A review of Mark Windschitl's Teaching Climate Change

Bibliographic Data

ID21392636
AuthorsEmily A Holt (0000-0002-1777-7882, Department of Biological Sciences University of Northern Colorado Greeley Colorado USA, corresponding author), Jessica Duke (0000-0003-0895-0265, Department of Biological Sciences University of Northern Colorado Greeley Colorado USA)
Year2024
Volume108
Issue4
Pages1222-1227
Publication date2024-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0036-8326 • E-ISSN: 1098-237X
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/sce.21872
OpenAlexW4394912525
LanguageEN
References cited17

The interdisciplinary nature of climate change often makes teaching the topic overwhelming for instructors, particularly if their own training and background did not focus on climate science. The difficulties educators may face upon planning and implementation of climate change content does not detract from the importance of its inclusion in our science curricula. In fact, educational standards for K-12 settings (i.e., NGSS Lead States, 2013) and many higher education disciplines (i.e., biology: 4DEE, Klemow et al., 2019; chemistry: VC3, Mahaffy et al., 2017; geosciences: Cervato et al., 2018) have included climate change as an integral topic to include in our curricula. But, where do we start? How do we determine what to discuss in our classrooms while making sure we align this content with our learning objectives or institutional standards? Dr. Mark Windschitl's book, Teaching Climate Change, seeks to answer this question by providing educators with examples of topics to cover and suggestions for how to implement these topics in a variety of classroom settings. Windschitl leverages his expertise in Science Teaching and Learning to provide educators a starting framework to incorporate climate change topics in their classrooms. The first three chapters of Windschitl's book discuss the importance of climate change education, outlines the difficulties instructors face, and summarizes background knowledge on climate change content. From there, Windschitl uses the later chapters to dive deeper into more specific aspects of climate change education such as using models and data in the classroom (Chap. 7–9) and how to build climate resilience in our students (Chap. 4 and 10). As suggested by the title of this book, i.e. Teaching Climate Change, this book targets teachers who desire or are required to teach students about climate change. However throughout its 191 pages, Windschitl never explicitly clarifies who these educators are. While informal educators (e.g., staff at museums or zoos, librarians, family members or neighbors; Jeffs & Smith, 2021) may benefit from its contents, the depth of content and examples in more formal contexts suggests formal educators are the target audience. Further, the fact that these examples are all K-12 educators and that Appendix B highlights NGSS standards specific to climate change suggests the intended audience is K-12 educators. Windschitl does not explore whether or how this book might benefit postsecondary educators. We believe this book could be useful to both K-12 and college educators. The caveat of its utility, however, may depend on the intersection of levels of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK; Kind, 2009) and climate literacy of the instructor (Figure 1). We felt Windschitl's arguments were strongest when he used vignettes of real or potential instructors (i.e., Carolyn, Jessica, Molly, and Erin). In this review of his book, to better describe our interpretations of this intersection of utility, we borrowed one of his characters (i.e., Carolyn) and developed three other vignettes to demonstrate these levels of knowledge and how they intersect, and to articulate how readers may envision parallels with these characters in themselves. We use vignettes, not unlike Windschitl did, to explore who we felt this book best targeted. We created three new vignettes for this exploration: Ellis, Imani, and Tomas. Ellis represents a fictional college instructor who has a strong biology background in topics outside of climate change (Figure 1). As is typical of many science instructors at the university level (Auerbach & Andrews, 2018), Ellis has received minimal training in teaching. In their new faculty position, they were assigned to teach an introductory biology course for non-majors. We propose that Ellis may not be the ideal reader for Windschitl's book, despite their initial intrigue due to its title. Chapter 2 suggests that readers can “Use this book to identify phenomena [related to climate science] with potential,” (p. 30). While Ellis is an expert in their field of molecular biology, they feel overwhelmed by the curated “core climate change ideas” in Chapter 3. Without a background in climate science, the salient topics that align with learning objectives they have for their introductory university students may sink amid the wash of information. If Ellis’ department dictates learning objectives for their course, they may be able to target sections for focus. The latter chapters (Chap. 4–10), reporting on application of these ideas, tempt Ellis to address one of these areas in their university biology course. Unfortunately, lacking minimal training in teaching, Ellis has not yet developed the skillset to implement the ideas in a pedagogically