Designing a Technology-enhanced Climate Change Education Curriculum (TECCHED)
Item type:Publication, conference paper[2024][T1e][S007][1]; ; Pre-service teachers are effective agents of change in the classrooms of the future. Character and values about socioscientific issues such as climate change are important factors that influence decision making regarding these matters. However, literature indicates that the initiatives towards enhancing the pedagogical skills as well as the character and values of preservice teachers for informed decision making are scarce. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a needs analysis of preservice teachers regarding climate change education. A total of 270 pre-service teachers from Bulgaria, Türkiye, Latvia and Lithuania completed a questionnaire consisting of 4 open-ended and 13 closed-ended questions, divided into three subdimensions: a) character and values regarding climate change, b) preparedness to teach climate change, c) technologies for teaching climate change. The results indicated that the pre-service teachers strongly agreed that climate change affects all of us and can disrupt the balance in nature. Only 1 respondent thought that not enough work has been done on climate change and about 25% of the respondents try to consider different opinions when making decisions on the issue. Although most respondents believe that teaching about climate change is important (n=234), only 61 respondents indicated that they have taken a course on climate change and only 82 respondents feel confident in teaching about climate change. The results also indicated that they get information about climate change mostly from social media and news, and 177 respondents indicated that they have never used information and communication technologies to learn about climate change. Based on the findings, we provide implications for the development of technology-enhanced climate change curricula.
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