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Global Climate Change: What has Science Education Got to Do with it?

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Abstract

Despite a near universal consensus among scientists regarding the perils of climate change for human civilizations, climate change has not emerged as a key issue among science educators. This position paper advocates for the centrality of climate change in science education. Using Polanyi’s critique of market in capitalist societies, it positions global climate change as an outcome of commodification of nature in market dominated societies. Thus, the paper argues that global climate change is primarily a societal issue that needs a societal response much more than a technological one. Further, it presents a case for considering science education as an important element of societal response to global climate change. In the end, the paper presents some ideas for re-imagining science education for the global climate change era.

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Notes

  1. TAR stands for IPCC’s third assessment report that was released in (2001).

  2. The binary between humans and nature has only heuristic value here. I acknowledge that humans too are very much a part of ‘nature’ as it exists on our planet.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Denise Glynn, Cory Buxton and Irfan Muzaffar for their critical comments and inputs on different version of this paper.

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  1. Elementary and Social Studies Education, University of Georgia, 624F, Aderhold Hall, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    Ajay Sharma

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Sharma, A. Global Climate Change: What has Science Education Got to Do with it?. Sci & Educ 21, 33–53 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-011-9372-1

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