Exploring Climate Change Through Students’ Place Connections and Public Data Sets

Abstract

Climate change is a pressing societal challenge. It is also a pedagogical challenge and a worldwide phenomenon, whose local impacts vary across different locations. Climate change reflects global inequity; communities that contribute most to emissions have greater economic resources to shelter from its consequences, while the lowest emitters are most vulnerable. It is scientifically complex, and simultaneously evokes deep emotions. These overlapping issues call for new ways of science teaching that center personal, social, emotional, and historical dimensions of the crisis. In this article, we describe a middle school science curriculum approach that invites students to explore large-scale data sets and author their own data stories about climate change impacts and inequities by blending data and narrative texts. Students learn about climate change in ways that engage their personal and cultural connections to place; engage with complex causal relationships across multiple variables, time, and space; and voice their concerns and hopes for our climate futures. Connections to relevant science, data science, and literacy standards are outlined, along with relevant data sets and assessments.

Keywords:

• Climate Change
• Data Science
• Youth Activism
• Multilingual Learners
• Place-Based Science
• Curriculum Design

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the youth and educators, who we learned alongside in the development and enactment of the curriculum.

ONLINE RESOURCES

Writing Data Stories Project—https://tinyurl.com/bde38frp

Writing Data Stories Curriculum Overview and Google Drive Links—https://tinyurl.com/5d6swd72

Public Climate Data Sets in CODAP (Spanish)—bit.ly/WDSClima

Public Climate Data Sets in CODAP (English)—bit.ly/WDSClimate

Common Online Data Analysis Platform (CODAP)—https://codap.concord.org

Teaching with CODAP resources—https://codap.concord.org/for-educators/

Notice and wonder questioning routines (NCTM)—http://tinyurl.com/n6r7fzym

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. IIS-1900606.

Notes on contributors

Kathryn Lanouette

Kathryn Lanouette ([email protected]) is an assistant professor in the School of Education at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Krista L. Cortes is Director of The Center for Hispanic Excellence (La Casa Latina) at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Lisette Lopez is a curriculum developer in Western New York. Michael Bakal is a doctoral candidate and Michelle Hoda Wilkerson is an associate professor, both in the Berkeley School of Education at the University of California Berkeley.