Professional development design considerations in climate change education: teacher enactment and student learning

ABSTRACT

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing society, and climate change educational models are emerging in response. This study investigates the implementation and enactment of a climate change professional development (PD) model for science educators and its impact on student learning. Using an intrinsic case study methodology, we focused analytic attention on how one teacher made particular pedagogical and content decisions, and the implications for student’s conceptual learning. Using anthropological theories of conceptual travel, we traced salient ideas through instructional delivery and into student reasoning. Analysis showed that students gained an increased understanding of the enhanced greenhouse effect and the implications of human activity on this enhanced effect at statistically significant levels and with moderate effect sizes. However, students demonstrated a limited, though non-significant gain on the likely effects of climate change. Student reasoning on the tangible actions to deal with these problems also remained underdeveloped, reflecting omissions in both PD and teacher enactment. We discuss implications for the emerging field of climate change education.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• conceptual travel
• professional development
• learning outcomes

Acknowledgements

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We are grateful for the members of the MADE CLEAR research team and to the teachers and students who have collaborated with us for this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Andrea Drewes http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9780-8839

Notes

1 Names of all research participants are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This paper reports on research supported by the National Science Foundation [grant number 1239758].