Crosscurricular workshop on climate change Secondary PGCE Partnership

Cross-curricular workshop on climate change Secondary PGCE Partnership Kate Hawkey (history); Jon James (science); Celia Tidmarsh (geography)

Context & Aims • End of PGCE year – student teachers take a lead in developing a cross curricular workshop to take into schools • acknowledging subject specialist strengths • building on previous cross-curricular initiatives • focus on a topic of contemporary relevance: climate change • Bristol Green Capital • 5 schools; approx 250 Year 9 students

Climate change and the curriculum: The Usual Suspects. . . • Science: KS 3 • ‘The Earth’s limited resources and efficacy of recycling • The production of CO 2 by human activity and the impact on climate. ’ KS 4 • ‘Evidence, and uncertainties for additional anthropogenic causes of climate change • Potential effects and mitigation of increased levels of CO 2 and methane on the Earth’s climate’

Climate change and the curriculum: The Usual Suspects. . . Geography: KS 3 - understand how human and physical processes interact to influence, and change landscapes, environments and the climate; and how human activity relies on effective functioning of natural systems

Climate change and the curriculum: The Usual Suspects. . . • Living Geography (GA): • Is directly relevant to people’s lives • Is about change – recognises that the past helps explain the present, but is current and futures oriented • Has a scale ‘zoom lens’ so that the local is always set in the global context • Is deeply observant – looks beneath the surface to identify the mechanisms that change environments and societies • Encourages a critical understanding of big ideas eg globalisation

. . . and a new addition? • History NC 2013: • ‘gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding. . . . long-term timescales’ • ‘help pupils understand (both) the long arc of development’ • ‘the study of an aspect or theme in British history that consolidates and extends pupils’ chronological knowledge from before 1066’

Shemilt (2009): ‘the disposition to investigate and analyse the past from the perspective of possible futures is a key development in historical consciousness and one that transcends the all too common perception that ‘the past is dead and gone’’ (p. 197). Drinking an Ocean and Pissing a Cupful: How Adolescents Make Sense of History. Teaching History

Preparation 1 • Subject specific readings, shared across all three subjects. Morgan, J. (2012) Ch 8. Climate change, mobile lives and Anthropocene geographies. Teaching Secondary Geography As If The Planet Matters; Hicks, D. (2011) A sustainable future: four challenges for geographers, Spring 2011, Teaching Geography. • Subject specific preparation: Eg. Geography – what’s being done in schools Eg. History – a little big history of climate change Hawkey, K. (2015) Moving forward, looking back. Teaching History

A Little Big History of Climate Change

Preparation 2 • Planning in 5 school groups • Common plenary: action focused • Avoiding overlaps

Examples: Science • Science behind global warming and dimming • Letter to an alien

Examples: Geography • Cause, effect, solution

Examples: History • A little big history of climate change • Road map of climate change Foster, R. (2008). Speed cameras, dead ends, drivers and diversions: Year 9 use a road map to problematise change and continuity. Teaching History

Plenary: focus on action • Different positions modelled • Get involved with politics • Campaign to ban plastic bottles in school • Reduce personal carbon footprint • How responsible am I for climate change? Opinion line

Plenary: what if. . . ? • • . . . We painted everything white? . . . We all walked and didn’t use cars? . . . Fossil fuels were not running out? . . . We closed all the factories? . . . We only used solar panels? . . . We all went vegetarian? . . . We all worked less (three days a week)? . . . There were only 1 billion people?

Evaluations School students • It was a unique way of teaching • It was helpful because it showed three different perspectives of climate change • I still stand with my opinion that climate change is not crippling to us PGCE student teachers • Working with other subjects helped me to develop my skills and to see how subjects can connect • I developed my confidence running a workshop on a potentially controversial subject • It moved me beyond my ‘comfort zone’

Going forward? • Threshold concepts & troublesome knowledge • ‘Wicked problems’ • Education for a post-carbon world/ the anthropocene

Going forward? Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge • Teaching about climate change is challenging – complex nature of the physical climate system, the many human factors affecting this system and the various human responses to the changes in the system. • The complexity of climate change means that it is a relevant subject area across a variety of disciplines; students therefore encounter climate change in a wide range of educational contexts, which may make learning about an already complex subject even more difficult. (Hall, B. 2011, Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Towards a ‘Pedagogy of Climate Change’? p 25)

Climate change - a ‘wicked’ problem Going forward? • Wicked and Tame Problems: Wicked problems = problems of mind-bending complexity, characterised by ‘contradictory certitudes’ (p. xxi). Solutions are difficult to recognise because of complex inerdependencies in the system affected; a solution to one aspect of a wicked problem often reveals or creates other, even more complex, problems. Tame problems = … while they may be complicated, have relatively well-defined and achievable end-states and hence are potentially solvable (p 334) Hulme, M. (2009) Why We Disagree About Climate Change? Cambridge Rittel, H. and Webber, M (1973) Dilemmas in a general theory of planning, Policy Sciences 4, 155 -69

Going forward? Education for the Anthropocene/Post carbon world “ There is an urgent need for educators to find ways to offer students a robust and realistic understanding of the forces and processes that shape our world. The curriculum is central to this – we might say that ‘Blessed are the curriculum writers , for they shall interpret the Earth’ “ Morgan, J (2016) Post-carbon Futures for Geography Education? P 13. Accessed Research. Gate 20/1/16 (Morgan, J. (2012) Teaching Secondary Geography As If The Planet Matters, Routledge. Teacher Education for the Anthropocene, work in progress, GSo. E. )

Questions?

• In the case of climate change there is great potential for new ideas and strategies to emerge from the fertile ground of interdisciplinary discussion. Different disciplinary perspectives are welcomed, as are innovative ideas on approaches and experiences of teaching and learning. Perhaps in time we will then move towards a clearer view of a pedagogy of climate change. (Hall, B. , 2011, p 33)

Issues? Dealing with ‘too little too late’ in the classroom? Caroline Lucas, 2015, on the politics of hope, Honourable Friends, p. 105

Start of agriculture (12, 000 years before present) Little Ice Age Medieval Warm Period The Big Freeze (Younger Dryas) Frost fairs and ice skating on the Thames Population growth (global population reaches 1 billion in c. 1800) Anthropocene (the period when humans have a significant impact on the global environment) Tambora volcanic eruption 1815 – the year without a summer Population growth (global population reaches 6 billion in 1999) The Romans grew wine in Britain Norse settlement of Greenland in the 10 th century More food Witch hunts (end of the 1500 s and throughout the 1600 s) Ford motors sold over a million cars in 1920 Selective breeding of livestock Swiss Alp villages destroyed by advancing glaciers Sources of energy Capitalism Factories Deforestation globally Famine Drought Migration Melting of the polar ice caps Great smog of London in 1952 Deforestation in England