Thursday, December 5, 2019

If climate change action is so important, why spend time teaching climate change science?

The social movements of our country’s past and present have arisen from people’s everyday, lived experiences. Child labor and brutal working conditions spurred a movement for workers’ rights; racial discrimination and horrific violence motivate the ongoing fight for civil rights; degradation of precious natural resources—and the effects on human and ecological health—have led to efforts to protect our air, water, and biodiversity. Now comes climate change. Earth’s climate affects many aspects of our lives—how we grow food, obtain water, use energy, build houses—and right now our climate is changing, but it can be hard to put a finger on just how it is changing in our everyday lives.  We’re getting more extreme storms, but haven’t we always had storms, some worse than others? Average temperatures are rising, but it’s hard to know what an average winter feels like when winters vary from year to year.  And it’s hard to remember how temperatures and rainfalls that seem typical today differ from what seemed typical ten years ago.
Because climate change can be hard to grasp at the scales of our everyday lives, it can be hard to motivate people to take action to stop it. But the changes in our climate are real, and climate science has established that human activities that increase heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, are behind it. Because our lives are so tied to climate, it is imperative that we change the ways we produce and use energy in order to prevent disastrous changes to our planet’s climate. Understanding this is foundational, which is why climate change education is essential to  fighting climate change. Dealing with climate change ultimately depends on an informed public, for only when people understand that the climate is changing, and why, and how it matters to their own community, can they be engaged and mobilized for action.
There is good news about climate change education. Young people worldwide, many of whom learned about climate change in school, are taking to the streets demanding climate action. In the U.S., a 2016 national study(1) found that around 75% of public school science teachers teach about climate change, and two-thirds of science teachers want professional development in climate science. A 2019 poll of U.S. parents(2) found that over 80% think that schools should teach about climate change. A large body of work by educators and researchers over the last twenty years has led to understanding of strategies for effective teaching about climate change.(3)
But challenges remain. The same survey that found that climate change is widely taught in the U.S. also found that around one-third of teachers do not think human activities are the main cause of recent global warming.(1)  Despite the highly interdisciplinary nature of climate change across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, 65% of teachers who don’t teach about climate change say it’s because it’s not related to the subjects they teach.(2)  The same poll reveals other concerns and needs of teachers.  Ninety-one percent of teachers who teach climate change say they feel comfortable answering students’ questions about climate change, whereas only 56% of teachers who don’t teach climate change feel comfortable with this. Perhaps related, 77% of teachers who teach climate change say they have the resources they need to answer students’ questions about climate change, whereas of the teachers who don’t teach climate change, only 32% say they have the resources they need.
Climate change teaching resources abound—a teacher can easily find lesson plans, datasets, maps and visualizations, stories, and images online.  But sorting through the vast array of resources and assessing their utility, relevance, and credibility is not easy. At the Paleontological Research Institution, we strive to help teachers discover the essential elements of teaching climate change, both climate science basics and social science issues associated with teaching such a complex, interdisciplinary topic. We do this through our recent publication, The Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change, as well as teacher professional development workshops and exhibits and programs at our two education venues in Ithaca, NY—the Museum of the Earth and the Cayuga Nature Center.
Many Americans don’t question that education is essential for building a strong economy and maintaining a vital democracy. We understand the continuing value of our children learning the things that schools teach today—some of which have been taught in the U.S. for more than 200 years —such as reading, writing, mathematics, history, foreign languages, geography, and science. Climate change education, which can connect to all these disciplines, is just as valuable. Given the need to act now for a stable, livable climate, climate change education is not only valuable, it is essential.

(1)  Eric Plutzer, A. Lee Hannah, Joshua Rosenau, Mark S. McCaffrey, Minda Berbeco, Ann H. Reid. (2016) Mixed Messages: How Climate is Taught in America’s Schools. Oakland, CA: National Center for Science Education. http://ncse.com/files/MixedMessages.pdf
(2)  NPR/Ipsos polls of 1,007 U.S. adults conducted March 21-22, 2019 and 505 teachers conducted March 21-29, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/22/714262267/most-teachers-dont-teach-climate-change-4-in-5-parents-wish-they-did (accessed 11/18/2019).
(3)  Monroe, M. C., Plate, R. R., Oxarart, A., Bowers, A., & Chaves, W. A. (2019). Identifying effective climate change education strategies: a systematic review of the research. Environmental Education Research, 25(6), 791–812. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2017.1360842