The views of teachers in England on an action-oriented climate change curriculum

Figures & data

Video abstract

Table 1. Teacher demographics.

Event	Region in England	Educational stage	Self-reporting as a science specialist	Self-reporting as a geography specialist	Self-reporting as other type of specialist	Unspecified	Total
1	Southwest	Primary	2	0	50	0	52
		Secondary	0	0	10	3	13
2	Northeast	Primary	4	2	41	0	47
		Secondary	4	5	16	0	25
3	West Midlands	Primary	0	0	0	0	0
		Secondary	40	19	190	10	259
4	Southwest	Primary	1	0	105	0	106
		Secondary	1	2	10	4	17
5	Southwest	Primary	0	0	0	0	0
		Secondary	15	9	70	13	107
	Total		67	37	492	30	626

Table 2. Percentage of teachers favouring the inclusion of CCE in each subject area.

Subject Area	% favouring inclusion of CCE in subject
Science	96.0
Geography	95.2
Citizenship	85.0
English	62.6
Design and Technology	54.6
History	54.3
Art	45.2
Mathematics	35.9
Computing	32.6
Foreign Languages	23.2
Music	21.1
Physical Education	18.9
Nowhere	0.0

Table 3 . The relative priority teachers assigned to curriculum areas for allocating additional school funding.

	% UK teachers placing as 1^st priority	% US teachers placing as 1^st priority*	% UK teachers placing as 2nd priority	% US teachers placing as 2nd priority**
Basic literacy	42.2	23	17.7	29
Climate change	19.3	5	21.0	7
STEM	18.4	29	26.5	29
Finance	11.6	21	14.7	24
Sex	6.7	6	19.4	6
Other	1.8	2	0.6	4

Note: US data is provided from the NPR/IPSOS poll (2019) for convenient comparison.

* For 1^st priority, the US survey also included “My school has plenty of resources to teach all subjects” and “don’t know” which accounted for 9% and 3% of responses, which were not options on this UK survey.

** For 2^nd priority, the US survey also included “don’t know”, which accounted for 2% of responses).

Table 4. Percentage agreement with statements indicating current engagement with students around climate change.

	UK Teachers (current study)					US Teachers
	Primary	Secondary	Teachers specialising in either Geography or Science	Teachers not specialising in either Geography or Science	Overall	Overall
1. I currently teach (or talk to) my students about climate change	73.7	69.9	95.1	69.2	73.7	42
2. My students have brought up climate change in the classroom this year	71.1	68.9	86.1	69.1	72.0	41

Note: The figure for US teachers is taken from the NPR/IPSOS poll (2019).

Table 5. Percentage agreement with statements related to climate belief, school encouragement, resource availability and feeling comfortable delivering CCE.

Variable	Statements included in Question 4	UK Teachers (current study)	US Teachers
Climate change belief	3. Climate change is being caused by humans	97.4	39% (mostly or entirely by humans)
	4. The world’s climate is changing	98.7	82%
	5. We could act to slow climate change	96.0	*
	6. We could act to lessen the effects of climate change	98.4	*
	7. Weather-related incidents are becoming more severe	93.7	62%
School encouragement	8. My school encourages us to discuss climate change in the classroom	57.9	37%
Resource availability	9. I have the resources I need to answer students’ questions about climate change	40.0	51
Comfortable delivering CCE	10. I feel comfortable answering students’ questions about climate change	75.1	71
	11. I would be personally uncomfortable if I had to teach about climate change	10.6	21

Note: US data is provided from the NPR/IPSOS poll (2019) for convenient comparison.

Figure 2. Scatter plots of feeling comfortable to deliver CCE against climate change belief, school encouragement (response to statement 8 in Table 5) and resource availability (response to statement 9 in Table 5).

Note: Shading represents the number of participants corresponding to each data point

Table

	EY	KS1	KS2	KS3	KS4	KS5	Inappropriate for school curriculum
Understanding the science of climate change
Understanding its root causes
Understanding its impacts on environment, economy, society
Understanding issues of global social justice re: climate change
Participation in school conservation projects re: climate change
Participation in climate change mitigation projects within the broader community (e.g. in local parks, local tree-planting)
Carrying out family advocacy (e.g. making family action plans)
Participation in local community advocacy (e.g. speaking and writing publicly about climate-related issues)
Participation in local campaigning (e.g. drawing attention to climate change through legal demonstration)
Participation in civil disobedience around climate change

Table

4. How much do you agree (or disagree) with the following statements (tick one box opposite)?	Strongly disagree	Somewhat disagree	Do not know	Somewhat agree	Strongly agree
Climate change is being caused by humans
The world’s climate is changing
We could act to slow climate change
We could act to lessen the effects of climate change
Weather-related incidents are becoming more severe
My school encourages us to discuss climate change in the classroom
My students have brought up climate change in the classroom this year
I currently teach (or talk) to my students about climate change
I feel comfortable answering students’ questions about climate change
I have the resources I need to answer students’ questions about climate change
I would be personally uncomfortable if I had to teach about climate change