April 6, 2016
Climate change in K-12 education topic of climate change meeting
Jackie Spears, professor of curriculum and instruction and director of the Center for Science Education in K-State's College of Education, will be the speaker for the K-State Climate Change Interest Group meeting. Spears will present "Climate Change Education in the K-12 Classroom" at 10 a.m. Friday, April 8, in 207 K-State Student Union. All are invited to attend.
Climate change became an explicit part of K-12 science classrooms when the Kansas State Board of Education adopted the Next Generation Science Standards as the state's science standards. Spears' presentation will introduce the framework used to develop the new science standards, provide an overview of how climate and climate change content is being integrated across the K-12 science curriculum, and profile a few of the many sources of K-12 educational materials on climate change that are available.
Work conducted as part of the Central Great Plains Climate Change Education Project, National Science Foundation award No. 1043393, revealed that Kansas teachers wanted to integrate locally/regionally specific climate data into classroom activities.
Lisa Tabor, doctoral candidate in curriculum and instruction, recently completed research into the extent to which geographic information system technology can provide a practical, reproducible and effective method for teaching climate change in grades 6-12 classrooms. An overview of her research findings will be presented.