cycles: teachers discovering climate change from a native perspective
TRANSCRIPT
*Three-year teacher professional development program promoting culturally-sensitive approaches for understanding and teaching about climate change in Native American populations
*Partner Schools: Fond du Lac, Cass Lake, Red Lake, and White Earth reservation schools
*19 teachers (grades 6-12, science, technology, culture)
C Y C L E S
Summer Workshop
Academic Year Follow-
Up
Classroom support and observations
C Y C L E S
Cedar Creek Ecosystem Reserve
*Day 1: Exploring Abiotic/Biotic Factors in different biomes and connecting climate to shifting biomes
*Day 2: Minnesota Climate, Climate and biodiversity
*Day 3: Constructing Past Climate Using Local Proxy Data, Tree-ring analysis
*Day 4: Ecosystem cycling of nutrients and its role in Global Climate Change
*Day 5: Climate change in the classrooms
C Y C L E S
*Teachers’ Attitudes About Climate Change
*Teachers’ Knowledge About Climate Change.
*Teachers’ Knowledge of Culturally-relevant Approaches
to Climate Change Education in Native Communities.
*Impact of Teachers’ Attitudes and Knowledge on
Classroom Practices
C Y C L E S
*Concept Maps – collected throughout the summer
workshop
*Photo Elicitation Interviews (PEI)
*Each proposition was scored using
the relational scoring method
(McClure & Bell, 1990)
*Propositions were aligned with the
seven essential climate literacy
principles (NOAA, 2009)
Proposition Score Proposition Description
1 Misconception or incomplete information,
2 Structurally strong but not reflective of in-depth
understanding
3 Structurally strong and shows in-depth
understanding of a concept
Climate Literacy Principles Number of
Propositions
Average
Score
1. Sun is the primary energy source. 18 2.22
2. Climate is regulated by complex interactions among the
components of Earth System.40 1.85
3. Life depends on, is shaped by and affects climate. 17 2.29
4. Climate varies over space and time through natural and
man-made processes.15 1.87
5. Understanding improves through observations,
theoretical studies and modeling.4 1.5
6. Human activities impact the climate system 54 2.44
7. Climate change will have consequences for the Earth
system and human lives86 2.07
8. Other 30 1.9
*T1: The heat comes in, carbon dioxide, when there’s more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the heat bounces off of it more rather than, I’m trying to view the picture they showed us. How it’s bouncing around rather than getting out.
Questions: What are greenhouse
gases? How do they create the
“greenhouse effect”?
How is the greenhouse effect related
to global warming?
*T2: What they do is, when the sunlight passes through the atmosphere it doesn’t actually trap in the molecules, but what it’ll do is cause them to be reflected back towards the earth more than they were before, so it keeps them in the atmosphere longer before they’re released back out into space. So, as the molecules, or the “energy packets” as they were described, from the sun bouncing off the earth’s surface it’s harder for them to get back out into the atmosphere. They may be redirected back towards earth three or four times before they are actually escaping into space.
*T2: Okay, so yeah. As the heat molecules are reflected back towards the earth more and more, what they’re doing is providing more heat to the earth before they escape back into the atmosphere.
*T3: Well this drawing sort of shows it here. So, short
waves—solar radiation—comes into the planet. It’s
absorbed by the earth’s surface and then the earth’s
surface re-emits long-wave infrared radiation as heat.
And then, the more greenhouse gases we have, the
greater the percentage of that heat that gets trapped in.
So, normally a certain percentage of infrared radiation
would just pass out again, out into space, but the more
greenhouse gases we have in there, the more they absorb
that energy and prevent it from leaving back into space.
And then, off the planet.
