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Futures-Focused Teaching and Learning of Climate Change: An Exploration into Students’ Perceptions of the Climate Future

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Innovative Approaches to Socioscientific Issues and Sustainability Education

Part of the book series: Learning Sciences for Higher Education ((LSHE))

Abstract

In recent years, a number of environmental and science educators have advocated the use of futures scenarios to aid learning (Kopnina in Journal of Environmental Education 45: 217–231, 2014; Liu in International Journal of Science Education 41: 1038–1051, 2019; Lloyd et al. in Teaching Science: The Journal of the Australian Science Teachers Association 56: 18–23, 2010). Specifically within the context of climate change education where the future plays a central role, developing descriptive scenarios or storylines of possible future climates seems to be a promising alternative approach to developing students’ foresight and empowering them to take climate action. This chapter focuses on a futures-focused teaching module seeking to systematically lead students to explore, examine, and create future scenarios under climate change. A writing activity in the final phase of the module requires students to describe in a narrative way a carbon-neutral future of their familiar local environment. This module was developed and taught as an integral part of an elective, semester-long, undergraduate course on climate change intended for all majors in a public university of southern Taiwan. Drawing on data collected through the implementation of the teaching module over two consecutive semesters, this chapter presents how this module helped to gain insight into students’ thoughts about what constitutes a sustainable future and to improve their perceptions of and attitudes toward the future of climate change.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the Editors for their invitation and support in completing this work, to Prof. Larry Yore, Prof. Chia-Yu Wang, Dr. Efrat Eilam, and Dr. Peta White for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this work. I am also thankful for the financial support from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology under two grants (MOST 107-2511-H-110 -008 -MY3 and MOST 110-2511-H-110 -015 -MY3).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for General Education, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Shu-Chiu Liu

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  1. Shu-Chiu Liu
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Correspondence to Shu-Chiu Liu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Institute of Science Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Ying-Shao Hsu

  2. Faculty of Arts and Education, School of Education, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia

    Russell Tytler

  3. Faculty of Arts and Education, School of Education, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia

    Peta J. White

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Liu, SC. (2022). Futures-Focused Teaching and Learning of Climate Change: An Exploration into Students’ Perceptions of the Climate Future. In: Hsu, YS., Tytler, R., White, P.J. (eds) Innovative Approaches to Socioscientific Issues and Sustainability Education. Learning Sciences for Higher Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1840-7_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1840-7_16

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-19-1840-7

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