The Understanding Global Change Project: Tools for teaching and learning about climate change and the Earth system

We need tomorrow's innovative scientists, engineers, and informed citizens to understand the multifaceted causes of global change in order to prepare them to tackle the most challenging issues of our time. In response, the Understanding Global Change (UGC) Project at the University of California Museum of Paleontology developed a suite of online and interactive learning materials that support middle and high school educators and their students to investigate how and why climate and ecosystems are changing. The UGC resources support learning about the Earth as a system, and are integrated with research-based teaching practices that utilize modeling to help students construct explanations of phenomena and make their understanding of complex systems visible. These materials and methods support the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013), and consequently, have generated great interest from educators across the country. Currently, the UGC Project is partnering with educators in Arizona, California, Idaho, Maryland, and Washington to co-design integrated science curricula that incorporate resources from the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN). Data were collected from UGC workshop participants in 2018-2019. Educators completed a 13-question online survey that required Likert-style and open-ended responses. Participants self-reported pre to post workshop increases in knowledge related to the content in the workshop, including the causes, consequences, and mitigation of climate change, systems thinking, and the nature and processes of science. New instructional units created by the collaborative network of UGC educators across the country are scheduled for release in 2019 and 2020.