Climate change education to promote climate action
Tartu University ·Estonia
About this project
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif">The aim is to establish climate change education at all levels (from kindergarten to gymnasium) of general education in Estonia: developing education strategies, creating learning materials and supporting teachers. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif">There are apparent gaps in climate change education in Estonia, and the developed education strategies and materials would help fill these gaps. Educational institutions covering various education levels will be involved from different subregions of Estonia to reach at least ten thousand students and teachers. </span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif">Educating teachers and students would translate to increased climate change awareness in Estonian society in general. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif">Information is exchanged in work seminars, the output is a list of climate competences and recommendations for curriculum renewal and the choice of teaching strategies, an educational program that would approach climate change, its mitigation and adaptation teaching in a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary manner. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif">An important educational material will be created: “ABC of Climate Change,” explaining the causes and impacts of climate change and climate change mitigation and adaptation options. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif">By mapping the used teaching strategies an analysis will be carried out (by education levels) to determine which teaching methods are currently used, also occured failures and problems are analysed. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif">Evidence-based teaching strategies are described to help to teach scientific concepts more efficiently (f.e climate change mitigation and adaptation). When creating learning methods, misconceptions and misunderstandings related to the topics, confirmation bias, cultural ideologies, psychosocial and ethical aspects are taken into account. </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif">Selecting topics that have significant impact but lack teaching resources or need improvement. Already existing innovative learning tools, which could have a significantly wider user base, can become the learning tools selected for the project. Teacher manuals are created if necessary.</span></span></p>
Bilateral cooperation results
Initially, the planned cooperation with the donor partner was mainly in the field of evaluation, but when starting substantive cooperation with partners, the main focus became the development of educational materials.
Project partners
- University of Bergen Donor project partner· Norway
- Tallinn University Project partner· Estonia
- Estonian University of Life Sciences Project partner· Estonia