Teaching Climate Change: Fostering Understanding, Resilience, and a Commitment to Justice

A practical guide to cultivating expansive understandings of climate change and environmental regeneration in K–12 students through classroom instructional practices and curricula. Teaching Climate Change lays out a comprehensive, NGSS-aligned approach to climate change education that builds in-depth knowledge of the subject, empowers students, and promotes a social justice mindset. In this fortifying and inspiring work, Mark Windschitl guides classroom teachers and educational leaders through an ambitious multilevel, multidisciplinary framing of climate change education as an integral element of school curricula. Exuding hope for the future, Windschitl emphasizes the big picture of research-informed teaching about climate change. He presents real-life classroom examples that illustrate not only key STEM concepts such as carbon cycles and the greenhouse effect, biodiversity, and sustainability, but also broader issues, including the countering of misinformation, decarbonizing solutions, the centering of human stories, and the advancement of equity and environmental justice. Windschitl offers keen advice for using methods such as storytelling, project-based learning, and models of inquiry backed by authoritative evidence as core strategies in science teaching and learning. He also addresses the social-emotional toll that discussion of the climate crisis may exact on both students and teachers. This timely book equips teachers to approach climate education with the urgency and empathy that the topic requires and shows how the classroom can inspire students to activism.

About the Author :
Mark Windschitl is a professor of science teaching and learning at the University of Washington. He is the coauthor of Ambitious Science Teaching.

Review :
“This timely book bridges educational research and practice, which results in an essential guide to teaching climate change in classrooms. New and experienced climate change teachers will benefit from the comprehensive rationale for teaching climate change and extensive classroom examples that embrace sensemaking.” —Julie A. Luft, Distinguished Research Professor and Athletic Association Professor of Mathematics and Science Education, University of Georgia “Offering a comprehensive vision for climate change education, Mark Windschitl’s Teaching Climate Change is informative, inspirational, and indispensable for any teacher seeking to empower today’s students to cope with the challenges of tomorrow’s warming world.” —Glenn Branch, deputy director, National Center for Science Education “This book offers a coherent approach to teaching climate change and is centered around the best of current scientific inquiry. It gives student voice, learner ideas, and social justice privileged positions, and recognizes the emotional toll that such a far-reaching challenge facing humanity places on professional educators. I highly recommend it!” —Stamatis Vokos, professor of physics and codirector of the STEM Teacher and Researcher Program, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo “Moving beyond core understandings of climate change at the global level, this book reframes the imperative of climate change education for all students in terms of a vision that centers young people as the solution by building upon their existing sensemaking strengths, capacity for resilience, and imagination for sustainability for their community and beyond. This timely book offers new and experienced educators alike a practical way to strengthen their capacity for climate change teaching and learning by outlining concrete examples for re-envisioning instructional tools to sustain students’ intellectual work and critical perspective around the scientific complexities and social injustices of climate change while also fostering hope and inspiring collective action in the face of the climate crisis.” —Maria Simani, executive director, California Science Project