Essentials for Teaching Climate Change
Cutting through the clutter and keeping up-to-date
By Seth Wynes T
EACHERS ARE MANDATED WITH covering the curriculum, but what should you do when curric- ulum guidelines get out of date? The study of climate
change is a field transforming as rapidly as our warming planet, and high school teachers may have to cover some of the gaps left by ageing instructions. But because of polar- ization in the media and society, it can be difficult to know which sources to trust and how to walk the line between being alarmist and underselling the severity of this problem. Fortunately, we can look at research to decide on some key points that every student should leave school understanding. For instance, studies have shown that a few key messages are critical in motivating action from the public:
• The Earth is warming • It’s Bad • It’s because of humans • Experts agree • We can fix it Covering these basics doesn’t need to use up a lot of time,
but it does require some initiative from teachers because cur- riculum documents tend to focus on the first couple of points, while missing the latter ones. Many science teachers go to great lengths to ensure that students understand things like ocean currents and the greenhouse effect — concepts which
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would be useful and uncontroversial even if our planet wasn’t in the midst of a climate crisis. But there are opportunities to address other important scientific ideas, while also teaching the five key points. For instance, the process of achieving consensus is vital to the scientific endeavour, and this process can be described while explaining that that 97% of climate scientists have come to agreement on the causes of climate change1
.
Addressing Controversy Some curriculum guidelines advise “teaching the contro- versy.” There is an effective way and an ineffective way to do this:
• Effective: Inoculation theory • Ineffective: Holding debates Let’s start with the ineffective way: holding debates. A
science curriculum document from Newfoundland and Lab- rador in Canada reads, “Research and try to find opposing arguments to climate change. Take one side of the issue and debate it with another student with an opposing viewpoint.” It makes sense to debate issues that scientists have NOT settled, where students have a valid opportunity to come to their own conclusions. But you wouldn’t hold a debate on whether DNA holds hereditary information, because scientists have agreed on the answer. The same is true for climate. Encouraging debate prompts students to consider the issue of what is caus- ing climate change to be up for debate, when it is not.
Green Teacher 121
Photo by
pixabay.com/ Lars Nissen Photoart
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