2.1 Introduction

Imagine a group of ninth-grade students on a class trip, walking around the neighborhood of their school. The school is called Al Taqwa, and it is located in Rahat, a predominantly Bedouin city in the Negev desert of southern Israel. As the students explore the neighborhood, their assignment is to pay attention to any environmental problems they notice and take pictures of evidence related to those problems. Some students smell the toxic scent of burning plastic and they notice smoke rising from a pile of trash near the street. They snap several photographs before continuing on.

After returning from the trip, the teacher facilitates a discussion that engages the students in analysing the causes of the problems they observed. In the example of the burning garbage, the students explore how they might personally contribute to the problem by purchasing food and other items with plastic packaging. Then, they expand their analysis to consider the functions of the local and national government in managing waste. Questions are also raised with regard to the role of culture, highlighting the fact that burning waste was a common practice in Bedouin society with a history that extends back to a time when all the waste was organic. As the web of cause and effect grows increasingly complex, the class begins to incorporate causal diagrams to organize the information, and they start to construct maps of the different stakeholders involved.

In this course, the goal is to enable students to conceptualize and help address climate change problems in the region – problems associated with heat waves, droughts, dust storms, soil degradation, changing precipitation patterns and dryland water scarcity. The teachers, Fareed Mahameed and Samah Matany, are incorporating our high school Climate Change Leadership curriculum to equip and motivate students to affect change.

The Climate Change Leadership curriculum is designed to integrate disciplinary concepts and process-based skills associated with defining problems, gathering evidence, generating solutions, synthesizing the possibilities for action, drawing conclusions with regard to the best way forward, communicating the results of the process and taking action. Throughout the curriculum, there are opportunities for students to practice empathy, systems-thinking, media literacy, and collaboration as they engage in projects connected to climate change. Clear standards, units, and lesson plans combined with an accompanying project-based assessment open possibilities for teachers to integrate the curriculum in a wide variety of ways.

We recognize that, in order for a curriculum to be effective, it needs to be accompanied by a strong implementation plan, and we are currently working with educators like Fareed to develop these plans for a variety of contexts. Ultimately, this approach to innovation in education is operating from a professional perspective that focuses on supporting the development of the capacity of teachers and school leaders to affect change (Reimers 2020). If we can build a network of teachers and school leaders interested in implementing the Climate Change Leadership curriculum and we can identify the customized support necessary for successful implementation, then the participating teachers will be able to enable climate change leaders in the new generation. We specifically focus on the development of a particular curriculum and its implementation because, in the context of Israel, there have been 17 reform initiatives in the past 30 years. If the curriculum were connected to a large scale reform, it could be more likely for it to be implemented in schools only so long as the initiative lasts, undermining the potential for longer-term integration of the curriculum.

In the first part of this chapter, we identify the problems in secondary school climate change curricula, particularly in Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. Then, we analyze the role of tertiary institutions through their relevant climate change pedagogical practices. Finally, we summarize the effective secondary education climate change resources that inform our curriculum. In the second part of the chapter, we present a Climate Change Leadership curriculum, highlighting how it integrates problem-solving frameworks from across disciplines to inspire inquiry and thoughtful action. We then describe our proposed standards to justify the pedagogical principles that are the basis of our curriculum. Lastly, we elaborate on our context-specific approach to the development of implementation plans to help schools successfully incorporate the curriculum.

We created this curriculum in collaboration with the Arava Institute, a tertiary education program in southern Israel that brings together Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian and international students from outside the region to engage in multi-disciplinary environmental studies, encompassing natural and social sciences as well as research into cross-border environmental issues. Thus, this curriculum was contextualized for Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, and we sought to learn from the work of the Arava Institute at the higher education level as we designed the curriculum for secondary schools in the region. While the regional focus has guided choices related to some of the curricular content, it is important to note that school leaders or teachers in diverse contexts could use the curriculum as well. Evidence that our project is not specific to the regional context can be seen in the success of Eco-Schools – a global Education for Sustainable Development program with an approach to climate change education that aligns with core aspects of our curriculum (Andreou 2020). Ultimately, our goal is to help shift the conversation of climate change curricula away from how we teach climate change to how we can foster environmental leaders within younger generations.

