An electronic newsletter for the science education community
March/April 2007
Project
2061 Offers Guide for Teaching Climate Change
New resource available in print
and online
Project 2061 has long recognized that citizens who are science literate are vital to
addressing some of the most pressing problems facing the nation and the world. Now, a
new resource from the project looks at what today’s students need to learn about
the problems posed by global climate change. Communicating and Learning About Global
Climate Change: An Abbreviated Guide for Teaching Climate Change provides science
educators with an overview of Project 2061’s recommendations for what all students
should learn about climate change and its environmental and societal implications.
Drawing on Project 2061’s standards-based science education resources, the 32-page
guide focuses on the ideas and skills that are central to understanding the science of
climate change, the process of scientific inquiry, and the trade-offs and constraints
implicit in making choices about technology. To support teachers as they work with students
and as they build their own knowledge about climate change, the guide includes:
- Excerpts from Science for All Americans describing
what science literate adults should know and be able to do.
- Strand maps from Atlas of Science Literacy, Volume 1 and the newly published Atlas
2 that show what students should be learning in kindergarten through 12th
grade in relevant topics such as weather and climate, the interaction of technology
and society, energy resources, and the interdependence of life in ecosystems.
- Recommended books written for a general audience that can help educators and others
understand global climate change.
- Recommended Web sites that provide access to climate change resources from government,
academic, and scientific organizations.
The guide was distributed as part of a special teachers’ kit
during a town hall event on climate change held in February at the AAAS Annual Meeting
in San Francisco. Bringing together more than a thousand teachers, students, business
executives, journalists, and scientists, the half-day forum included presentations from
some of the nation’s top climate researchers and the debut of a new AAAS video
on the science and impact of climate change. (To see the town hall presentations, the
video, and many other AAAS climate resources, visit www.aaas.org/climate).
Project 2061’s guide on teaching climate change
is the second of its kind. For a similar town hall event at the 2006 AAAS Annual Meeting,
the project created a guide for teaching evolution that
has been very popular with educators. By laying out the basic science concepts that
are important for understanding important issues like evolution and global climate change,
Project 2061 hopes these guides will provide teachers with a good picture of what a
science-literate person should know and be able to do as a concerned and well-informed
citizen.
# # #
You may read Project 2061’s climate
change guide for free online. To order print copies of the guide, visit Project
2061 Books.
For more information about Project 2061’s climate
change guide, please contact:
Project 2061 Director: Dr.
Jo Ellen Roseman, (202) 326-6752
Communications Director: Mary
Koppal, (202) 326-6643
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