An award has been made to Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) to establish a Phase I Climate Change Education Partnership (CCEP) in collaboration with WestEd and the University of Washington. Other Core Partners include the Pacific Curriculum and Instruction Council and consulting learning scientists from TERC and Northwestern University.
The overall goal of the CCEP Phase I project is to establish a coordinated national network of regionally- or thematically-based partnerships devoted to increasing the adoption of effective, high quality educational programs and resources related to the science of climate change and its impacts. This project will serve the United States Affiliated Pacific Island Region (USAPI) and will focus on climate change impacts on the coastal ecosystems that are vital to the lives and cultures of those who live in the USAPI.
The project targets educators, students, and community members in a region that is among the most vulnerable to climate change impacts. The specific goals include strategically planning a culturally responsive adoption of high quality K-14 climate change educational programs and resources; involving local communities in developing K-14 climate education initiatives that build upon local knowledge, particularly indigenous ways of knowing; and collaborating with other CCEP projects as a member of an NSF-coordinated network that plays a national leadership role in climate change education.
By the end of this two-year project, the PIs expect to develop a general, multidisciplinary K-14 climate change science education framework. In addition, the project will have developed and prototyped processes to facilitate the adaptation of existing curriculum resources to the Pacific region's climates and cultures. The science education framework and the adaptation processes both combine the best attributes of western science and indigenous cultures with respect to knowledge of the region's climate systems and ways accessing and presenting that knowledge. The most comprehensive outcome will be a Pacific Region climate change education strategic plan that the extended partnership network can implement using the tools, resources, and commitments that have been developed.
More information on this project is available by contacting the PI, Dr. Sharon Nelson-Barber at PREL or the co-PI, Dr. Art Sussman at WestEd.
The Pacific Islands Climate Education Partnership (PCEP) serves the United States Affiliated Pacific Island (USAPI) region that includes the state of Hawai‘i, the Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianna Islands, and the Freely-Associated States of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), the Republic of Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). The impacts that these islands face include changes in weather patterns and the intensity of extreme weather events, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, coral reef bleaching, ocean acidification, and contamination of freshwater resources by salt water. These impacts cause great harm to the ecosystems and physical infrastructures that are vital to USAPI citizens, especially the indigenous populations. The PCEP vision is to empower the region’s students and citizens through education that exemplifies modern science and indigenous environmental knowledge, addresses the urgency of climate change impacts, and honors indigenous cultures. Students and citizens within the region will have the knowledge and skills to advance understandings of climate change and adapt to its impacts. The PCEP is a collaborative network whose core team includes PREL, WestEd, the Pacific Curriculum and Instructional Council, the University of Hawaii, and other researchers. About 70 other organizations, including all USAPI school systems and institutions of higher education, as well as governmental agencies and a broad range of non-profit groups and local communities, comprise our cadre of supporting partners. This network coordinates expertise from climate scientists, education practitioners, and learning scientists. Over the past two years, this dynamic, collaborative network of climate researchers and educators network has built a supporting Pacific-island-focused, web-based, climate change education and information platform (http://pcep.dsp.wested.org/). This platform interlinks information about the island locations, the climate-related people and organizations serving these locations, and informational resources focused on climate science, climate impacts, and the science of learning. Other electronic tools that support the PCEP work include an interactive list server (Pacific island Educators Advocating for Climate Education (PEACE), http://lists.prel.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/peace), and a series of locally focused wikis for each jurisdiction involved in the PCEP (http://pcep.wikispaces.com/). A key outcome of the PCEP work is the collaboratively developed PCEP Strategic Climate Education Plan. This Plan has four interwoven strands of activities. The first two strands provide the essential framework for the activities delineated in the other two strands: Creating a PCEP Climate Education Framework (CEF) that focuses on the content and skills necessary for understanding the science of global and Pacific island climates, as well as the adaptation to climate impacts in the USAPI region. The CEF is organized into four grade spans that describe the climate science knowledge and skills for students by the end of grades 2, 5, 8 and 12 (see: http://pcep.dsp.wested.org/content_items/1524587); Collating the Indigenous knowledges and practices based on centuries of living sustainably on Pacific islands that directly relate to the understanding of USAPI climates, climatic variability, and the impacts of climate change; Gathering, refining, and disseminating teaching and learning resources that provide accurate and locally relevant ways for teachers to have the necessary knowledge and skills, and for students to have locally appropriate, accurate and engaging curriculum resources; and Providing resources to support climate education collaborations among local schools and community groups, particularly where students become actively involved in community planning and implementation activities that increase the resiliency of local ecosystems and societal infrastructures to current and projected climate change impacts. Test-bedding activities in Phase I have demonstrated the PCEP’s potential to design and support the implementation of effective and sustainable USAPI climate education. Engaged and informed communities are contributing to our understandings of indigenous ways of knowing based on the cultural stories and traditional practices relating environmental stewardship, climate, and local climate adaptation strategies, as we explore their integration with modern western science to promote more powerful, broadly accessible ways of learning climate science. In brief, PCEP Phase-I has laid the foundations for continuing work in Phase II that will foster: Improved, institutionalized climate education melding modern science and traditional knowledge; Increased capacity of formal and informal educators through professional learning; Dissemination of locally-relevant climate curricula; Thriving, sustainable partnerships among schools and community organizations; and Systemic improvements in K-14 climate education across the region.
