Climate change education in the humanities classroom: a case study of the Lowell school curriculum pilot

Abstract

Climate change as an instructional topic in K-12 schools is most frequently taught in the science classroom. However, it is a human issue requiring social as well as technological and scientific solutions. This study analyzes and evaluates a climate change curriculum implemented via an integrated social studies and language arts framework in a middle school classroom. The curriculum reflects collaboration between a private school, a climate education non-profit, and a government agency (NOAA). Following the first year of implementation, student surveys, teacher interviews, and classroom observations comprise the primary tools of data collection and evaluation. Based off these data, students demonstrate high levels of climate literacy, improvements in reading comprehension, and overall engagement with the topic. Teachers report successes and challenges of teaching the curriculum, and administrators offer opportunities for scaling and implementing the curriculum in other schools and contexts (including public schools). Findings from this study are relevant to climate change curriculum developers, researchers, and educators seeking to incorporate an interdisciplinary, socio-scientific approach to climate change education in their work.

Keywords:

• Climate change education
• climate literacy
• humanities framework

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support and cooperation of the teachers and staff at Lowell Middle School, in particular Kavan Yee, Dave Levy, Lucas Kelly, and Sarah Smith. We would also like to thank Climate Generation: A Will Steger Legacy for their role in drafting and developing the curriculum with Lowell staff, and for contributing interviews to this evaluation of the first year pilot.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Figure A1. Curriculum design and development process diagram.

Notes on contributors

Alana Siegner is a PhD student at the U.C. Berkeley Energy and Resources Group. Alana does research in sustainable agriculture, climate change education, and the food-energy-water nexus, applying participatory social science methods. She has developed an experiential food and climate change curriculum centered around school farms and gardens for middle school and high school students. She is currently working on a project with the Berkeley Food Institute, ‘Sustainable Urban Farming for Resilience and Food Security’. She co-founded the student group Tiny House in My Backyard (THIMBY), and led the water and agricultural systems design for an off-grid tiny house built for a California tiny house competition.

Natalie Stapert is the Middle School Humanities Curriculum Coordinator and seventh grade Humanities teacher at Lowell School. Natalie joined Lowell in 2010 as a second grade teacher. She is a graduate of Shippensburg University where she majored in Elementary Education and minored in International Studies. She taught for five years at Ben W. Murch Elementary School in Washington, DC, first as a fourth grade teacher and then as the primary-level reading specialist. In 2009, she earned National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification, an honor held by only 3% of the nation's teaching force.

Notes

1 The climate change curriculum under investigation here incorporates a similar Model UN climate negotiation as an effective student learning opportunity.

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DGE-1633740.