2.2 Analysis of Climate Change Curricula

2.2.1 The Problem with Climate Change Curricula in Israel, Jordan, and Palestine

In Jordan, Palestine, and Israel, the governments have acknowledged the need for enhanced climate change education due to the region’s semi-arid climate. More specifically, climate projections for the region include a rise of 3 °C (4 °C in Jordan), 10–30% decrease in precipitation (60% for Jordan), seawater level rise of 10 mm leading to land loss, and an increase in extreme weather events including floods, droughts, and heat waves (EcoPeace Middle East 2019). These environmental fluctuations threaten food, energy, and national security. The impacts of climate change are further amplified by the region’s influx of refugees and inter-state conflicts.

In this particular region, we chose to focus on a formal education initiative due to the sheer number of students in secondary schools. This may not be the case in many other regions as explored in Chap. 4, Haiti, and Chap. 5, Pakistan. As such, curriculum can be a powerful tool in implementing change in the formal education space and thus, affecting a large student population. In Israel, the secondary school net enrollment rate is around 98% with around 820,000 students in the formal secondary system; in Jordan, the rate is 80.86% with around 790,000 students; in Palestine, the rate is 50.86% with around 750,000 students (UNESCO Institute of Statistics 2020).

Furthermore, there is already some sort of precedence of teaching about climate change within the formal education system. In the Jordanian high school curriculum, “Earth Sciences and Environment” is a separate subject studied by most public high school students that combines knowledge, skills, and behavioral domains. The curriculum also teaches students how to collect environmental information in their community and integrate it into civic action campaigns for awareness and advocacy. However, while the textbooks give instructions regarding how to apply environmental literacy to informed action, teachers and students do not necessarily have the knowledge and skills to conduct these projects (Al-Newashi 2002, p. 48). The formal high school system in Palestine faces comparable issues. Palestine also has environmental education as a mandatory subject between seventh and tenth grade. Nevertheless, an in-depth analysis of their main environmental education topic “The Science of Health and the Environment” reveals that while the curriculum addresses awareness and investigative skills, it is lacking in building major ecological concepts and applying their knowledge through positive environmental actions (Karama 2016, p. 14–17).

In contrast to mandatory environmental education in Palestine, in the Israeli high school system, education related to the environment is not compulsory and is only offered to students who major in “Environmental Sciences” or “Earth and Environmental Sciences.” The “Environmental Sciences” curriculum has not been significantly updated since 1983 and it is mostly focused on students studying ecology. While students do have the option of selecting environmental ethics or environmental planning and management as a study unit, this constitutes a small population (Sagy and Tal 2015, p. 69). On the other hand, the “Earth and Environmental Sciences” curriculum is more aligned with climate change education as it focuses on “developing environmental insight” through systems-thinking (Sagy and Tal 2015, p. 70). However, since it is a new course, few students are exposed to this style of environmental education. In total, less than 10% of Israeli high school pupils are exposed to environmental education (Sagy and Tal 2015, p. 71). Since 2004, there have been initiatives spearheaded by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Environmental Protection to certify “Green Schools” based on a review of environmental practices of the school and environmental education curriculum. However, these initiatives fall short because there is no ongoing evaluation after the certificate is awarded to ensure that the school continues to perform to the relevant standards (Tal 2020).

Outside of the formal curriculum, there have been initiatives by various schools to transform the way climate change is being taught in the region. This is derived from a larger global movement through the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This organization has provided climate change educational resources that clearly show education’s role in mitigating climate change: enabling the youth to take collective action. For example, in UNESCO’s course for secondary school teachers on climate change education called Climate Change in the Classroom, there is an emphasis on “motivating action through local learning” and “motivating learners through real life experience” (Selby and Kagawa 2013, p. 8). UNESCO has worked with the One UN Climate Change Learning Partnership (UN CC: Learn 2013) to directly disseminate curricular resources embodying these ideals.

On a global scale, climate change education is moving towards project-based learning, which is a pedagogical practice where students engage with an authentic problem or question. Through inquiry and reflection, they ultimately create a public product as a summation of their investigation. Similar approaches can be seen in regional initiatives such as Youth Xchange, ASPnet, and South Eastern Mediterranean Environment Project (SEMEP). Youth Xchange is a collaborative initiative of UNESCO and the United Nations Environment Programme that has designed materials to enable educators to teach sustainable lifestyles throughout the Middle East, including schools in Jordan (UNESCO and United Nations Environment Programme 2011). Similarly, ASPnet is dedicated to enabling schools to engage in climate change education that includes multi-disciplinary, collaborative projects (UNESCO Associated Schools Network n.d.). Resources include guidelines to build climate change education networks within schools and materials designed to facilitate climate change education across subject areas. Lastly, the South Eastern Mediterranean Environment Project (SEMEP) programs focused on teaching students to apply scientific methodology to address specific issues in their local contexts (Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture 2012). For example, in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, secondary school projects were developed related to water filtration and conservation. In Jordan and Palestine, students were involved in other SEMEP initiatives, including expanding green spaces to combat desertification, and exploring questions of ethics and global warming (Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture 2012).

