Making Climate Change Matter: Exploring Local-Global Experiences Through Multimodal Narratives

• In Event: 64.073 - Exploring Lived Experiences Through Multimodal Texts and Methodologies: Narratives and Complex Representations of Learning

Abstract

Purpose
While weather is experienced as a local, daily phenomenon, media reports and textbook descriptions can make climate change seem distant, abstract, and unlikely to lead to the behavioral change and political action needed to address this crucial issue. Engaging young people with the lived experiences of others around the world can help them understand climate change in both local and global contexts as well as increase empathy with students across cultures. This presentation draws from an ongoing science education project to help middle school students from around the world understanding the lived experiences of climate change through the composing and sharing of multimodal texts.

Framework
This multidisciplinary, action research project involves schools and students in the US, the Philippines, and South Africa and will eventually include schools in four other countries. Multimodal narratives provide a way of exploring the relationship between abstract ideas influence lived experiences (Vasudevan, Schultz, & Bateman, 2010) and allow student authors to juxtapose materials from multiple disciplines in ways that enhance the representation of complex concepts such as climate change (Shipka, 2011). Finally, multimodal texts can be useful in connecting writers and readers across cultures (Kim, 2016).

Methods
In the project, students investigate the physical, economic, social, cultural, and political impacts of climate change in their communities and share their insights through multimodal, digital texts and collaborations with partners in other countries. Students compose videos, blogs, and podcasts to represent what they have learned of their local experiences. Student projects include measuring and comparing their schools’ carbon footprints, comparing local media coverage of climate change, and interviewing family and community members about their experiences and conceptions of climate change.

Data
The analysis focuses on literacy practices in the multimodal narratives composed by the students in the U.S., Philippines, and South Africa. The data also include classroom observations and interviews with students. The project has necessary IRB and ethics board approvals.

Findings
The composing of the texts allows the students to reflect on the connections between the science of climate change and their lived experiences and compare their understanding with those in other countries. Also, the students gain an increased understanding of how to communicate their experiences to an audience from outside their culture. The responses from students in other schools helped students gain a broader perspective on relationships between science and culture.

Significance
Proponents of climate change education (Beach, Share, & Webb, 2017; Shepardson, Roychoudhury, & Hirsch, 2017) often emphasize the role of science-based evidence in working with students. Though science is obviously crucial to such education, other research (Callison, 2014; Eubanks, 2015) illustrates that, in a post-truth era of media and politics, scientific evidence by itself is not always enough to shape students’ understanding. Instead, local cultural perceptions of both science and traditions of authority are also essential in shaping how how communities understand and respond to these issues. Multimodal narratives of lived experiences provide both the opportunity to explore the interantimating relationships between science, culture, and literacy, both at home and around the world.

Author

• Bronwyn T. Williams, University of Louisville