Posted on 26 July 2011
Professor Simon Haslett, Dean of STEM, lead editor of Pedagogy of Climate Change.
A new much anticipated book on how universities are educating students about climate change has just been published under the lead of a University of Wales Professor.
Pedagogy of Climate Change includes 10 chapters authored by UK and Australian academics, telescoping from institutional campus-wide approaches to climate change education right down to ways in which students are assessed on climate change issues.
The books lead editor is Professor Simon Haslett, Dean of the School of STEM at the University of Wales, who realised the need for the book after he organised a symposium of the same name for the Royal Geographical Society.
In collaboration with the University of Wales, academics from the University of Chester, University of Plymouth and the Higher Education Academy, as well as others, have worked together in the production of the book.
Simon Haslett, who is Professor of Physical Geography, said that “climate change education faces significant challenges at present due to the limited success of recent international summits such as Copenhagen, scandals like ‘climategate’ that surrounded leaked academic emails, and the fact that Europe has experienced two of its coldest winters for many years.”
“The public and students are now more sceptical about the scientific basis of climate change, and it is the job of lecturers to provide them with the knowledge and understanding to properly evaluate reports that come via the media.”
“What is worrying is the growing ‘green fatigue’ that students display, because the current generation have been taught about climate change throughout their school years and so are often fed up with hearing about it again at university.”
“Lecturers and universities need to be innovative and engaging so that students take notice – after all, the current generation of students may be last graduates capable of effecting meaningful change before severe climate change impacts occur. This new book gives could examples of how academics and universities have turned it around”.
The book, published by the Higher Education Academy, is freely available to download from their website, so that it may be available to all. The book was also presented by a University of Wales team at the Climate Change Showcase in Swansea this week, and copies are to be sent to all University of Wales institutions. The publication of this book is part of the University’s wider contributions to education for sustainable development and global citizenship in Wales.
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The Pedagogy of Climate Change may be downloaded from http://gees.ac.uk/pubs/other/pocc/pocc.htm
For more information on The University of Wales please visit: www.wales.ac.uk