Through a review of the formal high school curricula in Israel, Jordan, and Palestine, there is clearly a need for updated curricula related to climate change combined with sufficient educator capacity to deliver the curricula. One way forward might be to adopt project-based initiatives in the region, inspired by UNESCO, to guide such curricula as these initiatives can help students learn about climate change and apply their knowledge in the context of local collaborative projects. In parallel with these initiatives, there would also be a need for substantive professional development for teachers to ensure that they have the skills and confidence to teach in this way. While this shift in climate change curricula and teacher training could be impactful, the impact would be limited by the fact that project-based initiatives are less attentive to ensuring that students come away with a deep understanding of frameworks for informed actions outside of the context of the curriculum and their particular projects. This undermines the ability of students to transfer their understanding and limits their ability to engage with the multi-faceted dimension of climate change outside of the context of the course. Therefore, in order to teach students how to translate their knowledge into sustained civic engagement, it is essential that the students not only engage in projects within their communities, but that they also deepen their understanding of the process-based underpinnings of informed civic action.

2.2.2 Learning from Tertiary Level Climate Change Pedagogy in the Region

The role of tertiary institutions extends beyond educating young adults – in the context of climate change education, they can be a source of knowledge for content and pedagogical practices. As such, we turned to the tertiary institutions in the region to analyze effective climate change curricula. For example, at the Technion in Israel, Daniel Orenstein teaches a course on environmental policy in which students develop their understanding of environmental policy analysis through the study and application of ideas from the work of Eugene Bardach’s (2011) A Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving (The Eightfold Path) and Steven Cohen’s (2014) Understanding Environmental Policy. The students also engage in environmental projects in collaboration with local NGOs. In an interview, Orenstein shared the underlying rationale for the structure of his course as follows:

The [project] component is due to the desire to work closely with stakeholders to suggest real and implementable solutions to environmental challenges with local urgency, and to have a “built-in” group of individuals and organizations who are interested in the students’ results. The [policy analysis] component is because I think Cohen’s framework helps students build a very strong and interdisciplinary foundation and understanding of the given environmental challenge, but lacks operational steps to define policy alternatives and potential solutions, while the Bardach framework is void of depth of analysis of the given challenges, but provides a very well-developed framework for problem-solving. Together they compensate for each others’ weaknesses (Orenstein, D. (2019, December). Email with authors).

In the Arava Institute, our partner tertiary institution, the Environmental Leadership seminar provides two tracks that “highlight the interplay between individual action and large scale institutional change as two important and complementary tactics for finding real solutions to today’s environmental crisis” (Haber 2019, p. 1). The Sustainable Living Track involves exploration of a topic along with a hands-on project on campus with a facilitator and mentorship. The Environmental Diplomacy and Entrepreneurship Track includes activism and community organization through an international non-profit called WeSea as well as collaboration with business mentors. Similar to the UNESCO initiatives in secondary schools throughout the region, there is a focus on inquiry and experiential learning. However, in these courses, there is an emphasis on the assessment of the process alongside the public product in order to develop leadership skills and problem-solving strategies.

Thus, at the tertiary level, there are courses that enhance the civic agency of students by cultivating a deeper grasp of the disciplinary content as well as understanding and implementation of the process of policy analysis. But this approach to education related to climate change is not accessible at the secondary level, and only the students who can access higher education and then gravitate towards classes on environmental policy are exposed to this pedagogy. This clearly indicates a need for institutions of higher education and secondary schools to develop strategies that would enhance the exchange of ideas in ways that would make effective climate change education accessible to all.

2.2.3 Effective High School Climate Change Education Resources

Lastly, we reviewed high school climate change education resources outside of the region that would help inform climate change curricula.

