EarthLabs: Supporting Teacher Professional Development to Facilitate Effective Teaching of Climate Science

ABSTRACT

The EarthLabs Climate program encourages high school students to develop systems thinking and scientific knowledge as the basis for climate literacy. In this paper, we introduce three components of the effort: curriculum development, teacher professional development, and evaluation. The main focus is on the two-part teacher professional development program, which enables a small group of exemplary teachers, known as EarthLabs “teacher leaders,” who have reviewed and tested the EarthLabs Climate modules (part 1) to lead a summer workshop introducing high school teachers to modules (part 2). Evaluation results from the first workshops held in Texas and Mississippi in summer 2012 reveal that participants appreciated the variety of activities covered, including online resources, individual work, small group work, hands-on activities, outdoor activities, field trips, and scientist lectures. Self-reported content learning and increased confidence in teaching the three main topics was positive for almost all participants. These results, in combination with teacher leaders' observed pedagogic practice and reported impact of their participation, suggest that the EarthLabs Climate two-part model of teacher professional development is effective. This success is largely because of our support system for teacher leaders to help them plan and deliver summer workshops, as well as the emphasis placed on supporting their continued professional growth. We are confident that EarthLabs Climate teacher leaders are competent to continue to offer professional development to their colleagues and to sustain climate education beyond the current effort. Research on student learning and detailed evaluation results will be presented elsewhere.

Key words: :

• climate science
• teacher professional development
• secondary education
• curriculum design

Acknowledgments

Development of the three EarthLabs Climate modules was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (EAR-0807575, DRL-1019815, DRL-1019721, and DRL-1019703). We thank scientists in the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin and MSU who gave presentations on climate topics during summer workshops: Drs. Kerry Cook, Ginny Catania, Jay Banner, Joe Levy, Tip Meckel, Hilary Olson, Jeff Hatten, Shrinidhi Ambinakudige, Andrew Mercer, and Renee Clary. We also thank graduate students Marie Cavitte, Enrica Quartini, and Kaustubh Thirumalai for their assistance with the delivery of the teacher PD in Texas. Finally, we appreciate the efforts of our curriculum developers Erin Bardar (climate and the cryosphere), Betsy Youngman (climate and the biosphere), and Candace Dunlap (climate and the carbon cycle) and our coordinators Sarah Hill, Elizabeth Polito, and Curry Templeton.