The survey was distributed to the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, representing 116 students. The 6th grade results represent the “experimental” group in this semi-experimental design, while the 5th and 7th grade students represent “control” groups who did not receive the climate change curriculum focus in their humanities classes. The 8th grade students are used for additional comparative analysis as they study climate change for 12 weeks in science class, and are thus a form of comparison between science and social studies-based climate curriculum.Interview subjects represented school staff , teachers and the partner non-profit Climate Generation , for a total of 5 in-depth interviews of approximately 1 hour in length. By the nature of this study as a participatory research partnership, one of the interview subjects is also a co-author of this paper. Rather than muddying the waters of analysis or representing a conflict of interest, it is our belief and intention that co-authorship provides necessary clarity and depth of perspective on the curriculum pilot by partnering a climate education researcher with an educator interested in critically analyzing, improving, and disseminating a climate curriculum innovation. Interviews were semi-structured, and focused on the following topics: a) impacts of teaching climate change through humanities, b) student and parent responses to curriculum, c) process of developing curriculum and/or delivering instruction , and d) advice and recommendations for other schools. The classrooms observations took place towards the end of the school year, in April, and notes were recorded for analysis by one co-author . The other co-author contributed insights from her observations and experience working in the school over the course of the year in her interview . Observational research methods bring critical insights and context to inform interpretation of results,vertical grow tables revealing personal motivations and helping to uncover process dynamics leading to end results. Survey results were compared across grades and analyzed using Google Forms data analysis as well as basic statistical analyses.
Google Forms is a commonly used educational technology, and thus using this method has the advantage of making the process easily replicable to teachers, schools, and education organizations seeking to gather their own data on similar interventions. Disentangling confounding variables and adjusting for student baseline academic performance and demographics are additional avenues for future research but were not the focus of this study. Interviews were manually coded for themes and analyzed by type to understand differences in reaction between teachers vs. other adults involved in curriculum development and piloting. Interview themes inform next steps for Lowell as well as other schools seeking to implement climate change curriculum through a humanities focus, and guide researchers studying effective strategies and evolving trends in climate education. They reveal strategic improvements possible for the curriculum, as well as hypotheses for testing in larger CCE research explorations .The climate literacy survey was administered to 30 5th graders, 36 6th graders, 27 7th graders, and 23 8th graders, for a total of 116 students. The 6th graders averaged 74.4% correct response on the nine multiple choice questions, while the 5th graders averaged 60.4% correct, 7th graders 69.5% correct, and 8th graders 74.8% correct . The 6th graders had higher correct response rates for five out of the nine MC questions; in the remaining four, the 7th grade had the highest response rate on two questions, and the 8th grade had the highest response rate in the other two. Asked about the global temperature rise limit specified at the United Nations Conference of the Parties talks in Paris, the 6th graders outperformed their peers by the greatest margin, perhaps due to the focus on UN climate conferences leading up to a mock UN climate negotiations activity included in the curriculum . In the open response questions regarding solutions for lowering CO2 levels and mitigating climate change, the 6th grade students matched the 8th graders in terms of total number of responses across various categories , and were the only grade in which a student mentioned the single most impactful individual action to mitigate climate change: have fewer children .
While the sample sizes are too small to merit statistical significance, there are other conclusions of significance to be drawn from these results .The curriculum coordinator, who worked most closely on the development process along with Climate Generation staff, recognized the need from the beginning to build a wide platform of support for the idea from stakeholders both within and beyond the school. Several parents as well as staff, teachers, and external partners were present at the very first curriculum planning meetings. According to school staff, the reaction from parents has been overwhelmingly positive, and there is reported evidence of students discussing climate change with their parents. In the Director’s words, “any push back we were expecting has not happened,” .The conversation has spread among parents at the whole school, who are aware of what is going on, and are motivated to keep their students at Lowell because of the new curriculum focus. It is additionally used as a recruitment tool to attract new families– 2018/2019 6th grade recruitment gains are related to the new curriculum, according to staff.The curriculum coordinator summarized the first year implementation as follows: “Students learned how climate change affects a variety of people around the world, and how different people are responding to it. They read fiction and non-fiction texts featuring climate change and studied the interaction of geography, civics, and economics with climate change. Next year we are hoping to add a substantial service-learning aspect to the course, as well” . When asked if middle schoolers are “ready” to learn about climate change, addressing a common concern among educators about an age threshold for talking about a topic as overwhelming as climate change, all respondents answered in the affirmative. In the words of one teacher, students learn about the Holocaust and slavery in middle school, so they’re already dealing with emotionally charged content.