2.2.3.1 Paleontological Research Institution: The Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change

The scales involved in climate change research lie outside the range of human experience, spanning billions of years and involving the interactions of microscopic particles and waves (Zabel et al. 2017). The systems and scales associated with climate change are often embedded in different disciplines within and beyond the context of the sciences, including biology, chemistry, atmospheric science, oceanography, geology, environmental sciences, etc. (Ledley et al. 2017, p. 6). In the United States, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) recognizes the inherent interdisciplinary nature of climate change by promoting “cross-cutting concepts.” Yet, by focusing on scientific complexity, teachers and students would get inundated with content, which could perpetuate the notion that only specialists can truly understand the issues, and thus, only specialists can address climate change (Gonzalez-Gaudiano and Meira-Cartea 2012, p. 15). The combination of these factors renders it difficult to make the relevant content accessible in a high school curriculum.

As a result, the Paleontological Research Institute (PRI) created The Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change (TFG) (Zabel et al. 2017) to address these obstacles by explicitly engaging with questions of cognitive bias and providing tools for systems thinking. With accessible and engaging language combined with models and images, the challenge of grappling with the systems and scales connected to climate change is demystified. Once the challenge is clear, the next step is to practice actually grappling with complex systems and models, and that can happen through the development of lessons and activities incorporated into a curriculum.

Overall, there are two ways in which the TFG mitigates the risk of conveying that only professionals can engage with the issue of climate change. First, it makes the essential foundation in science accessible without going into all of the details embedded in each discipline. Students can learn about the carbon cycle, for example, without learning the underlying biological processes associated with respiration. While the foundation in science is included in the TFG, there is also a recognition of the fact that this foundation itself can still feel overwhelming, especially in combination with the myriad risks associated with climate change. Thus, it is essential to engage with the psychological aspect of the challenge as well, and the TFG does just that, calling attention to the sort of big picture thinking that can help students assimilate information while maintaining a sense of motivation and hope.

2.2.3.2 Climate Interactive

Climate change involves multilayered systems with feedback loops and evolving dynamics. This presents a significant challenge to educators who seek to engage students in complex systems analysis and enable them to affect change (Ledley et al. 2017). In education, when real-life context is introduced through inquiry and experiential learning, systems thinking is often emphasized as a valuable process-based skill. Systems thinking can be defined as a practice for understanding complex and dynamic systems and can include modeling to help with decision making and implementation (Ledley et al. 2017, p. 6).

Climate Interactive is a think tank from Massachusetts Institute for Technology that directly tackles the complexities of systems thinking by providing video lesson resources and simulations to teach people system dynamics modeling in climate change issues. For example, through games like World Climate, students learn the complexity of climate change negotiations. World Climate is a simulation game, in which participants role-play as delegates to work together and create an international global agreement to combat climate change. Iterative drafts of the agreement are coupled with a real-time display of its effects, which are backed by robust scientific data. In an evaluation involving participant surveys and focus groups, 85% of participants increased their motivation to take action and begin the inquiry phase. Furthermore, the program taught major systems thinking insights (Climate Interactive 2019).

Climate Interactive has also released an online course called the Climate Leader which trains students in systems thinking to motivate global response to climate change. Topics such as areas of high leverage and feedback loops give students specific heuristic models to understand the effects of human activity on the environment and vice versa.

2.2.3.3 Project Look Sharp: Media Literacy

There is no agreed upon resource with the full body of knowledge related to the issue of climate change. While the vast majority of scientists (more than 97%) agree that human action impacts the climate and anthropogenic CO2 is causing global warming, a skeptic could still point to the small number of scientists who deny that such a causal link exists (Zabel et al. 2017). Furthermore, the issue of climate change has social and political dimensions that add layers of complexity to the analysis of sources and credibility. Some individuals or groups may present information to serve an agenda that has nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge or the wellbeing of society at large. The obstacle to understanding presented by the intentional manipulation of information is compounded by the fact that anyone can fall prey to misinformation or unconscious biases (or both). To mitigate these risks, it is essential for the consumer of information to have the skills to decode bias, analyze credibility, and identify important missing perspectives. This includes metacognitive reflection on one’s own biases in order to approach questions with an open mind and seek to identify and fill blind spots. For educators, it can be a difficult process to facilitate the development of media literacy skills necessary to explore questions associated with climate change.

