Including K-12 teachers in field research: progress and lessons learned on communicating climate change science to a broader audience
Abstract
Given the goal of climate treaties to limit CO2 emissions to stabilize at 450 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere (a ~ 3ºC increase), the world can emit another 45 Gt of C. This amount could easily come from the C stored in permafrost soils in the Arctic (i.e., Arctic amplification of climate warming). Thus, nations who share arctic territory may be severely constrained in their emissions and energy policies. Because all generations and societies will share this burden, engaging a broader audience than scientists is critical for a cross-cultural appeal to take on the tasks of discovering and applying solutions to climate change. Our approach to engage a broader audience in understanding the Arctic's role in climate change is to partner with K-12 teachers committed to using cutting-edge science on climate change as the means to achieve learning goals in their classrooms. PolarTREC, a National Science Foundation funded program has allowed us to bring K-12 teachers to the field and participate directly in our research. Interactions between our team of scientists and K-12 teachers in the field since 2013 has resulted in the development of peer-reviewed curricula in earth and environmental science that is integrated with our research and grounded in core education principles. Our curriculum "telescopes" in age-context and difficulty from K-12 to undergraduate to adult outreach levels. We've established a network of scientists and K-12 teachers that helps new teachers improve on and expand the curriculum and lessons learned from the prior experiences of former teachers. We've learned that including K-12 teachers in our field work capitalizes on the multiplicative effect of making their experiences as field scientists accessible to many more K-12 students and their parents than scientists could reach alone. Thus, we expect that collaboration with K-12 teachers is preparing society to both understand the role of the Arctic in global climate change and to think about possible solutions.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMED11A..03C
- Keywords:
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- 0799 General or miscellaneous;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0815 Informal education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0840 Evaluation and assessment;
- EDUCATION;
- 0845 Instructional tools;
- EDUCATION