New advances in research on learning have important implications for teaching mineralogy, petrology, and geochemistry. Effective instructional practices are increasingly student centered, address diverse student learning styles, and employ a variety of active-learning strategies. Teaching practices should be redirected from learning about science to learning to be scientists, emphasizing inquiry, discovery, critical thinking, problem solving, and the skills required to observe, analyze, and interpret the world around us. This issue of Elements describes some of these findings and provides examples of how they can be applied to teaching mineralogy, petrology, and geochemistry.
