NAEE published an earlier version of this post two years ago arguing that it seemed plausible to think of five essential elements to teaching and learning about climate change. What follows here is an updated version of the original with the five elements remaining unchanged.
Five Elements
- What is climate?
- What’s the evidence for global heating and the changing climate?
- Looking ahead: what might happen if we carry on as we are?
- Looking around: what are we already doing?
- Looking ahead: what might (or should) we be doing?
Rationale
[1] What is climate? This is the easy bit and it goes on in schools already. It’s uncontroversial, and there is a great deal of teacher experience and expertise. It is in the national curriculum. [Note 1]
[2] What’s the evidence? This is more challenging. There is less experience and expertise in relation to teaching about the warming planet and the changing climate. There is some reference to this in the national curriculum, but not in any comprehensive sense. There are excellent resources however, and it’s now largely uncontroversial. This is the province of geography and science teaching, although there is scope for other subjects to get involved; maths is an obvious area, for example, in terms of data analysis.
[3] What might happen if we carry on as we are? This is more complex in both its nature, and in terms of how to help students learn. It can be seen as an extension of [2] and is a complicated and contentious mix of science and outcome forecasting by the IPCC with some of the modelling suggesting a badly compromised biosphere if the Paris Agreement targets are not achieved. It’s not in the national curriculum at all. There’s an argument that this has to be addressed in schools, given the focus on it in the wider world, and the existence of considerable doom-laden forecasting giving rise to anxiety amongst young people. Pedagogically, it’s an area where careful discussion will be necessary across many subjects.
[4] What are we already doing? and [5] What might (or should) we be doing? These bring new levels of difficulty because they are both inherently political, and values are in play. Although [4] might be thought of as largely factual, it will be impossible to focus sensibly on it without evaluating what is being done (and hence not done) especially where the UK and some other governments have been revising net-zero policies. Exploring this and [5] carries risk for a school because of its political and controversial nature, but it’s what groups of young people say they want. The national curriculum is silent on it.
Progression
These five elements might be seen as broadly sequential.
Certainly [1] is needed for a study of [2], and this is what the national curriculum sets out, although it defers a focus on [2] to secondary education which seems problematic given that it implies that primary school children should be taught about climate without any mention at all of climate change. This makes no sense and is not what young people want.
[1] and [2] need to be in place before [3] is tackled with [4] and [5] following. Logically, [4] should come before [5] but it might make more sense, pedagogically, to address these in an integrated fashion. Dealing with [4] and [5] will likely always be difficult, and there is little if any teacher professional development focused on these areas. It is understandable, if disappointing, that there seems to be so little focus on this. One issue is that external agencies offering help here will likely come with their own, often value-driven, perspectives on the issues which they might find difficult not to promote.
Whilst all that might make broad sense, it say little about what gets focused on as young people move through the key stages, and the lack of focus in the national curriculum on [3] to [5] does not help. Nor does it address the key organisational questions about which subject(s) might best contribute to which aspects. Whatever formal guidance is generated (there’s none yet) about any of this, it will have to be left to individual schools and academy trusts to determine operational matters. One thing seems clear, however; that as we go from [1] to [5] there’s an increase in the number of subjects that will have to contribute if the issues are to be explored fully and effectively.
Support for School Leaders and Teachers
Given the lack of guidance on how climate education could usefully be experienced by students as they progress through schools from reception to year 13, there is surely a niche for a non-prescriptive but authoritative guide. This would explore progression through the key stages, identify the contribution of different subjects (using Teach the Future’s track change reports, perhaps), explore pedagogies, and set out what informal activities such as fieldwork, projects and school clubs etc can do. All this might be based around what NAEE has already published or other thinking but It would necessarily be a collaborative venture involving a range of interested organisations with wide consultation.
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Note 1. We should remember that climate is not a stand-alone topic but is a facet of what might be termed Earth Systems eg, material cycles, atmosphere and ocean currents, greenhouse effect, plate tectonics, natural phenomena, etc.