SNAPSHOT
- Young people want to learn about climate change
- Young people want green skills and green jobs to mitigate climate crisis impacts
- Educators want to teach adequately on climate change, but are constrained by packed curriculums and their own limited knowledge of climate change
- Transitioning climate change to a core subject could resolve some of these problems
In September 2021, the WA Parliament opened an inquiry into the response of Western Australian schools to climate change.
The inquiry considered four key topics:
- What climate change mitigation and adaptation actions are currently being undertaken in schools, and the benefits they are achieving
- What are the barriers that schools encounter in undertaking climate action, and how these can be addressed
- What more can be done to support schools to respond to climate change
- What the co-benefits are of climate action in schools
The Education and Health Standing Committee received over 60 public submissions to the inquiry, including from the Department of Education, the Waste Authority, the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage, the Department of Health, the Climate Change Authority, the Australian Medical Association, the University of Western Australia, the State School Teachers Union, Synergy, ECU, the Water Corporation and the Commissioner for Children and Young People.
These submissions then formed the basis of a report now available – Making Hope Practical: Report of the inquiry into the response of Western Australian schools to climate change.
Clean State was pleased to see the inquiry and subsequent report take shape – this is a wonderful first step in shaping the future of WA’s green skilled, climate-resilient economy! We were also thrilled to see some of our work cited in the report itself.
The critical significance of curriculum
We were particularly interested in how the inquiry and its submissions looked at the challenges and opportunities of firmly embedding climate change knowledge in the Western Australian school curriculum.
These concepts have formed part of Clean State’s policy recommendations around education and climate change mitigation under our Youth & Education and Green Skills projects.
Developing green skills in society is fundamental to having a greener and more sustainable economy – and developing those skills starts with a clear understanding of climate in the classroom.
Schools have an essential role in addressing climate change. Education develops a country’s economy and society by providing knowledge and skills to the population and shaping the behaviour of future adults. So, it’s critical the new generation can better understand that every human action has an impact on the environment.
Young people deserve and demand the right to know that the world is experiencing a climate crisis that can have fatal consequences due to certain historical decisions – and to know how their future actions can and will mitigate some of those consequences.
What do young people say?
We wanted to know how young people feel about their climate-impacted futures when it comes to school and work, so we undertook a state-wide survey of people under 30.
In our research, we found that young people did not learn much (or as much as they desired) about climate change in school.
Our preliminary results indicated the leading way that people under 30 have learned the most about climate change was through film and television, followed by social media, and finally through school. When asked ‘How often did climate change (including topics such as sustainability) get taught at school?’, 54% of survey respondents said only 1-2 times per year.
We also asked people under 30 when they expect the impacts of climate change will begin to affect them in WA. Tellingly, almost 55% of respondents said, ‘They are already impacting me’. This is a clear sign the WA Parliament’s question on including climate change in Australian curriculums is overdue and of extreme importance.
Some of our key findings:
The full findings are available in our PDF report AMPLIFY: Youth Voices on the Green Future of Work.
What does the Making Hope Practical report say?
Of the 24 recommendations made in the Making Hope Practical report, we’ve focused on three regarding the WA curriculum:
- Recommendation 21: Ensure that teachers are surveyed following the rollout of new curriculum resources to identify areas of further need, especially in relation to sustainability and climate change
- Recommendation 23: Dedicate funding to provide quality professional development opportunities for teachers in relation to sustainability and climate change, covering both the cost of sessions plus relief teacher coverage.
- Recommendation 24: Advocate at a national level for incorporating competencies for sustainability and climate change in national teaching standards
The exciting thing is that our survey findings aligned perfectly with the Making Hope Practical Report recommendations on climate and curriculum!
That means it’s abundantly clear that:
- Young people want to learn about climate change
- Young people want green skills and green jobs to mitigate climate crisis impacts
- Educators want to teach adequately on climate change, but are constrained by packed curriculums and their own limited knowledge of climate change
So, what can we do about it?
More support for teachers
Recommendation 21: Ensure that teachers are surveyed following the rollout of new curriculum resources to identify areas of further need, especially in relation to sustainability and climate change
Recommendation 21 notes that teachers should be surveyed following the rollout of new climate change curriculum resources to identify areas of further need. However, Clean State believes climate change could be better addressed as a specific learning area. Currently, sustainability is a ‘cross-curriculum priority’, which means it is not a specific learning requirement.
These cross-curriculum priorities are often difficult to implement for teachers as they need to focus a lot of work on the existing learning areas already – seven general capabilities and three cross-curriculum priorities, to be exact. Research has found that teachers will have to do much work beyond the brief and generic advice provided to ensure the priorities are given special attention if they must continue teaching sustainability across the curriculum.
