T238 STEMming the Tide: How Can We Promote Science Literacy?

Wednesday, 12 October 2011
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room L100FG

THE CLIMATE LITERACY AND ENERGY AWARENESS NETWORK (CLEAN) – FACILITATING CLIMATE AND ENERGY LITERACY

Paper number: T238-9
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Authors

Abstract

There is a clear need to support teachers, students, and citizens in becoming scientifically literate and to enable them to make responsible decisions about the environment for themselves and for society. The need for scientific literacy has been recognized through the establishment of essential principles in climate, Earth science, oceans, and atmospheric science. However, to pursue literacy in any of these areas it is necessary to identify educational materials that are scientifically accurate, pedagogically effective, and technically robust, and to use them effectively.

The CLEAN Pathway (http://cleanet.org) is a National Science Digital library (http://www.nsdl.org) project that is stewarding a collection of materials for teaching climate and energy science in grades 6-16. The collection contains classroom activities, lab demonstrations, visualizations, simulations and more. Each resource is extensively reviewed for scientific accuracy, pedagogical effectiveness, and technical quality, and is aligned with the Climate Literacy Essential Principles for Climate Science and the AAAS Project 2061 Benchmarks for Science Literacy. The CLEAN website hosts 100+ resources that represent the leading edge of climate and energy science resources for the classroom.

In addition, educators can use the CLEAN website to learn about pedagogic strategies for teaching climate and energy topics. Each essential principle is supported with a description of why the principle is important, why it is difficult to teach, information on how to effectively teach it, and links to resources in the collection that can be used to teach it at the middle-school, high-school, and undergraduate levels. Educators can also join the CLEAN community and attend professional development interactive webinars or workshops focused on effective strategies for bringing the principles of climate and energy literacy into their classrooms. In this presentation we will describe the CLEAN collection, the various avenues through which it can be used to identify resources relevant to educators, and the professional development activities that facilitate its effective use.