Project Look Sharp (n.d.), a media literacy institute at Ithaca College, has honed the process of constructivist media decoding (CMD) to address the need for students to build media literacy skills. The process of CMD is inquiry based, and the role of the teacher is to present rich media documents for the class to analyze. A rich media document is one that has layers of complexity that connect directly to media literacy goals while engaging with content relevant to the curriculum. The teacher can lead the decoding by asking questions that engage the students in deep analysis of content, bias, credibility, purpose, techniques, and impacts. Decoding also involves analysis of how the interpretations of the document can vary, illuminating the ways in which our personal biases can shape the way we interpret the world. It is important to note that the process of CMD should be incorporated into analysis of documents that teach content, but the purpose of the decoding of the media document is not to teach the content itself. In CMD, questions are not designed to lead students to the teacher’s predetermined conclusions, but rather to build the skills of inquiry and analysis, empowering the students to engage with each other and the documents. When students share insights and raise important questions, they engage in the practice of drawing evidence-based conclusions. Ultimately, the students develop the skills of decoding and the habits of inquiry that they can apply in the context of any complex question in order to understand how to draw informed conclusions based on an analysis of evidence from diverse perspectives and sources.

2.3 Climate Change Leadership Curriculum

2.3.1 Rationale of the Curriculum

In our analysis of existing climate change curricula in Israel, Jordan, and Palestine, we identified a pressing need for a curriculum that not only provides the necessary foundation in the sciences, but also helps students understand how to interpret scientific information to draw their own informed conclusions; a curriculum that not only provides students with an experience of agency through a hands-on project, but that also ensures that they understand how to design a project with attention to complex power structures, interconnected systems, and the needs and interests of diverse stakeholders; a need for a curriculum that not only instills a sense of civic responsibility, but that also provides a deep understanding of how to fulfill that responsibility by setting clear goals and collaborating with others to affect change. In other words, there needs to be curricula that help the student internalize the process of creative problem-solving and informed action. Students should graduate from high school with the skills and inclinations to mitigate the risks of climate change. This cannot happen solely through the practice of science in the classroom, nor can it happen solely through service connected to a project in the school or community. While these experiences and the associated learning outcomes may be necessary, they do not add up to the capacity for thoughtful policy analysis, innovative design thinking, or practical understandings of how to engage across divides to transform the future by mitigating the risks of climate change.

As a result, we have created an example of what a climate change education could look like called The Climate Change Leadership Curriculum (see Appendix A). It is important to note that implementation of a project-based curriculum without educator and school leader capacity would be insufficient, as ascertained by the project-based Jordanian curriculum. The resources we are developing, including this curriculum, are therefore constantly in revision through feedback from educators and schools involved in implementation. Before elaborating on the implementation plan, we will explain the different components in our curriculum that are informed by the gaps identified in climate change education as well as inspired by tertiary institutions in the region and effective global secondary school resources mentioned earlier.

2.3.1.1 Anchor Skills

The anchor skills delineate what students need to be able to do in order to exercise leadership specifically in the context of climate change. We identified four overarching themes: empathy, systems thinking, media literacy, and collaboration. These anchor skills are embedded throughout the curriculum, and metacognitive reflection on their application helps to ensure that students gain the ability to transfer the skills to new contexts.

Based on the review of effective high school climate change curriculum, these anchor skills are standards that must be taught in alignment with the process-based skills that guide the student leaders, which will be discussed in the next section. For example, in order to define problems, students need empathy to be able to approach questions with humility and seek to understand diverse perspectives. In order to gather evidence, students need media literacy to understand how to assess the credibility of information and consider the ways in which bias can lead to blindspots that need to be filled by seeking out missing perspectives. In order to generate solutions, students need systems thinking to understand how complex systems can be impacted by affecting change in areas of high leverage. And in order to draw conclusions, students need to understand how changes to specific areas of high leverage can help to transform harmful dynamics, effectively and efficiently promoting positive change. Eventually, students need to understand how to collaborate and motivate groups to take action based on their conclusions and inspire others to do the same. Then, they need to maintain their curiosity as they iterate the process, taking into account the actual impacts of their actions.

2.3.1.2 Process-Based Skills

Whereas the anchor skills revolve around climate change leadership competencies, process-based skills outline what the students actually have to do to engage in effective problem-solving that leads to informed civic action and, additionally, what it means to do these steps effectively. The process-based skills are drawn from three essential resources: Bardach’s (2011) Eightfold Path, Stanford Design School’s design thinking process (Platner n.d.), and the National Council for the Social Studies’ framework called College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) (2017).

If a goal of education is to foster thoughtful and engaged citizens, then policy analysis would be essential. However, the skills of the policy analyst are not explicitly included in traditional high school curricula, leaving the concept of policy analysis vague or inaccessible. In the Eightfold Path, public policy professor Eugene Bardach (2011, xvi) demystifies the conceptual framework behind policy analysis by identifying eight fundamental steps of the process, which we summarize below:

  1. 1.

