Climate Literacy in the Classroom: Supporting Teachers in the Transition to NGSS
Abstract
Meeting the challenge of climate change will clearly require 'deep learning' - learning that motivates a search for underlying meaning, a willingness to exert the sustained effort needed to understand complex problems, and innovative problem-solving. This type of learning is dependent on the level of the learner's engagement with the material, their intrinsic motivation to learn, intention to understand, and relevance of the material to the learner. Here, we present evidence for deep learning about climate change through a simulation-based role-playing exercise, World Climate. The exercise puts participants into the roles of delegates to the United Nations climate negotiations and asks them to create an international climate deal. They find out the implications of their decisions, according to the best available science, through the same decision-support computer simulation used to provide feedback for the real-world negotiations, C-ROADS. World Climate provides an opportunity for participants have an immersive, social experience in which they learn first-hand about both the social dynamics of climate change decision-making, through role-play, and the dynamics of the climate system, through an interactive computer simulation. Evaluation results so far have shown that the exercise is highly engaging and memorable and that it motivates large majorities of participants (>70%) to take action on climate change. In addition, we have found that it leads to substantial gains in understanding key systems thinking concepts (e.g., the stock-flow behavior of atmospheric CO2), as well as improvements in understanding of climate change causes and impacts. While research is still needed to better understand the impacts of simulation-based role-playing exercises like World Climate on behavior change, long-term understanding, transfer of systems thinking skills across topics, and the importance of social learning during the exercise, our results to date indicate that it is a powerful, active learning tool that has strong potential to foster deep learning about climate change.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014AGUFMED23F..02R
- Keywords:
-
- 0815 Informal education;
- EDUCATION;
- 0825 Teaching methods;
- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1637 Regional climate change;
- 0850 Geoscience education research;
- 1699 General or miscellaneous;
- 6324 Legislation and regulations;
- POLICY SCIENCES;
- 6615 Legislation and regulations;
- PUBLIC ISSUES