Peta White, Deakin University, Australia
The OECD PISA Science Framework 2025 includes a focus on ‘environmental science’, emphasising what 15-year-olds should know regarding climate change. An Expert panel defined “Agency in the Anthropocene” and crafted three competencies for the Science Framework 2025, informing this year’s PISA assessment. I will discuss how we pushed on from environmental and sustainability education to focus on the socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene, prioritising:
– personal and collective agency from local to global in ways that generate hope and hopefulness;
– intergenerational learning and leading community climate action;
– respect for diverse voices and knowledge systems, including multi-species, in an aspiration for socio-ecological justice;
– an understanding of how the Earth’s complex, interconnected systems meaningfully extend the practices and outcomes of science education.
The Science Framework 2025 now stands as an important document that curriculum developers will use to inform curriculum policy and documentation internationally. We hope that as countries design their science education programs to enable success at PISA, we will see transformed practices in the classroom, enabled by rich and rigorous research. Furthermore, the OECD is hosting a new project to support climate literacy across all PISA domains.
Climate change education is an inherently political practice and yet doesn’t often register on either the climate or the education policy landscape. Neither do schools and teachers tackle the small p politics of Anthropocene challenges in their classrooms. What are our roles and responsibilities to influence governments to establish policy and engage schools, teachers, and students in leading communities to take effective political action? I will share our strategic efforts designed to establish climate change education policy across Australia– in addition to curriculum policy.
I will also provide some examples of how we explore what climate change education might look like in science education as we focus on developing student and teacher agency through our current research – Enacting Climate Change Education with our Taiwanese and Finnish colleagues. We are also undertaking interdisciplinary projects that integrate arts-based pedagogies to engage schools, teachers, students, and school communities in addressing local socio-ecological challenges. Through these projects, we can re-imagine ways forward with science-informed citizenry, tackle misinformation, and engage in decision-making and regenerative leadership that is socially and ecologically just.
White, P.J., Ardoin, N.M., Eames, C., & Monroe, M.C. (2023). “Agency in the Anthropocene: Supporting document to the PISA 2025 Science Framework”, OECD Education Working Papers, No. 297, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/8d3b6cfa-en