Singapore teachers’ beliefs about the purpose of climate change education and student readiness to handle controversy

Teachers’ Knowledge, Beliefs, and Attitudes about Climate Change

“…they motivated to fulfill their role. The results concerning in-service teachers (Dawson, 2012;Herman, Feldman, & Vernaza-Hernandez, 2017;Hermans, 2016;Karami, Seyed, Jafari, & Hendi, 2017;Liu, Roehrig, Bhattacharya, & Varma, 2015;McNeal et al, 2017;McNeal, Walker, & Rutherford, 2014;Plutzer & Hannah, 2018;Raath & Hay, 2016;Seow & Ho, 2016;Wise, 2010) are confirmed by more numerous publications concerning pre-service teachers. The knowledge gaps and distorted beliefs observed twenty years ago in pre-service teachers' (Boyes & Chambers, 1995;Dove, 1996;Fortner, 2001;Groves & Pugh, 1999;Khalid, 2001;Papadimitriou, 2004) are diminishing today but they still exist.…”

“…The attitudes of teachers regarding practical steps to be taken in order to slow down climate change relate both to their own behavior (the enactment of climate-friendly steps or decisions) and to their teaching practice. As presented here, climate change continues to be recognized by many teachers as a controversial topic, and therefore teachers are frequently reluctant to teach it even if they are literate in this field (Dawson, 2012;Hodson, 2013;McGinnis & Simmons, 1999;Sadler et al, 2006;Seow & Ho, 2016). Some teachers overcome their reluctance by choosing to teach the two opposite beliefs about the human responsibility in climate change, and this makes their teaching hide the actual problem (Herman et al, 2017;Plutzer & Hannah, 2018;Wise, 2010).…”

Personal, professional, political: an exploration of science teacher identity development for teaching climate change

“…Building connections between socioscientific issues instruction and the accountability that comes with the adoption of the NGSS may offer new benefits while teaching and learning about climate change. Climate change is an important topic to teach as a socioscientific issue because it prepares learners to deal with global and local aspects of climate change that will impact them and others in the future (Seow & Ho, 2016) and it educates students on how to engage with uncertainty and manage conflicts in situations inside and outside of the classroom (Baker & Loxton, 2013). Like other socioscientific issue instructional topics, climate change education is perceived as valuable by teachers because of its goal of a more informed citizenry that understands the interwoven relationship between ourselves, our society, and our environment (Kirk et al, 2014).…”

“…Additionally, through careful evaluation of the claims made and the views held by others, this type of epistemically oriented climate change educational enactment helps to ready students to deal with the uncertainty of future local and global impacts and to manage disagreeing perspectives (Baker & Loxton, 2013;Seow & Ho, 2016) all while preparing students to be informed citizens that understand the wider relationship between themselves, the environment, and our society (Kirk et al, 2014).…”

“…This pedagogical style to teaching climate change is also valuable to explore the various direct and indirect influences on climate change content knowledge and beliefs across diverse contexts in this "global climate change era" (Sharma, 2012) and to examine these topics in the midst of the perceived controversy (Colston & Ivey, 2015). This approach also prepares learners to deal with the global and local aspects of climate change that will impact them and others in the future (Seow & Ho, 2016) and it educates students on how to engage with uncertainty and manage conflicts in situations inside and outside of the classroom (Baker & Loxton, 2013). Once again, elements of these instructional efforts and learning goals were found in Civic and Epistemic Skills Promoter teaching identities within this study, but more integration of these efforts is desired.…”