Climate Education with Hands-on Science at School

<< Background >>Education is a vital agent to cope with CC. It can encourage children to change their attitudes and behavior, qualify children with green skills, and helps them to make informed decisions. Therefore, climate education needs to be a part of the school education system to tackle the issue with the generation who will face it. An important study (https://bit.ly/3fA9se0) with 100 countries -including Turkey- indicated that 47% of the national curriculum of 100 countries made no reference to CC. Also, 95% of teachers believed climate education is important, but less than 40% were confident in teaching it. According to the same study, four-fifth of teachers can’t explain how to take action well. Teachers’ competencies in teaching CC need to be improved; more importantly, adequate educational and in-class resources on CC need to be presented to the teachers. In order to draw children's attention to the subject, attractive, easy to- follow and interactive digital content should be developed.<< Objectives >>* To establish an education program that enables children to have higher climate literacy, be equipped with longgreenskills, and supports climate-friendly behaviors* To design of digital and hands-on science instructional material that can be implemented in the classroom forupper primary and lower secondary school students* To implement of pilot program for the developed educational program – in-class education materials, onlineplatform, experiments* To increase the knowledge, competencies, and literacy of teachers on climate change<< Implementation >>* Conducted Needs Assessment* