Fostering Climate Change Education in the Central Great Plains: A Public Engagement Approach

Abstract

Despite its increasing importance for sustainability, building widespread competency in the basic principles of climate literacy among the United States general public is a great challenge. This article describes the methods and results of a public engagement approach to planning climate change education in the Central Great Plains of the United States. Our approach incorporated contextual and lay expertise approaches to public engagement with a focus on supporting the self-determination of the specific stakeholder groups-rural producers, educators, and community members. An integration of results from the focus groups reveal that our approach was received positively and elicited a number of important themes describing stakeholders' concerns, interests, and needs pertaining to climate change education. Focus group participants were concerned about climate change, cautious regarding conflicting sources of information, and interested in learning more about climate science and climate change impacts. Across all stakeholder groups, participants consistently expressed a desire for trustworthy, personally-and locally-relevant, easy-to-access information that they could evaluate and use in applications as they saw fit. Although these findings do not yet provide a recipe for concrete educational programming, when viewed through the lenses of social, cognitive and educational theories, they suggest a number of important directions for future research and program implementation that are needed in order to advance the understanding of effective climate change education.

Navigating the Environmental Education and Climate Change Curriculum in Türki̇ye through the Prism of Climate Change Literate Citizenship

“…Climate citizenship is a critical aspect that aims to stimulate civic engagement in efforts related to climate change mitigation and adaptation. This multifaceted concept entails not only recognizing the global consequences of our individual actions but also actively working towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving natural resources, promoting sustainable living practices, and advocating for policies that prioritize environmental protection (Dobson, 2007;Kranz et al, 2022;PytlikZillig et al, 2013). It requires individuals to be informed about current scientific knowledge on climate change and its impacts while also considering social equity issues surrounding the unequal distribution of risks associated with this phenomenon.…”