Abstract
The major cause of climate change is increasing concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (predominantly carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide) – mainly a result of human actions – and this is an existential threat to Earth systems (International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2014). From a science teaching perspective it might appear as if a simple solution to this issue is ensuring that students learn about the causes and effects of global warming and that humans are mainly responsible for what is occurring. Students, as tomorrow’s citizens, will then take appropriate pro-environmental action. Unfortunately, although there is longstanding evidence that a ‘basic’ knowledge about global warming does influence students’ concerns about climate change (e.g., see Lee et al., 2015), we know that for many people awareness and knowledge about the causes and effects of global warming does not translate into action (Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002). The apparent pedagogical simplicity of a linear connection (knowledge leads to action) needs to be enhanced by more sophisticated educational pedagogies.
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Notes
- 1.
Anthropogenic pollutants added to the atmosphere result in an exacerbation of the natural greenhouse effect, leading to an increase in the average temperature of the lower level of the Earth’s atmosphere and of the oceans (‘global warming’). A major consequence of this is long-term changes in weather patterns over a region or across the planet (‘climate change’). Although the term climate change is now the more widely used, we have elected in this paper to use the term ‘global warming’ because it describes the primary consequence within this process.
- 2.
We acknowledge that some authors (e.g., Courtenay-Hall & Rogers, 2002) argue that quantitative approaches to environmental education research has its limitations. However, we believe it continues to offer insights about mindset and behavioural change, as is illustrated by the findings in this paper.
- 3.
Schwartz (2014), for example, outlines his conception of culture and his theory underpinning seven cultural value orientations that are “useful for describing and comparing societies” (p.547). How these orientations were measured is overviewed, together with the analyses from 77 national groups leading to the conclusion that countries can be treated as ‘cultural units’.
- 4.
Education for sustainability is usually considered a broader concept than environmental education (McKeown & Hopkins, 2007); for many countries environmental education has been an across the curriculum priority for decades while in more recent times ‘sustainability’ has become the cross-curriculum priority.
- 5.
- 6.
Jordan et al. expand on some pedagogies to address wicked problems that could be applied to climate change education. They are: promoting careful observation and continual curiosity; have more conversations with diverse stakeholders; and engaging in collective and distributed sense-making.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge Emeritus Professor Shalom Schwartz (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) for providing the cultural scores for his value dimensions for the countries in our sample as well as several relevant publications. We also express our appreciation to the following colleagues who assisted in the collection of data from nine of the countries: Manuel Rodriguez, George Malandrakis, Rosanne Fortner, Ahmet Kilinc, Neil Taylor, Kiran Chhokar, Dua Shweta, Abdulla Ambusaidi, Irene Cheong, Mijung Kim and Hye-Gyoung Yoon.
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Appendix
1.1 Sample Descriptions: Location and Other Characteristics
Country | Description of sample characteristics |
|---|---|
Oman | 12 schools in Muscat (capital city), Al Dakhlya and Batinah South regions. All the major centres in Oman (not just Muscat) were included, hence “purposeful”. Within each centre, students were randomly selected. Policy dictated that all grades were single sex. |
South Korea | 13 accessible schools—4 elementary (grade 6), 4 middle (grades 7–9) and 5 high (grade 10)—from the Seoul metropolitan area; characterised as “medium” SES. |
Greece | 3 different areas of the Thessaloniki metropolitan area (the second largest Greek city): east, centre and west side, corresponding to 3 SES levels: high (east and centre), medium (centre/west) and low (west). The sample is representative (in terms of religious, linguistic, cultural or ethnic characteristics) of the Greek urban student population, hence “purposeful”. |
USA | California (urban), Ohio and Florida (suburban) and Minnesota (rural), hence “geographic” and “type of locality” range. |
Singapore | 5 different schools (elementary, junior high and senior high) in different communities. SES of students differs markedly from family to family and school to school. Many ethnic groups are represented—“official” languages are English, Chinese, Tamil and Malay but most speak English at school. |
India | 4 large English medium schools in metropolitan Delhi. These fee-paying schools drew largely from predominantly Hindu, middle and upper middle class families (medium to high SES) although some free places were reserved for “disadvantaged” students. |
Spain | 6 government schools in medium SES areas of Madrid (city area and Alcorcon and Tres cantos). |
England | 4 suburban social catchment area state (i.e. non-fee-paying) community comprehensive (i.e. non-selective intake) schools in the north west of England—with no formal religious association. |
Brunei | Government schools, except for some private secondary schools. |
Turkey | 3 randomly selected primary schools (grades 6 through 8) and 2 secondary schools (grades 9 and 10) in Kırşehir, a city in central Turkey (of medium SES across Turkish cities). |
Australia | Government schools in NSW were randomly selected; this resulted in 5 primary and 3 secondary schools located in cities and large and small regional centres—all were in medium SES areas. |
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Skamp, K., Boyes, E., Stanisstreet, M. (2021). Climate Change Education: Simple or Complex? The Impact of Culture on Students’ Willingness to Reduce Global Warming. In: Geelan, D., Nichols, K., McDonald, C.V. (eds) Complexity and Simplicity in Science Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79084-4_5
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