Bridging Educational Divides: A Research-Practice Partnership to Empower Teachers to Integrate Climate Change Across Subjects

• In Event: Learning and Questioning: How Social Actors Engage with Sustainability and Climate Change

Proposal

No singular institution can address as large and complex a challenge as climate change education. Through an on-going research-practice partnership (RPP) between the Center for Sustainable Futures at Teachers College, Columbia University and New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) Office of Energy and Sustainability, we identified main barriers for teachers’ engagement with climate change education. These barriers include: misperception of climate as only a science topic, teacher knowledge gaps, curriculum resource gaps, and overall teacher preparedness. We sought to address these barriers by developing professional learning opportunities for NYCPS teachers aiming to develop teachers’ knowledge of climate change, situate climate change in a local NYC context, and build connections between the impacts of climate change to K-12 education. Climate scientists from the Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP) center at Columbia University, curriculum development experts, and NGOs/CBOs were active in these programs. We offered these programs in two modalities. The summer institute was created as a week-long, intensive workshop with 40 teachers from the same school level (e.g., elementary) to develop transdisciplinary lesson plans on climate change over the school year. The mid-winter institute provided 500 teachers access to NYCPS curricular experts and local partners around climate change education during a three-day program. This paper will present findings from both cases and future directions for this RPP. We hope this will serve as a model for future partnerships around climate change education, inspiring strategic collaborations between K-12 education systems and higher education.

Authors

• Christina Ann Torres, Columbia University Teachers College

• Oren Pizmony-Levy, Teachers College, Columbia University