Teachers’ understanding of climate change
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Problem Statement: The climate science has made a great progress in the last decade and also the climate system itself has shifted towards a hotter state. The climate change topic has been included at the framework curricular documents in the Czech Republic since 2007. But there are no rules on who should be in charge of teaching climate change at the schools. The natural science is usually taught as integrated subject at lower-primary schools (grades 1-5) and divided to physics, chemistry, biology and geography at upper-primary schools (grades 6-9) and secondary schools (grades 10-13). Therefore formal education of interdisciplinary climate science is challenging and well trained teachers are required. Providing an adequate climate literacy to the next generation remains a challenge. Purpose of Study: The study aims to investigate the current state of Czech teachers’ knowledge and understanding of climate change. The teachers don’t get any special training on climate change issues and educational resources are also missing in the Czech Republic. In order to provide a tool for teaching climate change we develop an online applications and lesson plans. Research Methods: In 2011 we conducted a research on teachers’ understanding of climate change collecting data using an online survey form. The test questions were focused on how the climate system works, which is a domain of climate physics. Findings: The upper-primary teachers performed significantly better in the test than the lower-primary teachers and physics teachers showed significantly better knowledge compare to the rest of the teachers. Czech teachers are interested in online educational resources available on the Internet. Conclusions: Although the Czech Republic declares a compulsory education on climate change issues, in reality teaching of the topic has been problematic. Through our research we discovered that physics teachers have relatively good understanding of the climate system, thus are better placed to teach climate science than other teachers. As a free educational tool we developed an online application on modelling future global CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation. The application can be used during the school lessons on climate change mitigation. |
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