Overview

Enacting Climate Change Education: Building student and teacher agency through representing scientists’ practices in classrooms

This research works alongside scientists and teachers to translate contemporary climate-related research practices into a novel curriculum approach that will emphasise deep knowledge of science and scientific practices, values and decision making designed to prepare students for a 21st century marked by complex work futures and major socio-scientific challenges related to climate change.

This ARC Discovery Project is responding to the increasing concerns about the declining engagement of students with science, and growing calls for a futures-oriented, competence-based curriculum. It is aiming to produce a scientifically literate population and future scientists equipped to respond to a changing global landscape.

The research is addressing the pressing national issues of developing students’ STEM engagement and competencies for fast changing work futures, and for decision making and action regarding climate-related challenges.

Global May 2023 temperatures
NOAA Climate.gov image, based on data from NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information.

Engaging scientists with school communities in three distinctive education contexts (Australia, Taiwan, and Finland), we are exploring how Climate Change Education (CCE) can be framed and developed within an expanded conception of science education to engage students in a) contemporary scientific R&D practices related to CC; and b) decision making and actions based on appraisal of scientific findings and solutions alongside broader knowledge and value systems.

Learning sequences are being co-developed with the following features: video and media representation of scientists’ research including their motivations and accounts of societal complexities framing the science; student engagement with scientific knowledge and practices utilising scientific papers and authentic data; the incorporation of innovative, guided inquiry pedagogies that promote student reasoning and learning; discussion of/reasoning about different values and stakeholder positions on sustainability issues framing the science and decision-making on personal and collective approaches to these issues, focused on developing student agency.

Where appropriate, case studies of scientists’ research will include perspectives from community members and agencies on the societal aspects /importance of the research including complexities of interactions of scientific findings with community needs and concerns.

The project is aiming to:

  1. Investigate co-design approaches to representing, translating, and communicating science knowledge and practice to develop learning sequences that position science as central to responding to Anthropocene challenges.
  2. Investigate how to productively incorporate contemporary scientific research and practice related to Anthropocene challenges into school science, developing a climate change education progression model for upper primary to lower secondary years (5 – 10) of schooling in varied socio-cultural settings.
  3. Develop approaches to teaching and learning and teacher professional learning about climate related science focused on content, procedural, and epistemic knowledges, values, and student decision-making with a focus on developing student and teacher agency.
  4. Investigate the progressive development of students’ citizenship competencies through critical engagement with socio-scientific reasoning and practices in relation to Anthropocene challenges.