Identifying Inequities in Climate Change Educator Training Programs

• In Event: Improving Education for a More Sustainable World

Proposal

Global Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing the world today. The impact of climate change is being felt across the globe, in virtually every country and community. Governments and states across the world are taking measures to address climate change. Most well-known of these interventions include reducing carbon emissions, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, adoption of renewable energy, and adopting sustainable practices.

Education about climate change is another important means of addressing this challenge. Without understanding how climate change is affecting our communities and the role communities must play in addressing climate change how can any corrective measure be successful or sustainable? By introducing climate change content into school curriculums at an early age, we increase the potential of raising climate responsible citizens who will be more environmentally and socially responsible than the current generation of adults. But how can we begin to teach student without first educating the educators? Hence, key to educating students is providing the schools and educators the necessary training opportunities to understand climate change, and opportunities to the develop curricula addressing climate change. And while western counters are capable of marshalling vast resources to addressing climate change, developing countries such as Pakistan lack the means to do so quickly.

This scarcity of resources can lead to inequities in resource allocation from the center to the provinces, the effects of which trickle down to communities, educators, and students. This can also lead to inequities in opportunities for training instructors and educators who would be teaching students across all levels about climate change (Hussain 2019). These inequities are further exacerbated by regional political influences.

The purpose of this study is to explore and understand how training programs for secondary school educators differ across the provinces and which factors have led to the development of differences in training programs.

The two research questions guiding this study are:
1. How do programs that train educators to teach climate change differ across the provinces?
2. What factors have led to the differences in these educator training programs?

The scope of the research will be restricted to public secondary school educators in the provinces of Pakistan, namely Sindh, Punjab, Baluchistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The choice of public schools was precipitated by the fact that majority of school attending children in Pakistan study in public schools. A secondary consideration was that many private schools either directly follow, or are influenced by, foreign educational curriculums from the United States and Europe which have been more responsive to the inclusion of climate change education. But since only a small proportion of students study in private schools, long term impact at a national scale can only be achieved through reform at the public school level.

The study will attempt to answer this question using a modified analytical framework based on Networked Improvement Communities (NIC) model developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The NIC model, which itself is rooted in the foundational theories on educational improvement and improvement science, will be used to determine variations in climate change educator training programs and the system that produces inequities in training opportunities.


This qualitative study will use a combination of documentary analysis and interviews with school administrators, trainers and educators involved in climate change educator training programs.

A working hypothesis is that resource allocation for educator training programs is determined by incomplete or incorrect understanding of climate change impacting communities and exacerbated by political biases towards ethnic provincial communities. Lastly the study will attempt to identify how an NIC model can be modified to help communities bridge inequity gaps in educator training and how this modified model can be applied in other educational contexts to overcome inequities.


References:
Bryk, Anthony S., Louis M. Gomez, and Alicia Grunow. "Getting ideas into action: Building networked improvement communities in education." Frontiers in sociology of education. Springer, Dordrecht, 2011. 127-162.

LeMahieu, Paul G., et al. "Networked improvement communities: The discipline of improvement science meets the power of networks." Quality Assurance in Education (2017).

Fletcher, Carol L., et al. "Reflections on Launching a Networked Improvement Community with Computer Science Educators." 2020 Research on Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT). Vol. 1. IEEE, 2020.

Feygin, Amy, et al. "Evidence for networked improvement communities." (2020).

Noble, Chelsea E., et al. "Building a Networked Improvement Community: Lessons in Organizing to Promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics." Frontiers in Psychology 12 (2021).

Penuel, William R., et al. "building a networked improvement community to promote equitable, coherent systems of science education: How a state-level team can support district-level change efforts." Editorial Review Board 13.1 (2018): 30-38.

Martin, W. Gary, et al., eds. The mathematics teacher education partnership: The power of a networked improvement community to transform secondary mathematics teacher preparation. IAP, 2020.

Hussain, Mudassar, et al. "Divisional disparities on climate change adaptation and mitigation in Punjab, Pakistan: local perceptions, vulnerabilities, and policy implications." Environmental Science and Pollution Research 26.30 (2019): 31491-31507.

Author

• Mohammad Mansoor Khan, University at Albany