    Define the problem – What is the problem under investigation?

  2. 2.

    Gather evidence – What perspectives and data would be necessary to analyze the way forward?

  3. 3.

    Construct alternatives – What are possible paths forward based on the evidence?

  4. 4.

    Select criteria – How should the alternative paths be weighed relative to one another? On what basis?

  5. 5.

    Project the outcomes – What would be the outcomes of the different paths?

  6. 6.

    Confront tradeoffs – What are the pros and cons of the projected outcomes relative to the criteria?

  7. 7.

    Focus narrow deepen decide – What path forward makes the most sense following an analysis of the tradeoffs?

  8. 8.

    Tell your story – What are effective ways to communicate the results of this process to garner support for the conclusion?

Similarly, design thinking brings in another layer of how to creatively think through problems in the following steps as summarized below (Platner n.d.):

  1. 1.

    Empathize – What does the target population care about and need?

  2. 2.

    Define – Based on the needs and interests of the target population, how should the problem be framed?

  3. 3.

    Ideate – What is a broad range of possible ways forward to address the problem?

  4. 4.

    Prototype – How can a prototype be built to further explore the best way forward?

  5. 5.

    Test – How can ideas for revision of prototypes be gained through testing and feedback?

  6. 6.

    Revise.

Lastly, the C3 framework also outlines process-based skills that begin with teaching students how to design inquiries and ends with communicating conclusions to take informed actions. Although this inquiry-based framework uses disciplinary concepts limited to social studies, the format could easily integrate science disciplines.

  1. 1.

    Dimension 1: Developing Questions and Planning Inquiries

  2. 2.

    Dimension 2: Applying Disciplinary Tools and Concepts (Civics, Economics, Geography, and History)

  3. 3.

    Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence

  4. 4.

    Dimension 4: Communicating Conclusions and Taking Informed Action (National Council for Social Studies 2017)

The process based skills in our curriculum are structured following the sequence of Eugene Bardach’s (2011) Eightfold Path, and they integrate the ideas embedded in design thinking and the C3 framework. In addition, the accompanying project directions for students outline these process-based skills in sequential order. The benefit of making this process transparent to students is that they can learn how to apply skills of policy analysis, design thinking, and inquiry to multiple aspects of climate change and/or other issues, and they could engage in a self-directed iterative process. In other words, by including the following process-based skills, students are able to internalize effective problem-solving processes:

  1. 1.

    Defining problems: developing compelling questions that promote inquiry and crafting meaningful and actionable problem statements.

  2. 2.

    Gathering evidence: Determining the types of relevant sources, evaluating for credibility, and gathering information from these various and diverse sources.

  3. 3.

    Generating solutions: Synthesizing evidence to generate a wide range of ideas and creating externalized prototypes to communicate potential solutions and receive feedback.

  4. 4.

    Concluding: Applying selection criteria, assessing strengths and weaknesses of outcomes, and drawing conclusions on how to proceed.

  5. 5.

    Communicating and acting: Communicating the results and trade-offs and taking direct actions towards implementing the results of the analysis.

This draws upon evidence of the efficacy of an inquiry learning cycle that fosters the students’ sense of responsibility and autonomy in the process of knowledge generation and cultivates the ability to apply knowledge to new context (Cairns 2010). In many ways, our project builds upon work being done in environmental education grounded in experiential learning theory. For example, the Enviroschools Programme in New Zealand incorporates a learning cycle that involves identifying a current situation, exploring alternatives, taking action, and reflecting on change (Eames and Mardon 2020).

2.3.1.3 Disciplinary Tools and Concepts

All of the above skills are directly relevant to mitigating the risks of climate change, and they must be taught and assessed in order for students to emerge with the capacities for climate change leadership. But they will only lead to an impact on climate change if they are also utilized to help students understand what climate change actually is. We integrated disciplinary tools and concepts into our curriculum because leadership cannot be taught in the absence of hard knowledge. In other words, science is necessary in climate change leadership. Instead of replacing the science behind climate change that is usually taught in isolation, our curriculum provides an example of what it would look like for students to have the space to apply scientific knowledge. Thus, teachers must facilitate students’ acquisition of the foundational disciplinary tools and concepts to navigate questions related to climate science.

