Why teach climate change?

Welcome to Teaching Climate Change. This is a professional development course for teachers of students aged 11-14 years, developed by ESERO Ireland and ESERO UK in partnership with STEM Learning.

Climate change is arguably the most important issue facing civilisation at this time. By understanding and educating about the mechanisms for climate change, you can empower students to be agents for change themselves.

Over the next three weeks you will develop your own subject knowledge of climate change, discover how climate scientists use data from space and ground observation, and explore the ways we can mitigate climate change.

As you move through the course, you will build a plan to direct and support students to devise and implement a meaningful investigation of a climate problem. Your plan will be based on the ESA Climate Detectives project, which is open to schools based in the European Union. However, the approaches described in this course will be suitable for any teacher wishing to support their students in independent climate change research.

Developing your plan

Week 1: Identifying a climate problem

You will plan to establish a baseline of student knowledge about climate change, identify any misconceptions they may have and plan how to teach the scientific concepts. You will also develop your approach to supporting students to identify a climate problem to investigate and write a manageable research question.

Week 2: Investigating the climate problem

You will explore a range of data collection activities, including ground observations and the use of real satellite data which students can draw upon to measure the effects of climate change.

Week 3: Communicating the findings

The final week covers strategies to develop students’ a data analysis and presentation skills, as well as considering how you could raise awareness of STEM careers during the project.

Course Support

This course is presented by Stephanie O’Neill, manager of ESERO Ireland and Tom Lyons manager of ESERO UK and STEM Enrichment at STEM Learning. The course has been co-authored by Catherine Daly and Cliff Porter. Catherine, Stephanie and Tom will be supporting the course discussions between 6 to 26 September 2021.

Resources

Throughout the course we have included resources from the European Space Agency (with kind permission) and resources from the STEM Learning E-Library. Due to licensing reasons, some videos are not available to download from this course, however full versions of ESA videos are linked at the bottom of the relevant step.

Tip: You may wish to open resources in a new tab or window, so that you don’t lose your place on the course. Right click on links (or press and hold on links on mobile devices) which will allow you to choose to open them in new tabs.

Welcome

For our first discussion, we would like you to say hello and introduce yourself, where you teach and what age your students are. Then, share your answer to:

Why teach climate change?

Post your response in the comments below.

Tip: When you complete a step on the course, click ‘Mark as Complete’ at the bottom right. This helps you keep track of your progress.