One 6th grade teacher initially felt inclined to avoid the topic due to “gloom and doom” connotations and possible negative emotional responses, preferring to focus instead on developing a love of nature and the outdoors among students. However, he reports having his mind changed by the curriculum pilot experience, and notes that his skepticism about the climate fiction novel in particular proved unwarranted. The students had incredibly positive responses to the cli-fi novel chronicling a girl and her family’s flight from their homeland as climate refugees and struggle to start a new life. Students felt catalyzed to take action: “The Cli-fi novel was groundbreaking for me. The kids really enjoyed it. It’s a weird way for doom and gloom to be exposed to them, but yet their reaction is incredibly surprising, I thought they’d turn off, but it almost seems motivating and inspiring them to learn more” . The Director of the Middle School brought up several noteworthy outcomes from the first year not captured in the student climate surveys. From the school’s internal standardized testing, he noticed a dramatic improvement in the 6th graders’ reading comprehension scores. Students increased by almost two Standard Deviations from their scores last year, an unusually high rate of increase,flower pot wholesale with top students maintaining their performance and the bottom third reaching grade level standards . One key growth point identified in several interviews was the need to expand and improve the solutions focus within the curriculum and provide opportunities for students to take meaningful action locally on climate mitigation options. For example, when students read “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind,” students build windmills in science class. During the focus on renewable energy, they could also do a community action project around solar incentive programs: Maryland has a program for homeowners to put solar on their roofs, and students could advocate for D.C. to adopt a similar program as the same publicly owned utility covers both jurisdictions. Another idea brought up by staff is to change the end-of-year field trip from New York City to an island in the Chesapeake Bay threatened with disappearance due to sea level rise. The solutions piece is the most complex part to develop, as the content must be laid down first and authentic solutions built on top of that. This is a clear area of focus for future years . During this visit, 6th grade students articulately expressed the difference between climate change and global warming, which they acknowledged they had not known previously.
One student clearly explained the process of hydraulic fracturing in incredible detail, down to the underground wells with cement lining, injecting water at high velocity to release the oil stored in underground pores, producing a lot of wastewater and creating seismic activity . Students were generally excited to share what they had learned, and recounted memorable topics and projects of particular interest to them. This included the “CliMojis” art project, where they created personal Climate Emojis after reading a Washington Post article about a company designing climate change-based emojis, so that texters could communicate their frustrations and anxieties around climate change pictorially . The students read and discussed the article, and then designed their own climojis, synthesizing learning in a visual form. Other significant learning experiences reported were the Fossil Fuel Museum and learning about how bees will be impacted by climate change while reading a novel called The Hour of the Bees. When asked what students were hoping to do about climate change based on their newfound knowledge, students responded with ideas such as spreading awareness, creating more things from plant materials , farming in a way that supports the environment, and putting more plants in the ground. Many students seemed to have clear ideas around how to take action and expressed feelings of hope and empowerment when describing their collective “climate solutions.” As a whole, the Lowell middle school demonstrated much higher levels of knowledge and engagement around climate change than the average American teenager or adult. Based on a 2010 nationally representative survey of American teenagers, knowledge of climate science basic facts was found to be very low . 59% of American adults fall into the “Alarmed” or “Concerned” categories of the YPCCC Six Americas spectrum as of December 2018 compared to 82% of Lowell middle school students. What remains a challenge both nationally and at Lowell is building optimism around our ability to solve climate change: only 8% of youth agreed that we can and will do something to mitigate climate change in a recent study , and a mere 5% of Lowell students indicated they believe their generation will solve climate change. While acknowledging the receptive audience for implementing the curriculum, the results relating to increased student engagement, increased reading scores and favorable response to a humanities-focused climate curriculum are nevertheless significant and worth building on as an approach to middle school climate education. Further hypotheses are generated such as the claim that climate change as an engaging topic can help boost student performance in core academic disciplines , requiring further testing via controlled experiments. The time period between 6th and 8th grade is a significant youth development stage during which students develop capacity in knowledge retention and empathy and gain exposure to many new topics, and yet the 6th graders performed equal to or above the 8th graders on most climate knowledge and engagement questions. They shared information learned with families and friends more often than their 8th grade peers learning about climate change through science only, generating important hypotheses for CCE/IGL scholars . Results and best practices from this case study should be applied intentionally to other classrooms and school contexts. The web of support is a crucial enabling factor as well as the participation of key influencers, which must be identified in other contexts. The Lowell School curriculum coordinator suggests several vehicles for integrating similar curricula into more structured, state-mandated public school subject matter: through choice of reading materials in civics classes, suggested options for student independent research projects, and current events classes at the high school level.