This thorough screening process establishes validity
in the lesson plans included among StC’s resources. How- ever, in order to ensure the New-Jersey-specific StC portal’s resources are well aligned, a lesson plan rubric was devel- oped by the StC team. This rubric represents a modification of their existing lesson plan rubric, while also including alignment to New Jersey’s Climate Change Education Stan- dards,6 the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Net- work’s (CLEAN) review process,7 and the North American Association for Environmental Education’s Framework for K–12 Environmental Education.8 A focus group discussion was held with a group of stakeholders critical to the conver- sation on climate change education in New Jersey, includ- ing NJCCEI members and colleagues from their respective partner organizations, informal educators, practicing teacher leaders, school administrators, and StC staff. Together, this group offered further suggestions for modifying the pro- posed rubric. These suggestions were incorporated into a revised rubric for New-Jersey-specific lessons. The rubric itself was divided into two halves: a checklist to mark the presence or absence of seven items and a table containing five key categories on which to rate the lesson using three levels: low, average, or exemplary.
The checklist included the following items:
• Alignment to NJ standards • Contains interdisciplinary elements • Includes student outcomes • Includes essential questionsi • Includes assessment (can be formative or summative) • Where applicable, includes New-Jersey-specific ele- ments by integrating New Jersey’s local ecology and phenomena
• Includes teaching tips, including differentiation for stu- dents’ abilities
The key categories were as follows: Justice, Social-Emo-
tional Learning (SEL), Student Action, Depth, and Burden. And while the very thorough process described above
ensures that the lessons in the database are accurate, rigor- ous, and connected to New Jersey, the question remained: Would the rubric used to screen lessons be used reliably by the people screening the lessons?
Testing the rubric In an effort to test out this rubric, we reached out to New
Jersey public school teachers from within our professional network who met a few key criteria: a minimum of three years teaching experience and known professional learning about climate change either through undergraduate course- work or long-term professional development. We asked these teachers if they’d be willing to read a sample lesson and score it using the proposed rubric, and a total of nine teach- ers from six different school districts agreed. We sent them the following lessonii and the rubric itself
as a Google Form. We also allowed for open-ended com- ments at the end of the form. After the nine participating teachers completed the rubric, we analyzed the items one- by-one, and reported on those findings in-depth on a white paper.iii Overall, we are able to say that the rubric’s inter- rater reliability was approximately 80%, and for nearly all items within it, the coders were in agreement about 90% of the time. So, we can say conclusively that the rubric devel- oped for screening New-Jersey-specific resources is being used accurately by knowledgeable teachers.
Conclusions We are thrilled that New Jersey has made the bold move
to integrate climate change standards across subjects and grades. However, without the appropriate supports for teach- ers, we run the risk of seeing climate change education as just another task among the many that teachers face. The New Jersey portal of SubjectToClimate’s webpage is just the start of providing the tools we need to prepare teachers to face the challenge of climate change education head-on. We believe that this action will spark others to begin prioritizing climate education around the world and serve as a model on how to effectively support teachers when doing so.
Lauren Madden, Ph.D., is a Professor of Elementary Sci- ence Education in the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education at The College of New Jersey, where she also coordinates the Environmental Sustainability Edu- cation minor for pre-service teachers and graduate certifi- cate in Environmental Sustainability Education for practicing teachers. Her research and teaching advocate for scientific literacy and the health of our planet. She is the New Jersey Regional Editor for Green Teacher magazine.
Margaret Wang is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer for SubjectToClimate. She received her M.Ed from Harvard Graduate School of Education and her teaching certification from Princeton University. Her research at Har- vard revolved around international education policy, climate change education, and education entrepreneurship. Previ- ously, she was a high school Social Studies teacher.
References:
1. Office of New Jersey Governor, “First Lady Tammy Murphy Announces New Jersey Will Be First State in the Nation to Incorporate Climate Change Across Education Guidelines for K–12 Schools,” The State of New Jersey, June 3, 2022,
https://www.nj.gov/governor/news/news/562020/20200603b.shtml.
2. Rebecca Hill, Megan M. Rutkowski, Lori A. Lester, Heather Geniev- ich, Nicholas A. Procopio (Eds.), “New Jersey Scientific Report on Climate Change, Version 1.0,” New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection,
Page 26 Green Teacher 131
Photo credit Katie Conrad/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
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