Pre-service Teachers’ Understandings and Practices of Climate Change

Abstract

Globally, climate change (CC) is one of the most critical challenges of the 21st century with far-reaching environmental social, economic and political impacts. Climate change education (CCE) is essential to educate citizens about CC, its eff ects, adaptations, and mitigations, including how lifestyles need to be adjusted. Educators at both schooling and higher education levels therefore should be informed and wellequipped to educate about CC. Pre-service teachers (PSTs) need more exposure to both climate science content and pedagogical content knowledge relating to climate science teaching. Research on how pre-service teachers’ understandings and practices are influenced by their learnings about CC is lacking. Th is study investigated 40 preservice science teachers’ understandings and practices on CC, before and after a Biological Science for Educators module, in a Bachelor of Education undergraduate programme, at a South African university. Th e data generation methods in this qualitative, interpretive study included questionnaires and in-depth individual and focus group interviews. The findings indicate an improvement in the PSTs’ understandings and practices about climate change in their local environments and their conceptual knowledge, after the module teaching. Th eir climate change practices were, however, embedded only in their immediate contexts. Th e module teaching approach to climate change education requires change as limited aspects of CC were taught and more action-oriented activities should be included. Thus, a holistic (rather than piecemeal) approach to CCE is needed to deepen pre-service teachers’ understandings and practices and this study proposes an adaptable, action-oriented CCE model for PSTs. Keywords: climate change, climate change education, pre-service science teachers, understandings, practices, mitigation, adaptations