Chang, Chew Hung

This paper describes a baseline empirical study of Singapore secondary students' understanding of climate change . It reports that despite evidence of significant awareness on the topic , what learner's think they know does not match up with what they really know. Like other students around the world, their understanding of the phenomenon is not deep enough for accurate definition, explanation and linking of critical concepts together coherently and correctly. The paper critically examines how the introduction of a new national syllabus in geography in Singapore at grade 9level considers current developments in scientific discourse and affords the opportunity to help students develop values , knowledge, and skills to engage the climate change topic. The study argues for geographic education to be responsive in addressing gaps identified through updating the curriculum with current scientific discourse and by providing skills for students to engage a growing volume of information on climate change from various media.

Research literature on climate change education has been primarily focused on reporting how programmes are designed to help students learn the topic of climate change better. The aim of such education programmes invariably endeavours to educate a globally informed citizenry in response to the contemporary climate crisis through effective teaching and learning. While there have been literature to show how students’ knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviour have changed for the better with effective teaching and learning, this article seeks to curate some of these practices, especially those published by the author to exemplify how we can achieve the UN Delors report’s (1998) suggestion that education needs to help students to learn to know, learn to do, learn to be and learn to live together. These desired outcomes are also aligned with the aspirations of geographical education as set out in the International Charter on Geographic Education (CGE, 2016). The article will draw on published works by the author, review the relevance of these studies and compare them with other published works to provide an argument for using the Delors Report to help teachers in their curriculum planning and lesson designs. While education is inherently future-oriented, there needs to be some coherent and contiguous treatment of the way education practices can be used. To this end, the article’s approach to curating the published work will provide a critical discussion using a known framework to advance the discourse on best practices for climate change education. Ultimately the aim of climate change education should be to provide students with the capabilities and opportunities to flourish in society now and in the future, particularly in the face of the challenges brought about by global climate change.