Climate change has become a hot-button issue in the United States and addressing it can become politicized. However, Edward Cohen, deputy director of the Center for Mathematics, Science and Computer Science Education at Rutgers University, offers advice to education professionals who want to address the topic, as his office has incorporated it into its training program. professional development.
For her efforts to help educators at all levels lead the classroom discussion about climate change, Cohen received the Best Example of Professional Development in Higher Education award, one from tech & Learning. Innovative Leader Awards, in the recent northeast Regional Leadership Summit in New Jersey.
Cohen's work on climate change at Rutgers dovetails with New Jersey's proactive stance on climate change. “Right now, New Jersey has the strictest climate change standards in the United States,” Cohen says. In fact, it is the first state to introduce climate change education in all its K-12 Curriculum.
The state developed an interdisciplinary approach to problem-based learning when the need arose for each subject to be able to support climate instruction across its content, Cohen says. This allowed for novel approaches and collaborative efforts for teachers from different disciplines to create integrated units for students, which can serve as a model for other educational institutions.
Using motivating questions to teach about climate change
Cohen has the advantage of working with a group of state climatologists at Rutgers, using some of the resources they have and sharing their data, which is used to develop driving questions. For example, a recent question asked about the annual rise in water levels in the Garden State. The state sees double the average annual sea level rise.
“It's a thought-provoking phenomenon, especially for a state with such a large coastline, such a large industry with tourism and fishing and with people living so close to the coast,” Cohen says.
Researchers and educators are curious why New Jersey has an annual sea level rise of 40 centimeters compared to its neighbor New York, which has an annual rise of 30 centimeters. “Having that motivating question gets people interested and excited about analyzing the data and explaining why this is really happening,” Cohen says.
Professional development on climate change and discussion with teachers
Cohen recently welcomed K-12 teachers to a conference during which they were paired with college professors. The teams collaborated and came up with best practices for teaching climate change at the K-12 level and at the university level. They also explored data analysis on historical redlining and climate disparities.
All of this work prepared them to return to the communities they serve with new knowledge. “Framing the problem in multiple ways for people helps all students,” Cohen says.
Introducing climate change debates into the PD poses a different challenge. When he works with educators, Cohen makes them feel comfortable by creating a safe environment for them to raise concerns, making sure they feel free to be open and ask questions. “People are individual experts in their own content areas, but for this real, global challenge, we don't have a solution that works today,” he says. This is how creative thinking comes into play.
Thoughts about climate change can be stressful and cause anxiety for educators and students. “For some of our workshops, we hire social workers,” Cohen says. The main goal is to provide the necessary resources to educators so that they feel trained and comfortable working with students.
Inspiring students
Getting students' support or encouragement is not difficult, as studies show that climate change is important to them. “If we think about it from the students' point of view, these children are inheriting a world that is changing because of the climate,” Cohen says. The younger generations are the most active in raising awareness about this issue and demanding changes to solve it.
Cohen recounts a work experience with high school students in which the purchase of a first vehicle that has less impact on greenhouse gas emissions was discussed as a way to mitigate the effects of climate change. They talked about the choices people can make as consumers, and the conversations had real-world impact. Later, one student decided that his first car should not be an SUV.
“We have to encourage kids to focus individually, in the community and on a national level,” Cohen says.
