Unit name | Climate Change and Education |
---|---|
Unit code | EDUCM0090 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | M/7 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Professor. Keri Facer |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | School of Education |
Faculty | Faculty of Social Sciences and Law |
We live in a time that is increasingly concerned with the complex issue of climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in a 2018 report that we had only 12 years to limit catastrophic climate change. Yet we continue to live in a world where climate warming rapidly accelerates, with unprecedented numbers of wildfires, water crises, destructive storm surges and increased melting of ice sheets. These changes have wider implications, including health impacts such as ‘eco-anxiety’ and social repercussions of internal climate migration and worldwide protests calling for urgent action. Education in and beyond schools can play a crucial role in shaping how we understand and respond to climate change, influencing and being influenced by a range of social, political and environmental forces.
This unit aims to:
Develop the critical thinking skills students require for generating their own action plans in response to climate change.
By the end of this unit, students will be able to:
Classes will involve a combination of lectures, class discussion, case studies, debates, critical analysis of key readings and group presentations.
The assessment will have two parts.
There will be also be opportunities for formative assessment provided to students. Specifically, students will develop and present a poster of their proposal for the action plan they develop for the final assessment. This poster will provide formative critical feedback from peers and tutors that can support the remaining parts of the assessment. Additional formative assessment will also arise from group discussions, debates and oral critical analysis of key readings.
Corcoran P.B., Weakland, J. & Wals, A. (Eds.) (2017). Envisioning Futures for Environmental and Sustainability Education. Netherlands: Wageningen Academic Publishers.
Facer, K. (2019). Climate Change: how should public education respond?, FORUM, 61(2), 207-216. http://doi.org/10.15730/forum.2019.61.2.207
Hawkey, K., James, J. & C. Tidmarsh. (2016). “Greening the Curriculum? History Joins’ the Usual Suspects’ in Teaching Climate Change.” Teaching History 162: 32–41.
Kahn, P. (1999). The Human Relationship with Nature. MIT Press - http://cognet.mit.edu/book/human-relationship-nature
Latour, B. (2017). Facing Gaia: Eight lectures on the new climatic regime. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Leichenko, R and O’Brien, K (2019) Climate and Society, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Stevenson, R., Whitehouse, H.L., and Nicholls, J. (2017) ‘What is climate change education?’ Curriculum Perspectives. 37 (1), pp 67-71.
Wibeck, V. (2014). Enhancing learning, communication and public engagement about climate change: Some lessons from recent literature. Environmental Education Research, 20(3), 387-411.