This project utilizes existing climate change datasets, activities, and resources to develop a model teacher professional development tool kit and program for climate science. The target audiences for the tool kits are formal (teachers) and informal (naturalists, museum) educators who conduct teacher professional development. The secondary audience is secondary Earth science teachers. The tool kit is being developed in collaboration with educators from Benton Central Jr.-Sr. High School (Indiana) and St John's Lutheran School (Michigan), a naturalist with Tippecanoe County, IN, and represenatives of the Environmental Education Association of Indiana. The project is divided into three phases. The first phase focuses on the development of the teacher professional development tool kit and program. The second phase involves using the tool kit to conduct teacher professional development, field testing, evaluating, and revising the tool kit. The third phase involves a summer institute to prepare formal and informal educators to use the tool kit, disseminating the tool kit to organizations and institutions, and establishing a Project Climate Science network.
The purpose of this project was to develop a model earth system science teacher professional development toolkit for climate science that may be used by formal and informal educators to conduct teacher professional development. The final product, The Dynamics of Climate toolkit, takes a climate system approach to understanding how the Earth’s climate is changing. The toolkit utilizes climate datasets and activities to develop learners’ understanding of climate. The small group and individual activities require learners to interpret, analyze, and represent climatic data and use scientific concepts to explain climate events. The program was developed around four guiding questions: What is a climate system and what are the components that makeup this system? What happens when we change the components of a climate system? What are the climate and environmental impacts of a changing climate system? And what can people do about a changing climate system? The Dynamics of Climate toolkit is: 1) grounded in the geoscience education research on learners’ conceptions of climate, global warming, and climate change, 2) utilizes instructional activities and climatic data sets and visualizations from NSF, NOAA, EPA and NASA, and 3) is based on the research on effective teacher professional development. The toolkit consists of six components: 1) program manual that describes the professional development program and resources for implementing an effective professional development program, 2) PowerPoint program with video clips and talking points, 3) presenter’s guide that details the talking points, video clips, and the instructional activities, 4) materials packet that includes the handouts, visuals, and data sets for implementing the instructional activities and program, 5) a teachers’ guide to teaching about the Earth’s climate system, and 6) an administrative packet that provides suggestions for implementing a professional development program. The Dynamics of Climate toolkit is available through the project’s climate education website: iclimate.org/ccc/ and through the Purdue Climate Change Research Center website: www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/climate/climate-change/. The field test workshops and conference evaluation data indicated that the Dynamics of Climate toolkit provides an effective professional development program that is a model for preparing teachers and other professionals to teach about the Earth’s climate system and how it is changing. In summary, this project resulted in: 1) developing a teacher professional development toolkit that consists of rich data sets and visualization activities that are model learning experiences and that address the major misconceptions learners hold about the greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change, and 2) prepared formal and informal educators to be more knowledgeable of and better able to teach about climate and climate change. The toolkit and professional development program aligns nicely with the National Research Council’s (2012) A Framework for K-12 Science Education: ESS2.A Earth Materials and Systems, ESS2.D Weather and Climate, and ESS3.D Global Climate Change. Thus, the toolkit and program provides a foundation for the preparation of teachers in addressing the core science concepts and practices, linking to the Next Generation Science Standards.