TFG (Zabel et al. 2017) distills these tools and concepts in a clear conceptual framework, identifying the bigger ideas in earth system sciences necessary in understanding climate change. This includes the parts in the Earth System, energy processes, human environmental interactions, physical and chemical principles, and maps and models. In collaboration with PRI, we have adapted disciplinary tools and concepts for the context of our Climate Change Leadership Curriculum to the following:

  1. 1.

    Climate: Explaining how life is influenced by the environment and describing physical and chemical principles that affect the Earth’s systems.

  2. 2.

    Energy: Describing how the flow of energy drives the cycling of matter.

  3. 3.

    Model and Maps: Interpreting and creating models and maps to understand (deep) time and scale of space

  4. 4.

    Earth Systems: Explaining the multitude of systems Earth is composed of as well as the system Earth belongs to.

2.3.1.4 Resources Guiding the Educator

In this section, we outline the resources available to educators in our curriculum. Ultimately, the resources would need to be accompanied by high-quality, context-specific professional development, and we outline our approach to PD in the following section on plans for implementation. By grounding the resources in clear standards, educators can readily identify the skills students need to develop and demonstrate throughout a climate change curriculum. To illustrate the product of this standards-based curriculum design, we have created an example of a 12-week curriculum resulting in a final student project. Anchor skills, process-based skills, and disciplinary tools and concepts are all integrated into each unit within the Climate Change Leadership Curriculum, emphasizing the importance of inquiry and experiential learning. As a result, each unit is based on at least one standard from each sub-section of skills:

  • Unit 1: Becoming Inquirers.

  • Unit 2: What is Climate? Why Does Climate Change?

  • Unit 3: Challenges to Understanding Climate Change.

  • Unit 4: Defining Problems to Solve in the Context of Climate Change.

  • Unit 5: Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies in Climate Change.

  • Unit 6: Gathering Evidence from Credible Sources.

  • Unit 7: Brainstorming Strategies to Address Climate Change.

  • Unit 8: Getting Feedback on Climate Change Strategies.

  • Unit 9: Creating a Criteria for Effective Climate Change Solutions.

  • Unit 10: Confronting Tradeoffs in Climate Change Policies.

  • Unit 11: Telling Your Story About Climate Change.

  • Unit 12: Taking Action in Addressing Climate Change.

In each unit, we provide a series of activities that guide teachers on how students could reach the standards. These activities are organized based on which essential question they address in the lesson so that teachers can understand the purpose whilst engaging in the activity and thus, modify it to meet the needs of their classroom. In Appendix A, we provide an overview of our activities.

The pedagogy incorporated in the activities is designed to reflect the skills and inclinations associated with the learning objectives. The teacher exposes students to ideas and sources and facilitates their ability to make meaning through individual and group analysis and reflection. If the teacher were to simply present the material, draw conclusions, and assign projects for the students, it would actually undermine the message that students should have agency in the process of learning and civic action. In fact, it would implicitly suggest that the voices of students do not matter. With that established, the teacher has an essential role to play when it comes to ensuring that there is a sense of accountability to the deeper mission of learning. The clarification of this mission is important to highlight the role of the teacher in terms of ensuring that the learning space is maintained and that students follow through with their work. While methods for ensuring accountability can vary, most methods generally include standard-based rubrics that are used to evaluate student work.

This is not to suggest that teachers cannot present information to students. On the contrary, teachers should use their understanding to help ensure that students can access information in a clear and engaging way. At times, the teacher may be uniquely suited to directly impart information, and oftentimes the teacher plays a role in curating information. But critical thinking on the part of the students should be encouraged at all times as students “decode” the messages of the teacher, and the teacher should model the skills and habits of inquiry and curiosity as an essential means of transferring those skills and habits to students. Furthermore, in the context of an issue as complex as climate change, there is a good chance that a teacher would be much more credible about some aspects of the issue than others, and as students pursue their own projects, the teacher plays the role of a coach and guide in the process. As the course progresses, students are provided opportunities to play these roles as well, supporting each other in the learning process as they develop skills of collaboration.

Lastly, we provide a student resource that serves as a project template, guiding the students through the process-based skills – essentially the process of creatively solving problems and taking informed action. This project template also serves as a resource for the educator as it provides an opportunity for students to practice the skills touched upon in the units through formative assessments related to a topic that they had agency and choice over (See Appendix B for an overview of the student project). Furthermore, it can be used as a summative assessment in the form of a meaningful capstone project. As a result, not only does it inform teaching throughout the curriculum, but it also allows for meaningful assessment of the process so that students can internalize the process of creative problem-solving and transfer it to other contexts throughout their life.