meaningful way into their course (e.g., carbon footprint calculator, p. 102; logical fallacies, p. 104). Imani is a more experienced college-instructor with significant background knowledge in both educational practices and climate change and/or ecological topics (Figure 1). She represents a fictionalized characterization similar to the backgrounds of the authors of this review. Imani's formal training in pedagogy within the university system is unique when compared to most college science faculty; therefore, she potentially represents a minority of potential readers. Like Ellis, Imani may not be the intended audience of this book. Given Imani's extensive knowledge of climate change, the content-focused chapters of this book (Chap. 3 and 4) provide her only limited new knowledge, particularly sections focusing on the ecological impacts of climate change (e.g., Chap. 3, Section 4). Some of the latter chapters of the book provide new perspectives and ideas with which Imani is not as well-versed in (e.g., framing of climate change, Chapter 6; activism, Chapter 10), which encourages her to investigate these topics and Windschitl's related references more thoroughly. Additionally, given her background in discipline-based education research (DBER), Imani has the expertise to use Windschitl's tips and vignettes (e.g., Jessica and Colleen, pp. 24–27, 121–122; Molly, pp. 170–175), which are focused on K-12 populations, and scale or adapt them for her college course curricula. In our opinion, Tomas likely represents Windschitl's intended audience for his book. Tomas has many years of experience teaching high school students and a strong foundational knowledge of pedagogical practices (Figure 1), making it easier for him to incorporate Windschitl's teaching suggestions. Tomas does not have a background in climate change knowledge and therefore, finds Chapter 3, A Primer on Core Climate Change Ideas, immensely helpful in identifying topics that he would like his students to further explore in the classroom. His minimal climate change knowledge might make some topics seem initially overwhelming to incorporate in his classroom, such as climate modeling (Chap. 8 and 9). He could benefit from exploring some of the outside resources that Windschitl mentions at the beginning of Chapter 3 (e.g., National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), p. 38) to build his knowledge and become more comfortable presenting these topics to his students. After overcoming any content hurdles that may exist for Tomas initially, he has the foundational training on lesson construction that allows him to select relevant climate change topics and create learner-centered activities that align with NGSS standards (Appendix B in Windschitl). Carolyn is one of the vignettes depicted in Windschitl's book and we represent her here. We envisioned that this 3rd grade teacher may have low pedagogical content knowledge as a new teacher, but has a strong foundation in climate science from her prior training. While Carolyn's teacher training prepared her well with pedagogical knowledge, she is most successful when provided near complete lessons to integrate into her curriculum (e.g., modeling ecosystem disruption, p. 170). However, her limited experience in the classroom makes it more challenging to integrate broader ideas (e.g., activism framework, p. 186) into concrete lessons in which to engage her 3rd graders. Further, as a new teacher, despite her academic training in tree science, she may be unaware of the misconceptions that her students may hold. Windschitl often lists some common misconceptions related to each of the topics he introduces, yet Carolyn's inexperience leaves her unable to know how best to identify these alternative conceptions in her classroom and what interventions may be appropriate to remedy them. We used the one borrowed and three new vignettes above to show how different elements of Windschitl's Teaching Climate Change book may benefit or challenge readers with varying backgrounds. Generally, we felt this book has several strong but also several weak points. Beyond what is highlighted in the above vignettes, we felt some of the book's strongest points were the considerable amount of information condensed into about 200 pages of text, the use of vignettes to present novel classroom activities to teach climate change, and his efforts to push for integration of indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing into climate change curricula despite its omission from NGSS. In addition to some of the weaker points identified in the vignettes above, we felt the book contained deficit-minded (e.g., “students need to understand how and why,” p. 46) and alarmist language (e.g., “purgatorial conditions,” p. 69). While alarmist discourse is sometimes intentionally used to persuade and incite action (Cabezas-García & León-Araúz, 2022), a group of respected scientists on the topic (i.e., IPCC) intentionally avoid such language to limit entanglement of science and politics (Medimorec & Pennycook, 2015). Windschitl never discusses this point nor is careful with his own language; thus we hope such discourse is not carried into classrooms by its readers. One recurring theme that Windschitl incorporates throughout the book is that the context or framing instructors use to discuss climate change in the classroom