Climate Change Education: Comparison
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Please note this is a comparison between Version 2 by Lindsay Dong and Version 1 by Kamisah Osman.

Climate Change Education (CCE) is one of the initiatives taken to deliver the facts about the current climate status of the world and the proper mitigation actions that need to be done to the youth, as they will be the ones who will have to face and deal with the consequences of climate change [10].; thus, CCE has now become a critical factor in strengthening the climate change awareness of young people [11,12]. CCE is one of the sub-areas of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) where the focus is on the complexity and challenges involved in understanding and responding to the impact of climate change [13]; furthermore, the implementation of CCE in ESD should include a holistic and integrated view of all dimensions [14], covering the ecological, economic, and social aspects of the consequences of climate change [15,16].

  • climate change
  • Climate Change Education
  • climate actions

1. Introduction

In recent years, global environmental changes have become more obvious, and the underlying cause for these frequent occurrences is anthropogenic activities [1]. This causal relationship has been proven by various studies in the literature [2,3,4,5][2][3][4][5] besides reports on climate change from global organizations [6,7,8][6][7][8]. Human activities such as agriculture [8], the burning of fossil fuels [9], and open burning directly or indirectly give negative impacts on climate change in the world. These anthropogenic activities significantly contribute to multiple phenomena such as frequent occurrences of extreme weather and the rising sea level which is a result of the Earth’s rising average temperature [8].
The emergence of climate change as a serious issue worldwide, along with other critical issues, has led to the idea and implementation of the 2030 Agenda, which is comprised of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One of the goals, SDG 4, focuses on how quality education amongst students, whether in primary; secondary; or high school, will impact on SDG 13, which is climate action. Education for youth that emphasises more on sustainable actions will aid in improving the environmental condition of this world.

