Höfundur: Michael Odoom
Leiðbeinandi: Ólafur Páll Jónsson
Ágrip/Efni:
The climate change phenomenon is widely recognized as a significant challenge of the 21st century. Accordingly, the United Nations, urges the union countries to mainstream climate change education in their education system in a bid to enhance awareness and equip their citizens with the knowledge and skills to address this challenging issue.
Ghana in accordance with this introduced has introduced a new education curriculum which incorporates climate change education. Using qualitative content analysis, this study sought to examine the degree to which climate change education is infused within the primary and JHS science curriculum.
The study first, through qualitative analysis of a body of literature on climate change, developed a theoretical framework tool and then used it to evaluate the extent of climate change education in Ghana’s new basic education curriculum. The framework outlined three key components to be considered in climate change education: content knowledge (comprising of four themes: “The climate and observed change; drivers of climate change; impact of climate change; and responding to climate change”), pedagogical need and competency-based knowledge domain (cognitive, affective and intentional).
The study revealed that though the curriculum incorporates all the four themes on content knowledge outlined in the framework they were unequally and insufficiently addressed.
The results further suggest that competency-based knowledge was not addressed holistically as cognitive domain appears to be given more precedence over the affective and intentional domains and hence does not engender critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills specifically related to mitigating and adapting to climate change.
The findings also suggest that the curriculum recommends learner-centred pedagogy as the main approach for providing education on climate change.
The study recommended that Ministry of Education and National Council for Curriculum and Assessment should consider a comprehensive revision of the basic education curriculum to incorporate a more robust and integrated approach to climate change education.
