NAEE is working with Teach the Future and others in support of their attempts to develop the curriculum so and help persuade more school leaders to take climate change and the ecological crisis seriously. In terms of teaching about climate change, and based on what we have already published, it seems plausible to argue that there needs to be a focus on five aspects:

  1. What is climate?
  2. What’s the evidence for global heating and the changing climate?
  3. Looking ahead: what might happen if we carry on as we are?
  4. Looking around: what are we already doing?
  5. Looking ahead: what might (or should) we be doing?

[1] What is climate 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 is more complex and challenging.  There is less experience and expertise in relation to teaching this, and it’s not all mandated by the national curriculum.  There are good resources though, and it’s now largely uncontroversial.  Both these are 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. There is some reference to this in the national curriculum, but not in a comprehensive sense.

[3] What might happen is even more complex in both its nature, and in terms of how to help students learn.  It’s a difficult mix of clear science and scenario modelling – some of which suggest awful possibilities for us all.  There is a risk of slipping into doom-forecasting.  It’s not in the national curriculum at all. There’s an obvious argument that this has to be a focus, but perhaps it’s not something to dwell on.

[4] What are we already doing and [5] What might / should we do bring a new level of difficulty, because they are both inherently political, and values are in play.  Although [4] might be thought of as factual, it will be impossible to focus sensibly on it without evaluating what is being done (and hence not done). Exploring this carries risk for a school but it’s what groups of young people say they want. The national curriculum is silent on it.

These five 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.

[3] certainly needs [1] and [2] to be in place before it is tackled and [4] and [5] need to follow. Logically, [5] should come before [6] but it might make more sense, pedagogically, to address these in an integrated fashion.

Whilst all that might make broad sense, it say little about what gets focused on across the different key stages, and the lack of focus in the national curriculum on [3] to [5] does not help us. Nor does it address the key organisational questions about which subject(s) should get to teach about which aspects. Whatever guidance is generated (there’s none yet) about any of this, it surely will have to be left to individual schools and academy trusts to determine operational matters. One thing seems clear, however, which is that as we go from [1] to [5] there’s an increase in the number of subjects that can contribute – indeed, that will have to contribute if the issues are to be explored effectively.

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Note 1. We should remember that climate is not a stand-along 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.

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