T183 Climate Literacy: Formal and Informal Education and Outreach Activities and Research and Evaluation Measures of Success

Tuesday, 3 November 2015
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 324

THE CLIMATE LITERACY AND ENERGY AWARENESS NETWORK (CLEAN) PROJECT

Paper number: T183-1
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 8:00 AM – 8:15 AM

Authors

Abstract

Climate change is impacting and will continue to impact a broad cross-section of society. In order to respond, manage, and adapt to climate change, citizens of all ages need accurate, up-to-date information, knowledge of the sciences, and analytical skills to make responsible decisions and long-term plans. Teachers across the nation are helping to increase science-based understanding and awareness of current and future climate change by enhancing climate and energy literacy in K-12 classrooms as well as on college and university campuses. There has been tremendous progress to date; however, the new academic standards (the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)) require significant professional development to prepare teachers to address the inherently interdisciplinary nature of climate change and the societal responses in their teaching.

The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN, http://cleanet.org) is working to provide this support through 1) the CLEAN Collection – reviewed educational climate and energy science resources, 2) pedagogical support for teaching climate and energy science that includes an Educator Framework for Teaching Climate and Energy Science for K-12 teachers across the curriculum based on the Next Generation Science Standards: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas, and 3) facilitating a professionally diverse community of climate and energy literacy stakeholders called the CLEAN Network, to share and leverage their efforts to extend their reach and effectiveness.

In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the CLEAN Portal. This will include:

  • the CLEAN Collection of 650+ resources (activities, videos, visualizations, and short demonstrations and experiments) reviewed for scientific accuracy, pedagogical effectiveness, and technical quality;
  • the Educator Framework for Teaching Climate and Energy Science; and
  • a summary of the activities of the CLEAN Network including preliminary results from a new survey of climate change education stakeholders aimed at understanding the evolving make up and needs of this community to enable extending their reach and impact.