Fifty Years of Climate Curricular Confusion and Pedagogical Gaps

Details Fifty Years of Climate Curricular Confusion and Pedagogical Gaps Fifty Years of Climate Curricular Confusion and Pedagogical Gaps

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufmed14a..01m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #ED14A-01

Economy

0800 Education, 1600 Global Change, 1704 Atmospheric Sciences, 3305 Climate Change And Variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513), 6620 Science Policy (0485)

Scientific paper

The processes of weather and climate, including the greenhouse effect and the potential for significant, even catastrophic human impacts on the climate system, were sufficiently understood in 1958 during the International Geophysical Year that the authors of the science education booklet, Planet Earth, The Mystery with 100,000 Clues, published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, were confident to predict that continued emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could, in time, melt icecaps and glaciers and rise sea levels. This important scientific insight was further studied by climatologists, but is largely missing as an integral, important component of science education. Now, fifty years later, with a global population that has doubled, fossil fuel emissions that have tripled, and current energy consumption and emission trajectories that are above the IPCC Business as Usual scenario, leading politicians still doubt that our global economy can impact the climate system. NRC estimates that up to 40 percent of the approximately $10 trillion U.S. economy is affected by weather and climate events annually, making it a crucial if not dominant factor in our economic well-being, particularly for future generations. Despite the long term and short term importance of climate in our lives, society is essentially illiterate about climate science and confused about the connections between energy, economy and climate, as numerous public opinion polls and studies have shown. A key reason is that education programs and pedagogical content knowledge focusing on the basics of climate, including natural variability as well as human induced climate change, are largely missing from K12 and undergraduate education. Climate has fallen through disciplinary cracks, been avoided because of perceived controversy, and neglected because most educators lack training or expertise in the subject matter. With a focus on climate in formal education, this paper will provide an overview of science education over the past fifty years, examine various education reform efforts and initiatives aimed at fostering a more science literate society over recent decades, explore a few of the reasons why many students are never exposed to the basics of the climate system, and propose a strategy on how this unfortunate historical curricular and pedagogical gap in climate education can be addressed.

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