Learning to know, do, be and live together for climate change education. A reflection on practices that work in the context of geographical education
Abstract
Research literature on climate change education has been primarily focused on reporting how programmes are designed to help students learn the topic of climate change better. The aim of such education programmes invariably endeavours to educate a globally informed citizenry in response to the contemporary climate crisis through effective teaching and learning. While there have been literature to show how students’ knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviour have changed for the better with effective teaching and learning, this article seeks to curate some of these practices, especially those published by the author to exemplify how we can achieve the UN Delors report’s (1998) suggestion that education needs to help students to learn to know, learn to do, learn to be and learn to live together. These desired outcomes are also aligned with the aspirations of geographical education as set out in the International Charter on Geographic Education (CGE, 2016). The article will draw on published works by the author, review the relevance of these studies and compare them with other published works to provide an argument for using the Delors Report to help teachers in their curriculum planning and lesson designs. While education is inherently future-oriented, there needs to be some coherent and contiguous treatment of the way education practices can be used. To this end, the article’s approach to curating the published work will provide a critical discussion using a known framework to advance the discourse on best practices for climate change education. Ultimately the aim of climate change education should be to provide students with the capabilities and opportunities to flourish in society now and in the future, particularly in the face of the challenges brought about by global climate change.References
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