Dialogic action in climate change discussions: An international study of high school students in China, New Zealand, Norway and the United States

Diana J Arya,Jessica K Parker

doi:10.5195/dpj.2015.53

Abstract

Global efforts to prepare young developing minds for solving current and future challenges of climate change have advocated interdisciplinary, issues-based instructional approaches in order to transform traditional models of science education as delivering conceptual facts (UNESCO, 2014). This study is an exploration of the online interactions in an international social network of high school students residing in Norway, China, New Zealand and the United States (N=141). Students participated in classroom-based and asynchronous online discussions about adapted versions of seminal scientific studies with facilitative support from seven scientists across various fields. Grounded in a language-in-use frame for investigating facilitation and demonstrations of problem-based and evidence-based reasoning (Kelly & Chen, 1999), we traced the varied questions, assertions, and evidentiary sources within student-led online discussions. We found that questions from scientific experts in the form of unconstrained, open-ended invitations for exploration were followed by students’ acknowledgement and consideration of complex and, at times, conflicting sociopolitical and economic positions about climate change issues. These findings suggest that broadening science classroom discussions to include socially relevant, unsolved issues like climate change could open potential entry points for a dialogic approach that fosters a scientific community in the classroom.

Highlights

Using a classroom discourse frame for analyzing language in use within a secondary school science context (Kelly & Chen, 1999), we explored the social turns within online discussions that were designed to address the three general themes highlighted by the working groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2010)—a) The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change, b) Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, and c) Mitigation of Climate Change
We believe it is a worthwhile venture to study an online exchange between individuals from different parts of the world, we realize culture and contextualized genres are essential to communication and such intercultural communication may result in conflicts about what is expected from whom and to what particular ends (Kramsch & Thorne, 2002)
During our initial phase of categorizing discussion threads, we found that the student-driven discussion forums aligned succinctly with the official working groups established by the IPCC (2010), which was not entirely unexpected since the official materials and activities for the Climate Exchange for Language and Learning (CELL) program were inspired by the governing principles and published reports of IPCC

Summary

Introduction

Traditional models of science instruction in the form of delivering conceptual facts are insufficient for fostering engagement with issues about an uncertain future In their most recent report, UNESCO emphasized the importance of providing opportunities for students to consider the tensions created from the intersections of lifestyle consumption and green technologies (Buckler & Creech, 2014). For such an open dialogue about the consequences of climate change on living beings within ecosystems around the world to occur in the science classroom, students need the time and space to initiate and engage in problem-based and evidence-based reasoning about climate change. This form of dialogue is what we characterize as dialogic action

Methods

Results

Conclusion