Pre-service teacher professional development on climate change: Assessment of workshop success and influence of prior knowledge
Abstract
As states move to adopt the next generation science standards, in-service teachers are being provided with professional development that introduces climate change content and best practices for teaching climate change in the classroom. However, research has shown that it is challenging to bring this information into the higher education curriculum in education courses for pre-service teachers due to curricular and programming constraints. Over two years, the Maryland and Delaware Climate Change Assessment and Research (MADE-CLEAR) project explored a professional development approach for pre-service teachers which employed paired workshops that resulted in participant-developed lesson plans based on climate change content. The workshops were designed to provide pre-service teachers with climate change content related to the carbon cycle and to model a variety of techniques and activities for presenting this information in the classroom. Lesson plans were developed between the first and second workshop, presented at the second workshop and discussed with peers and in-service teachers, and then revised in response to feedback from the second workshop. Participant climate change content knowledge was assessed before the first workshop, and after the final revision of the lesson plan was submitted to the MADE-CLEAR team. Climate content knowledge was also assessed using the same survey for additional pre-service teacher groups who did not participate in the professional development. Results show that while the paired workshop approach increased climate content knowledge, the amount of improvement varied depending on the participants' prior knowledge in climate change content. In addition, some alternate conceptions of climate change were not altered by participant involvement in the professional development approach. Revised lesson plans showed understanding of underlying climate change impacts and demonstrated awareness of appropriate techniques for introducing this complex topic. These findings will be useful to those planning pre-service teacher professional development on climate change in the future.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMED31B0287V
- Keywords:
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- 0805 Elementary and secondary education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0825 Teaching methods;
- EDUCATION;
- 0830 Teacher training;
- EDUCATION;
- 0850 Geoscience education research;
- EDUCATION