The project has worked with teachers, scientists and students across years 5-10 and across the three countries to generate fresh insights into the nature and practice of Climate Change Education in school science. At the current time we are still engaged in researching in schools, and the research will be ongoing through 2026.
Key findings to date include:
- The generation of a perspective on CCE: that it should fundamentally focus on students learning about the nature of and entanglements between Earth systems and human systems, with socio-ecological challenges recognised as placing humans at the centre of environmental concerns.
- Recognition that science education researchers have a fundamental role to play in the co-design processes with scientists, teachers and students, but there are a range of variations in the Design Based Research approach that can lead to productive interventions.
- The generation of a curriculum / learning sequence model that flexibly attends to contemporary science research practices within school curricular settings.
4. The development of a range of approaches to defining and supporting student agency in relation to socio-ecological challenges.
5. The design and evaluation of a range of learning sequences that generate positive student learning of science knowledges, values and decision-making competencies related to socio-ecological challenges.
6. Cross country comparison of teachers’ knowledge and perceptions of climate change education
7. Analysis of textbooks across Australia, Finland and Taiwan identifying a detailed set of code categories representing different aspects of science and social science knowledge and practice relevant to CCE.
More detailed findings
Defining Climate Change Education in ways that are different to Education for Sustainability
The Australian research has developed a range of findings and generated a number of principles relating to Climate Change Education within Science Education. First, we argue that the core focus on CCE should be on learning about and adopting a perspective on Anthropocene challenges related to climate change as involving the entanglement of Earth systems and human systems. Traditional environmental education and Education for Sustainability has tended to position the environment as separate from humans, but it is clear that humans and human systems are at the centre of socio- ecological challenges and science education needs to incorporate human systems into any consideration of the ecological challenges of climate change.
Consideration of human systems might involve traditional technology aspects of science such as the science of new materials, renewable energy or new food technologies, but if we are learning about socio-ecological challenges then a systems perspective is needed that considers also the complexity of science-society-environment interactions including the need to ‘speak to power’ in decision making and action. Rather than teaching CCE through an ‘impacts’ perspective that emphasises urgency and crisis, the approach is much more built around personal and civic actions, responsibility, and personal and collective agency.
Climate change education can be successfully infused into the science curriculum
Many have argued that CCE is inherently interdisciplinary, but we have shown, through the textbook analysis and through infusing CCE across the year 5 and year 6 curriculum in Victoria, Australia, that science can be productively expanded to include CCE concerns as a setting for in depth learning of science content within CCE contexts. This can involve, for instance, 1) expanding a study of light and vision to include the infrared section of the electromagnetic spectrum and undertaking a building design activity utilising infrared cameras, or 2) combining studies of energy, and chemical reactions, to consider the role of hydrogen produced through electrolysis in the energy transition including video of researchers and industry figures discussing current research and social licence.
Responses to the curriculum were positive with students expressing confidence in learning science, interest, and understandings of the complexity of the issues.
Students were able to separately comment on their interest in topics, and the importance.
Strategies for developing student agency
In infusing CCE across the science curriculum we have found it often difficult to free up time for serious attention to student agency. However, activities focused on agency include:
- Students generating and refining multimodal representations in learning of science concepts, emphasizing students’ critical and creative thinking
- Investigations leading to design recommendations -energy efficiency of the school, designing a bee garden, developing a bushfire plan
- Futures thinking – e.g. about energy transition
- Critical thinking about scenarios – case of converting a local bus line to fuel cells
- Arts based approaches – writing climate fiction about bees in the future
In a current Year 10 sequence we are working with the teacher to build the curriculum around case studies that are meaningful to students and that have both local and global significance. Case studies emphasise the complex connections between the science, human decision making and systems. Study of global systems is built around the construct of Planetary Boundaries which allow scope for conceptualizing the interaction between Earth and human systems. The current case study is built around ‘fast fashion’ and case studies attend to materials science and the complex systems involved in clothing.
Involving students in co-designing climate change science curriculum
In Finland, students work with scientists around climate-related research to map out school level activities that can be used as stimulus for teachers in incorporating CCE into their practice. Science educators act as mentors to curate this process which will result in the production and investigation of varied resources for CCE in the science curriculum.
Student decision making in an online module on the heat island effect
The Taiwanese research has involved science educators working with scientists, including those from the national climate monitoring body, to represent the complex science and civic regulations associated with the heat island effect in Taipei. Teachers have worked with these researchers to develop an online learning module that involves student decision making and actions that consider the system complexity involved in using the science knowledge to develop personal and community policy in situations where competing interests are at play. The module follows the learning sequence model outlined above and the research is investigating the nature of and factors affecting student decision making.
Conceptualising student and teacher outcomes
The research is investigating both student and teacher outcomes from the various initiatives. For students the outcomes are listed below, and are being assessed through a range of means, from online responses and decision making, written assessments, classroom observations and student productions. These outcomes are associated with ‘Agency in the Anthropocene’ from the PISA 2025 Science Framework.
Knowledge
• Understanding how human impacts have altered and are altering Earth’s systems (with increasing global and local impacts). This involves:
-Understanding of key science and mathematics concepts and contemporary science thinking and practice around socio-ecological challenges
-Systems thinking (complexity thinking) about socio-ecological effects that involves multiple, interdisciplinary knowledges and practices
• Understanding that humans are part of ecosystems and the rights of all species need to be acknowledged
• Understanding the communal and democratic processes through which actions can be effective for change
Values
• Valuing multiple perspectives and diverse knowledge systems (including Indigenous knowledges)
• Recognising and committing to the social justice implications of climate change (including justice to the environment – eco-justice)
• Demonstrating hope, resilience and efficacy in the face of socio-ecological crises
Competencies for decision making and action
- Critical competencies related to argumentation and review of science communication
- Developing habits of critical appraisal, decision making and action supported by clarity of knowledge and values
- Designing approaches to climate change related challenges that acknowledge complexity
- Commitment to acting for socio-ecological change at the personal, community and policy level, across scales from local to global
- Believing that their actions to mitigate climate change will be effective and recognised (self-efficacy, knowledge of action possibilities including community actions)
- The ability to engage inter-generationally in civic processes to effect change
Teachers
For teachers, the research involves teachers’ engagement with the co-design process, their motivations and perspectives, agency, and responses to the teaching and learning sequences. Teachers are positioned as partners in this research, and their judgments about pedagogy and content sequencing, and about student responses, are central to the research.
Teacher Education
In 2026 the project will move into a phase of trialling the findings and resources with pre-service teachers.
