Proceedings of the 6th World Conference on Education and Teaching
Year: 2024
DOI:
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The Effectiveness of a Contextualised Programme on Young People’s Climate Change Perceptions
Mark Mifsud, Ms. Elaine Mifsud Scicluna
ABSTRACT:
Young adults are amongst those who will face the worst immediate effects of climate change. Yet are young people prepared enough? Do they have the necessary skills to adapt? Can contextualised climate change education be an effective actor to produce a future generation that is more knowledgeable and adaptable to climate change. This study explores young people’s perspectives about climate change and how these can change following a contextualised longitudinal year long programme of climate change education with these young people. The sample consisted of 83 young people attending the Institute of Information and Communication Technology Malta College of Science and Technology. These students were given a questionnaire in the initial days of starting their studies and eventually they were exposed to the Climate change contextualised pedagogy programme in which a number of different issues including climate change were discussed through the use of educational shorts videos, reading comprehensions and through the use of a more critical thinking approach. Following this programme the same student cohort was again researched through a second questionnaire. Preliminary results indicate that the programme is effective at moving young people’s perspectives towards a more pro-environmental viewpoint. The young people were positive on the multi modal pedagogy employed that utilised student centred methods which were both bottom up and top down in their vision. In response to these findings, a number of recommendations are drawn up to further enhance the effectiveness of the this programme at the MCAST college that can be contextualized to other colleges around the world.
keywords: climate change education – critical thinking- longitudinal study programme effectiveness – young adults’ perspectives