2. Climate Change Education

Currently, Climate Change Education (CCE) is one of the initiatives taken to deliver the facts about the current climate status of the world and the proper mitigation actions that need to be done to the youth, as they will be the ones who will have to face and deal with the consequences of climate change [10].; thus, CCE has now become a critical factor in strengthening the climate change awareness of young people [11,12][11][12]. CCE is one of the sub-areas of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) where the focus is on the complexity and challenges involved in understanding and responding to the impact of climate change [13]; furthermore, the implementation of CCE in ESD should include a holistic and integrated view of all dimensions [14], covering the ecological, economic, and social aspects of the consequences of climate change [15,16][15][16]. Students that receive and accept multiple dimensions of sustainable education in the proper and right way will obtain a better understanding of what climate change and sustainable development are all about, and this will eventually help to create awareness amongst them of the need to practise a more environmental-oriented lifestyle. The knowledge and skills acquired by younger people will guide them to conserve the environment [17].
In recent decades, CCE has become an important part of educational policy developments in most countries; however, the ways CCE is adopted in the education system of each country is important as well, as this will determine the success rate of its implementation. For instance, the implementation of CCE and ESD is considered progressive in Sweden [18]. These ideals have been integrated formally into the curricula and educational practices of Sweden [19], and the Swedish education system focuses more on each student’s individual responsibility for global environmental issues [20]. On the other hand, more attention is paid to knowledge than environmentally responsible behaviours in the Turkish and Bulgarian curricula [21]; however, an analysis of the national curriculum in England and Wales showed that teachers are legally bound to cover the information contained within the syllabi, and other topics like citizenship or ESD will be taught only if time and space allow [22]. Based on the examples above, different implementations of CCE will produce students with different views of climate change itself. Effective initiatives of Climate Change Education will employ well-established models, theories, and past literature in guiding the process of creating their curricula for students’ learning. Good curriculum content related to the topic of climate change will influence students’ global competence which covers three elements, namely knowledge, skills, and attitudes [23]. The first dimension of global competence, which is knowledge regarding the impacts and consequences of climate change, will expose and encourage students to be more climate-friendly [24]. Climate change issues, such as global warming and others, are perceived as an intersectional area of science and society, where the result will be complex, often controversial [28][25], and viewed as a productive context for both teaching and learning [29][26]; thus, teachers and students are the main players in tackling these issues of climate change. More efforts are needed, especially from teachers, to increase students’ understanding of controversial issues and to eventually train capable and responsible youngsters to participate in decision-making [30][27]. This is also supported by the fact that humans need gradual and consistent education for sustainable development (ESD) from an early age. This education should involve their surrounding community so that they will grow to be aware of how their actions affect their environment. ESD covers the balance between the economic, social, and environmental dimensions [31,32][28][29] and is not limited to knowledge of one’s climate and environment [31][28]. Each human being tends to become a better person through individual development, which consists of several processes and aspects such as physical, behavioural, cognitive, and emotional growth [33][30]. From the social aspect, adolescents will be directly influenced by the people immediately around them in determining what actions they will take in the future, especially in relation to environmental aspects [34,35][31][32]; hence, students tend to become aware of the climate issue if the formal education that they receive at school regarding sustainable education is effective, besides the role played by their social context such as the attitudes and actions of their family and friends towards the environment. A person’s attitude towards climate change and sustainable development is seen in their behaviours in relation to any stimuli, external and internal situations [36][33], and is influenced by knowledge and emotions. All these eventually impact the person’s decision-making about natural resources and how those resources are managed [37][34]. The knowledge and action towards a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle cannot simply be imparted to students through a short training programme. It must be acquired through proper ESD, which will improve the person’s capacity and commitment to building more sustainable societies [38,39,40,41][35][36][37][38]; however, there are several constraints that will prevent students from achieving good global competency, which include the lack of knowledge, skills, and correct attitudes toward a sustainable lifestyle [42][39]. These gaps can be caused by weaknesses in the curriculum of ESD itself, as well as negative factors in the students’ surroundings. In addition, parents of students also play a major role in exerting a significant impact on their values, behaviours, and attitudes towards the natural environment. This will eventually influence the students’ positions and stances on environmental issues, such as whether or not they choose to engage in pro-environmental behaviours [43,44][40][41]. Children show positive behaviours towards the natural environment when their family is functioning positively [45][42]. For example, through recent studies, family and friends were observed to have a highly significant role in improving the global competency of students regarding climate change by facilitating communication between them and helping them in their search for information [46,47,48,49][43][44][45][46]. Such information allows parents to show a willingness to inform and discuss with their children the current serious environmental issues that affect us, such as the pollution of the seas and ourthe excessive consumption of energy and water. Another important group that assists in the process of generating global competency in dealing with climate change among students is the teachers; they are the ones who are directly involved in delivering the input about climate change to the students in school, and any mistakes made by them in the process of delivery will produce a major impact on the objective of Climate Change Education itself. The pedagogy used by the teachers in teaching this knowledge should be varied and not just adhere to the traditional methods of teaching. Generally, multiple teaching strategies can be applied by teachers to make students interested in obtaining new information about all aspects of climate change; for example, the inquiry-driven approach will allow students to consider the human element of environmental change and at the same time, gain deeper insights into the environmental and social impacts of human activities [50][47]. The prediction of long-term outcomes of change will take the students’ thinking processes into envisioning and imagining outcomes across different scenarios [51][48]. Thus, a scenario such as the students’ observation of accurate sea levels under different levels of carbon emission under their teacher’s guidance will provide a better awareness of the risks of global warming causing the sea level to rise [52][49]. Nevertheless, the most important factor is the curriculum content of the Climate Change Education itself. The implementation of climate change-related curricula is different across the countries. Although most countries have a well-highlighted vision to achieve sustainability based on the Sustainability Development Goals, certain actions taken to realise that vision, especially in the scope of their curricula, are still not well-implemented. Firstly, the textbook topics about climate change are not overarching and sometimes reproduce biased knowledge [53][50]. In Sweden, certain dimensions of sustainability are underdeveloped in their biology textbooks [54][51]. Therefore, an integrated and holistic view of all dimensions of sustainability is needed in Climate Change Education [14]; furthermore, the lack of action-oriented content about sustainable development in the textbooks has been mentioned. This lacuna will become a potential challenge for the ability of educators to promote action competence in their students [55,56][52][53]. Most of the textbooks give exercises and tasks that do not encourage readers to find any information beyond the concepts and perspectives that are already provided; indeed, the arrangement and setting of certain values in Climate Change Education will indirectly impact the thinking style of students.

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