Promoting Regionally-Based Climate Change Education through Collaborations with Formal and Informal Education Institutions

Improving climate literacy is necessary to effectively respond to climate change impacts. However, climate change education efforts face significant hurdles both in the classroom and in out-of-school settings. These include addressing uncertainity and the complex mix of drivers and impacts that occur over large spatial and temporal scales. These efforts are further hampered by audiences who are disinterested and resisant to discussions of anthropogenic climate change. Bridging formal and informal education experiences focused on climate change offers a potentially powerful strategy to tackle these challenges. In this session, we will describe our NSF-funded Maryland-Delaware Climate Change Education, Assessment and Research (MADE-CLEAR) project, which applies a comprehensive regional partnership among scientists, education researchers, K-12 and informal education practitioners, and other stakeholders to improve public and student understanding of and engagement in climate change issues and solutions. To better understand gaps and opportunities, we have conducted surveys and interviews with K-12, informal, and undergraduate educators and administrators. We found that climate change education aligns with most institutions' missions and efforts, that most educators do not face institutional barriers to climate change education, and that climate change is typically incorporated as part of a host of environmental issues. Despite this, climate change education is still quite limited with few institutions explicitly focusing on climate change in their programming. Additionally, there is little apparent communication among these institutions with regard to this issue. In response to these needs, we have focused the MADE-CLEAR project on creating and providing regionally-relevant resouces and professional development on climate change science, impacts and solutions for both formal and informal educators. Our approach is collaborative and includes strategies to promote networking within and among these two groups. For example, we will lead joint workshops where K-12 teachers can share their in-depth understanding of climate change concepts and links to education standards, while free-choice-learning practitioners can provide their expertise in engaging diverse audiences and supporting more learner-centered teaching. Our resources will further support a formal-informal bridge by helping both groups of educators make climate change relevant to their audiences with local examples of impacts and ways to mitigate or adapt to these impacts. Our project includes design-based research, and thus we will examine how our professional development is translated into practice at different types of institutions and the impact of our approach on enhancing formal-informal education collaborations focused on climate change education.