Climate Change Workshop For K-12 Teachers Set For July 21
Climate change can be a contentious topic in classrooms, but Texas A&M atmospheric sciences professor Gunnar Schade hopes to clear the air at a climate change workshop for K-12 educators on July 21.
The workshop titled “Global Warming & Climate Change: Myths, Misconceptions and Solutions,” presented by the College of Geosciences, the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and the Texas Center for Climate Studies, will equip educators with the tools they need to communicate climate change to students at a time when the scientific consensus is called into question due to societal pressures. Event registration is now open.
Schade, who is directing the workshop as part of a National Science Foundation grant studying the urban-to-rural climate gradient of Houston as a proxy to assess global climate change effects, said the workshop is timely considering the findings of a nationwide survey of climate change education by the National Center for Science Education. The survey found that 60 percent of teachers were “unaware of, or actively misinformed of the near total scientific consensus of climate change,” which is similar to polls measuring the general public’s stance on climate change.
“You would expect that science teachers on one hand are much better informed than the general public and should be teaching the science and not opinion,” Schade said. “On the other hand, science teachers are not a separate group from society – they are part of society, so why would their general cross-section of opinions be different?”
Schade said there are a couple factors at play driving misinformation, denial or avoidance of climate science education, which he will explain at the workshop. First, there are some restrictions on what teachers can present in classrooms because of the baseline science curriculum established by the Texas State Board of Education which Schade said has been subject to being politicized. Second, the American media landscape, unlike many other countries, offers a platform for both sides to be heard, even if one side spreads a message of misinformation that disregards the scientific consensus.
“These teachers are not just confused with how climate science is discussed in society compared to what the consensus is in the climate science community,” Schade said. “There’s also a problem that their state education agency is giving them poor guidance. I will have to start with the basics in the climate workshop and work my way up from there. I also want to address why there is a societal controversy while there is no scientific controversy whatsoever. That’s almost U.S. specific.”
Schade said he hopes for a broad cross-section of teachers – those who have accepted the scientific consensus, those who are confused about it and those who deny it – at the workshop so he can update them on the latest climate science knowledge, address myths of climate science and explain how scientific theory can be controversial.
There are also many teaching tips and tricks educators can take back to their classrooms that work within Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) parameters. Climate data can be used in statistics classes or in science classes to teach students how to identify trends, for example.
“My hope is that teachers who participate in the workshop become more confident they can teach climate science in the classroom, because it’s a very well-established science and people should not be afraid of teaching it just because there is a societal controversy,” Schade said.
Download the official event flyer: http://ppo.tamu.edu/Services/Outreach/Educator-Conferences-Workshops/ClimateChange_flyer.aspx
Media contact: Sam Peshek, Texas A&M Division of Marketing & Communications.
