Abstract
The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the incorporation of climate change social science research into climate change education practice. Semi-structured interviews with 19 educators from five climate change related professional development programs and networks revealed a high level of awareness of climate change social science research. Educators accessed research through a variety of means and reported both practice change and a sense of validation as a result of the research. They reported shifting toward programs that focused less on climate facts to programs that focused on solutions and that integrated their understanding of audiences’ values and identities. They also reported feeling a conflict between their practice knowledge and the knowledge they gained through professional development and accessing research. This work begins to fill a gap both in our understanding of how nonformal educators communicate about climate change and in how they use research in their practice.
Highlights
Interest in climate change education (CCE) and communication have expanded recently in tandem with the growing interest in teaching climate change at the practitioner level
Scholars call for CCE research to be guided by the domains that inform climate change communication, such as communication theory and psychology [8,9,10,11]
We present results from an exploratory qualitative study on how nonformal climate change educators who have participated in five programs—National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI), Climate Urban Systems Partnership (CUSP), Project Learning Tree (PLT), Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN), and Community Climate Change Fellowship (CCCF)—translate climate change social science research into CCE practice
Summary
Interest in climate change education (CCE) and communication have expanded recently in tandem with the growing interest in teaching climate change at the practitioner level. Scholars call for CCE research to be guided by the domains that inform climate change communication, such as communication theory and psychology [8,9,10,11]. They recommend broadening epistemological and theoretical approaches to CCE research to produce integrative theory, and to move beyond research that seeks to understand which education elements lead to climate change literacy [12]
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