Climate Change in Science Education: Investigating Teachers’ Practices and Students' Understanding in Pakistan Ref.No.SSTCRC2596
1. Introduction
Increasing calls have been made for climate change to save the world. Global temperatures and sea levels are increasing at a staggering rate due to climate change resulting in intense heatwaves, extreme weather events and changing weather patterns. This poses a threat to the stability of ecosystems, economies, and societies. The global average temperature has risen by about 1.5°C and continues to increase. In Pakistan, climate change is already impacting various sectors, including agriculture, water resources and infrastructure. Moreover, climate change has its impact on the human activities and education system. This research aims to investigate how climate change is integrated into science curriculum in Pakistan, focusing on the teaching practices of educators and the level of understanding that students have about climate change.
2. Research Progress
The curriculum includes certain concepts in which students develop a strong understanding of tackling climate change issues. Science education plays a crucial role in shaping students' perceptions, knowledge, and attitudes toward climate change. But this development requires foremost teachers’ ability to teach adequately. To deal with this crisis, research is needed emphasizing preparation for the next generation for climate change education. This research is in its preparatory stage. The proposal for its procedure has been developed for implementation in the field. Data collection, transcription, analysis and write-up stages are remaining for this project.
3. Cooperation Required
Cooperation is needed for data collection from the field. Moreover, analysis of data and processing further for data analysis process. Financial support will be needed to approach the field and traveling the far-flung areas in the projected site to collect data. Financial assistance will help analyze the collected evidence for further writeup for academic publication.
4. Benefits
Climate change has led to difficulties and challenges to life processes and education system in Pakistan. This research project will contribute to the ongoing debate on climate change education. It will investigate what type of contributions in climate change education will be significant and what aspects to teaching learning in climate change concept need more attention. A significant contribution of this project will be to inform both the policy and practice of climate change education. Firstly, it will examine the existing science curriculum to investigate how climate change concepts are integrated in curriculum and what are the teachers’ practices and students’ understanding of it. This will contribute to strengthen the concept framework for the climate change concepts in the curriculum, that how in countries like Pakistan, climate change concepts need to practice. Secondly, it will identify the gap in climate change education and provide suggestions to enhance the needful integration of climate change concepts with contextually relevant mechanisms to mitigate the challenges. Moreover, the findings of this study will have implications for the government and other contributing organizations, international donors and contributing agencies for climate change actions sustainability in Pakistan.
5. Outputs
The academic outcome will be publishing of academic paper in a well reputed journal. Moreover, the research findings will be presented in educational institutions like schools, colleges and universities. Awareness sessions will be held for students and educators based on the needful findings of this project. This study will have implications for the policy makers and curriculum support specialists that how to enhance the climate change education through curriculum enrichment and interesting and support.