This is reflected in section 6.7 of the report, which notes:
“Lack of explicit inclusion in the curriculum doesn’t preclude teaching about climate change, but means it can be easily overlooked as a concept. A recent survey of WA primary schools teachers indicated that teachers approached teaching climate change in an ad hoc and opportunistic way, if at all.”
If sustainability were a specific learning area in the curriculum, it could provide structure and alleviate some pressure on teachers to refer to sustainability in all other subjects. This could function somewhat like a Health & Physical Education class – compulsory for all students, but only once a week.
This was a suggestion mention in section 6.12 (“establishing climate change as an independent core subject in the curriculum, in order to advance its status”), and is one that we at Clean State wholeheartedly support providing it does not place more undue pressure on educators.
Making professional development more efficient
Recommendation 23: Dedicate funding to provide quality professional development opportunities for teachers in relation to sustainability and climate change, covering both the cost of sessions plus relief teacher coverage.
Recommendation 24: That the Minister for Education and Training advocates at a national level, through the Education Ministers Meeting, for incorporating competencies for sustainability and climate change in national teaching standards.
Recommendations 23 and 24 found that teachers need access to quality professional development opportunities in relation to sustainability and climate change, and that these competencies should form part of the national teaching standards.
This is a great step in the right direction, however, as noted, if this becomes too expensive or too much of a burden on already overworked teachers, there is an alternative. If sustainability were a separate subject, less funding would be required to integrate new teachers that can specialise in the topic. This would also open up an entirely new sector of paid work for people with green skills who are able to teach them.
The workload seems to be a huge problem for teachers, and cross-curriculum priorities exacerbate this issue: integrating two different topics is not easy, and a broad knowledge of both topics and planning to deliver is not an easy task.
Plus, the teacher shortage is not new in Australia this has been an issue even before COVID. If more requirements are added to the existing teacher’s standards, this will have a critical impact on the labour market. As mentioned above, having an exclusive teacher with these skills and knowledge could be more efficient.
Measuring cross-curriculum priorities to ensure they are taught
Finding 25: The sustainability cross-curricular priority is the primary vehicle through which teachers can teach climate change. However, it is a weak policy imperative for doing so.
Section 6.11: The cross-curriculum priorities are not compulsory nor assessable, which makes them easily omitted from classroom programs.
Another issue with sustainability as a cross-curriculum priority is that it’s difficult to measure or enforce. With no ownership of the learning area, it can become a low priority. Incorporating sustainability as a specific learning area in the curriculum could allow it to be measured and tracked along with other skills.
Going beyond sustainability
General cross-curriculum guidelines to teach sustainability don’t have a strong enough focus on climate change. Sustainability can be anything from recycling to soil quality to responsible water consumption – and while all those things relate to climate change, it’s vital that young people understand climate specifically as a key driver for change in their world.
The existing organising ideas on sustainability are missing the impact that humans, businesses and governments have had on the actual climate crisis. As such, the topic of ‘sustainability’ must be framed in a way that allows teachers and students to both understand this focus.
Clean State had a similar survey response from young people when we asked them how they would like to be taught about climate change. Many people surveyed expressed that they felt they only learned about the science behind greenhouse gases or the negative impacts of the climate crisis.
What they want to learn is more complex – they want to know what human impacts have caused the crisis, and most importantly how they can work to find solutions. A poignant quote from one anonymous participant said: “Don’t tell us we are all going to die and there’s nothing we can do about it. Focus on the facts, and then what we can do to help.”
However, in teaching about impact, it’s important we don’t over-emphasise individual consumption. We must go beyond individual carbon footprints and dimensionally study sustainability – examining economic agents like industry and government and examining scientific, moral, judiciary and fiscal perspectives on climate.
For example, students need to be capable of understanding that financial investment is required to develop green technologies – or even to build a cycling path that they can ride an electric scooter on.
They must understand that investment is linked to government policy. They must understand where emissions come from – and how the Australian government interacts with heavy-emitting industries.
Framing climate and sustainability in this way will help students understand how the whole economic system works and how they can impact their future.
Where to from here?
In summary, the Making Hope Practical report recommends that teachers get more support when new climate curriculum resources are rolled out, that teachers receive funded climate change professional development, and that teaching climate change becomes a part of the national teaching standards.
Our own AMPLIFY report also reflects a similar understanding of climate change in the WA curriculum. Together, these two reports show us that both learners and teachers want to learn and teach about climate change – we just need to tweak a few structural elements in WA schools to facilitate that process!
We welcome these steps toward better climate awareness in schools and look forward to hopefully seeing the Department of Education implement them.
Have you got any ideas on teaching climate in the WA curriculum? We’re always keen to hear your thoughts. Reach out to us on info@cleanstate.org.au to let us know.
