A guest speaker at the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society’s (AMOS) annual conference tomorrow will call for climate science to be included in the national curriculum from middle primary school onwards.
Prof Vaille Dawson, the Dean of Teaching and Learning in Science and Engineering at Curtin University, is a guest speaker at the AMOS conference’s Education and Outreach day to be held tomorrow. She was a member of the senior secondary science advisory panel for the Australian curriculum.
“Climate change is the most significant issue that will affect this generation and should be a part of the broader curriculum from middle primary school onwards rather than just an elective in year 11 and 12,” said Prof Dawson.
“It is also a multidisciplinary subject that reaches across all branches of science, maths, geography, environment and is perfectly positioned to encourage critical thinking and other higher order thinking skills.”
As well as being an adviser for the development of the national curriculum, Prof Dawson has also done significant research into how Australian students understand climate change. During the AMOS conference she will present a study that shows Australian students struggle to understand the difference between the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere.
Another piece of research suggested that Australian students struggled to distinguish opinion from data.
“A foundational tenet of the Australian curriculum is that it must help students to participate fully in society, which means they need to understand how to make evidence-based choices and through this to contribute to decisions in society,” Prof Dawson said.
“Including climate science in the school curriculum does this. Studying climate science in schools removes the politics and focuses on the evidence, opening opportunities across many subjects to explore the implications for this generation of students.”
Prof Dawson said she recognised her call would prompt a negative response from certain sections of the community that were opposed to the established science surrounding global warming.
The AMOS conference, Southern Investigations, is being held at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, Hobart, and concludes tomorrow.
