However, with technological advances and greater international communication and exchange today, the pace of change has quickened. Teaching how to be successful today without looking to the future is outdated. Enabling young people to predict and cope with change is part of a quality education in the new millennium.
Climate change education: what to
teach Climate change education has two obvious parts: climate and change. The climate part obviously falls
under the umbrella of the natural sciences and has tradition- ally been taught in geography (e.g., climatology) and earth science (e.g., meteorology). Climate includes atmospheric composition and processes. This part of climate change education can be easily updated in formal education through
change. However, education that includes awareness, knowl- edge, skills, values, and opportunities for participation does bring about in-depth learning and behavior change. We need to keep this in mind as educational systems around the world define and implement climate-change education.
Climate change: an umbrella paradigm
Climate change is an umbrella paradigm for a host of social, economic, and environmental changes, problems, and issues. Global climate change comes with alterations in the frequency of extreme weather events, agricultural zones, habitat for plants and animals, and geographic ranges for diseases as well as many other consequences. People’s livelihoods and patterns of daily life are changing and will continue to change. In some cases this change will be slight and in others substantial. For example, an affluent urban dweller experiencing a rise in temperature and a decrease in rainfall may install air conditioning and pay higher utility costs for electricity and water. To these urbanites climate change may seem like an affordable nuisance. In contrast, farmers who have planted traditional crops for many years may find that drought now shrivels the plants in their fields. They will need to learn how to adapt to this change by selecting low-water crops that are appropriate for the new rainfall and temperature regimes. These farmers will also have to locate new sources of water, not only for their crops but also for their own household use. For them, climate change is life changing. For both these farmers and their children—who often
assist on the farm—it is important that education systems teach more than natural science and mathematics. It needs to embrace teaching people how to adapt and plan for change. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines life skills as “abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enables indi- viduals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.” Everyday life is changing rapidly and will continue to do so, in part because of climate change. Years ago when the pace of change was slower, one
of the goals of education was to help pupils understand the workings of our society and how to be successful in it.
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cyclical revisions of the science curriculum that take place about every seven years. The second part—educating for change—is where the
thought-provoking discussions on climate change education need to occur. What does it mean to educate for change? What change is predicted so that we can prepare people to adapt to it? We need to distinguish between educating about change—history courses have done that for years—and educating for change. We posit that educating for change will help people lessen negative changes, adapt to change, and to promote positive change. Educating for change will require engaging social science and humanities teachers, as well as others. We think there are six important components to the
change portion of climate change education: • issue analysis, • community and personal decision-making, • political processes, • social justice,
• inter-cultural sensitivity and inter-cultural competence, and
• behavior change
The following are short descriptions of each of these six components. Implementing anyone of these will require far greater description and discussion than space allows.
Issue analysis
Climate change is an umbrella concept that encompasses environmental, social, economic, and political problems and issues facing communities around the world. We think it is important for people to have ways to investigate the things that challenge them and then propose solutions to those challenges. Issue analysis guides people through a process that can be used with any issue. It is a “generic” process that can be applied to a wide range of environmental, social, and economic problems. There are many good methods of issue analysis in the educational literature (Clarke 2000; Ramsey, Hungerford & Volk 1989). See sidebar. Issue analysis gives individuals and groups the back- ground information they need to understand issues and to
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