2.4 Implementation and Program Theory

There are several aspects of the context for delivery that are essential for the curriculum to make an impact, of which the teacher is the most important. In particular, the teacher interested in implementing the curriculum would need to have the skills to deliver the lessons as well as an understanding of the content of each lesson. Together with other faculty and school leaders, they would also need to be able to assess contextual factors that would dictate the ways in which the curriculum could be adapted to align effectively with the particular priorities and constraints of the institution.

The current implementation plan involves seeking feedback from teachers to learn what sort of professional development they might need and how they might adapt the curriculum to their contexts. As we learn from teachers about those needs, we can work with them to create modified versions of the curriculum that would be suited for implementation under different circumstances with consideration for various constraints in terms of time and/or other resources. Ultimately, we will have a wider variety of options for both professional development and implementation that teachers and school leaders could review. With that established, it would still be important to further align both the professional development and the curriculum with the needs of a particular school or course.

In order to find schools and teachers who would be interested in implementing the curriculum and giving us feedback, we have been working closely with the Arava Institute to identify alumni who may be involved in secondary education. Through this process, we were introduced to Fareed Mahameed. Fareed works with the Hura Agricultural Sustainable Farm, a program in the Negev Desert designed to serve as a center for research, education, and training for primary, middle and high schools in the region with a focus on integrating experiential education to learn about nature and the environment. We spoke with Fareed about the Climate Change Leadership Curriculum, and he went on to establish a partnership between the Hura Agricultural Sustainable Farm and the Al Taqwa Secondary school in Rahat, Israel, where he would teach the curriculum in collaboration with high school teacher Samah Matany. With the partnership, we worked together to adapt the curriculum to meet the needs and constraints of the Al Taqwa school. We also scheduled regular times to speak with Fareed to offer support in his delivery of the curriculum and to solicit feedback regarding the experiences of the different stakeholders involved.

In addition to conversations with the teacher implementing the curriculum, we will also collect student work, assessments, and surveys in order to gain a more complete picture of the experiences and perspectives necessary to inform the way forward. Furthermore, surveys with questions linked to each of the standards for the curriculum will be administered at the start and end of the course to gain insight into the efficacy of the curriculum. In Al Taqwa, Fareed administered a survey to the students that tested basic knowledge and confidence about climate change linked to the disciplinary tools and concepts, process-based, and anchor standards. In addition, we had survey questions regarding their general attitude about climate change leadership. The survey results provide a baseline for us to be able to measure impact through a post-survey. It also provided insight into the population of students we were working with. For example, Fareed noted that most students did not believe that individual actions could lead to climate change mitigation, which allowed him to consider how he could use specific units in systems thinking to address this attitude.

As students engage in the course, they will also have opportunities to demonstrate their assimilation of ideas related to climate change and the process of policy analysis through collaborative projects, personal reflections, and written assessments. Student project proposals that extend beyond the contained structure of the class will be the key indicator of their ability to transfer the understandings acquired during the course to new contexts. Finally, feedback from alumni will be solicited to measure their motivation and ability to continue to engage with the issue of climate change.

2.5 Conclusion

It is not sufficient for climate change education to focus on knowledge acquisition, and, even when students have opportunities to apply knowledge to address real-world problems related to climate change, an essential objective of climate change education is still left unmet. In particular, students need to understand the complexities of each step of the processes associated with thoughtful civic engagement in order to be enabled to truly lead in mitigating climate change. As students develop their understanding of how to affect change within complex systems, the standards and assessments must be aligned to these process-oriented skills in addition to the content knowledge. Ultimately, as students realize their potential to integrate thinking and practice, they will be able to affect meaningful change.

While a curriculum can provide the pedagogical frameworks and lessons to foster climate change leaders, a curriculum alone does not lead to successful implementation. Change comes about when the context-specific needs and interests of diverse stakeholders are considered and training and support is customized for teachers involved in the delivery of the curriculum. As we continue to engage in this work, there is potential to build an expanding network of educators and schools dedicated to fostering climate change leaders. By changing the way climate change is being taught, we hope that several high school students will be inquiring and observing the various impacts of climate change within their community and then be equipped, motivated, and empowered to take actions just like the ninth graders in Rahat, Israel.