Project Content

Project Title:

Design and Implementation of a Climate Change Teaching Module Based on the Socioscientific Issues-Based Teaching Approach

Our Objective:

In order to minimize the risks arising from the impacts of climate change and to enable future generations to live in harmony with climate change, climate change education is being incorporated into the curricula of many countries, including Türkiye. One of the steps taken in Türkiye for this purpose is the "Environmental Education and Climate Change" course, introduced in 2022 as an elective in middle schools. Recent research on climate change has shown that, unlike previous approaches, climate change education should focus not on cognitive but on social and ethical aspects, and should be an interdisciplinary process that makes effective use of technology and allows students to establish a direct connection with their personal lives (Monroe et al., 2019; Rousell et al., 2020). In addition, it has been stated that the greatest barriers to effective climate change education are teachers' unfamiliarity with climate science, the neglect of the social, cultural and ethical dimensions of climate change, teachers' reservations about discussing these dimensions in the classroom, and the lack of instructional materials (Foss and Ko, 2019; Hestness et al., 2014; Jorgenson et al., 2019; Monroe et al., 2019; Oversby, 2015). Based on these needs, the main objective of this project is to develop teachers' pedagogy for teaching climate change as a socioscientific issue (SSI) using the SSI-based teaching approach, and to examine the change in students' climate literacy as a result of these teachers' in-class practices. In this project, climate change education will be designed and implemented based on the SSI-based teaching approach, as it is an approach capable of addressing the needs mentioned above. The SSI-based approach proposes designing instruction in the context of complex, open-ended issues with no single answer, such as climate change, and educating future generations as individuals who can propose solutions and reason about these complex issues (Sadler and Zeidler, 2005). Within this scope, a professional development program developed as part of the project will be implemented with a group of middle school science teachers working in Istanbul. During the professional development program, a climate change teaching module will be developed together with the teachers, and the module will be implemented in the classroom. At the end of these implementations, the development of students' climate literacy will be measured. Throughout the iterative processes of the project, teachers will receive continuous feedback. The two main outputs of the project are the Climate Change Professional Development Program and the Climate Change Teaching Module; by monitoring the classroom implementation of the teaching module and measuring students' climate literacy, the project aims to make an original contribution to the literature. In addition, the professional development of teachers who teach the "Environmental Education and Climate Change" course, introduced in Türkiye only this year (2022-2023 academic year), will be supported in relation to climate change education. Through these outputs, the project is expected to make significant contributions in terms of academic and societal impact.

Project Stages:

Analysis and exploration

Design and development

Evaluation and reflection

This website has been developed as the introduction, information and online platform interface of the TÜBİTAK ARDEB 3501 research project with project number [SOBAG-123K129]. The project team is responsible for all published content, and the content does not in any way reflect the views of TÜBİTAK.