Supporting Communities of Practice as a Strategy to Accelerate Uptake of Environmental Science for Climate Action: TV Weathercasters as a Case Study.

Abstract

Advantageous new ideas and practices have a vexing track record of taking root slowing, if at all. Identifying or creating, and then supporting, communities of practice is a promising approach to enhancing the likelihood that science-based environmental science knowledge will be applied to solve societal problems. A community of practice, simply put, is a group of individuals who have shared interests and problems related to a specific topic. This article provides a brief overview of what communities of practice are, and how they might be embraced as a strategy to accelerate the development of climate change solutions. The approach is illustrated with a brief case study of a highly successful program designed to support TV weathercasters as local climate change educators, called Climate Matters. It concludes with a heuristic to guide future efforts at supporting communities of practice.