Research
Q&A: Climate change politics in the high school classroom
A Stanford education scholar discusses how young people are affected by the politicization of climate change – and what science teachers can do to help bridge the divide.
How We Know What We Know: Advancing climate change education
Climate change is one of the most complex scientific and social challenges we face today. Learning about climate change offers rich opportunities for students to learn both what we know about the causes and effects of climate change and how we know what we know. In this article, we describe what we learned from working with middle and high-school science teachers as they taught a unit about climate change in their classrooms. . .
Classroom Implementation, Student Achievement, and Project Evaluation
Our first hypothesis is supported by our finding that, at the classroom
level, the average level of student engagement/interaction is positively
related to the average achievement gains on the paper-and-pencil test
of the curriculum. In addition, we found that the greater the
disengagement, the lower the learning gains.
Advancing Climate Change Education: Student Engagement and Teacher Talk in the Classroom
Preliminary Results from the first cohort of teachers was presented at the American Geophysical Union's Fall 2011 meeting.
Why and How We Teach about Climate Change
Climate change is unlike many other topics taught in science. It is politically-laden and may be perceived as controversial in public debates because responses have immediate implications for contemporary human behaviors and practices that extend beyond the realm of science. In this paper we discuss what we learned and thought about in this project. . .
Middle and high school students’ conceptions of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies
Both scientists and policy-makers emphasize the importance of education for influencing pro-environmental behavior and minimizing the effects of climate change on biological and physical systems. Education has the potential to impact students’ system knowledge – their understanding of the variables that affect the climate system – and action knowledge – their understanding of behaviors that can impact the system. . . .
Supporting and Understanding Students’ Epistemological Discourse About Climate Change
The climate change community has begun to look carefully at how the public understands, or fails to understand, climate change and the scientific claims made based on data. This study focuses on how teachers provide scaffolding that supports students’ understanding of, not only how climate systems work or the causes and effects of climate change, but also how we know what we know.