can have important implications on student learning. He even devotes an entire chapter to this topic, Ch. 6: It Matters How You Frame the Story, in which he outlines three integral frameworks for instructors to follow, (1) telling the story from the human perspective, (2) connecting humans to the environment, and (3) integrating science with social justice. He also alludes to other frameworks throughout the book such as taking an interdisciplinary approach (Molly's vignette on pikas, pp. 27 and 28, pp. 170–175), localizing climate change (Chap. 4, 7), making climate change personally relevant (Chap. 3.5, 9, 10), solutions based instruction (Chap. 4, 10), and incorporating indigenous knowledge into the curriculum (Chap. 6). While Windschitl introduces numerous relevant frameworks, he does not always refer to them by their named construct, potentially making it difficult for readers to seek out additional resources on these topics. One case he does this well is with the construct of Eco-grief. Early in the book (p. 7), Windschitl hints at this concept when he states that “the more students learn, the more they can feel besieged by the rhetoric of threat and doom. This can slide into apathy, as their fears become tinged with guilt.” In the next chapter (p. 32), he then names the construct and signposts that it will be a central discussion in the final chapter of the book. He deftly uses relevant and recent literature (Chap. 10) to discuss this construct in-depth at the end of the book, which will inevitably be of interest to readers. However, not all climate-related constructs are mentioned by name (as cited in the literature) and detailed this well in other parts of the book. A missed opportunity, when Windschitl may have been able to mention and direct readers to well-researched constructs with pedagogical implications, is his minimal discussion of Psychological Distance and Place-based Education. In Chapter 6, Windschitl discusses incorporating humans into the discussions and activities we explore with our students as a way to personalize climate change. While Windschitl explains the difficulties an instructor may face when presenting climate change through this lens and even provides examples of how this can be achieved (pp. 114–118), he does not explicitly link the importance of psychological distance to student learning outcomes or elaborate on the implications of using place based frameworks to alleviate this distance. How close someone feels to the phenomenon of climate change, or their Psychological Distance, can have serious implications on their level of concern for its impacts and willingness to act to mitigate its effects (Spence et al., 2012; Trope & Liberman, 2010). Adding human elements to our climate change narrative along with incorporating place-based educational practices in our curricula can help mitigate the distance our students feel to climate change (Devine-Wright & Batel, 2017; Devine-Wright, 2013; Scannell & Gifford, 2013) making them more environmentally aware of how climate change is impacting their local environments and themselves (Duke & Holt, 2022). The concept of Transformative Experiences (TE) for student learning is another construct that Windschitl tangentially mentions early in the text (p. 28), related to Anchoring Events. Although he uses the term to suggest planning your classroom curricula to design for these transformative experiences (p. 14), he does not define or explain its significance to his audience who may not be familiar with this particular learning theory (i.e., Ellis or Carolyn, Figure 1). Transformative experiences are defined as learning episodes in which a student is able to acquire new knowledge, expand their perceptions, and then use the learned content within their everyday experiences (Pugh, 2011). Pugh et al., (2010, 2017) developed the Teaching for Transformative Experiences in Science (TTES) Model to guide instructors on how to purposefully design their curricula to target these transformative learning episodes in their students. Further, others have used this TE framework successfully to build climate literacy in their students (Duke & Holt, in-review; Littrell et al., 2022). Overall, Windschitl offers an information-packed book to arm any educator wanting to know more details about the many facets of climate science. While much of the included information is regularly updated on the numerous government and academic websites to which he refers (p. 38), his book represents a tidy compilation of facts and concepts organized by topic for what we know now. We envision that some of his discussions of disinformation, framing, multicultural knowledge sources, and self-care related to climate knowing may help to broaden conversations about what aspects of climate change belong in science classrooms. We commend Windschitl for starting this conversation and opening the door for educators to consider what it means to “teach climate change” and to proactively seek the resources they need to teach it and support their students. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. No data were collected for this review

Climate change · Mathematics education · Science education · Sociology · Climate Change and Geoengineering · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Environmental Education and Sustainability · Geology · Oceanography · Psychology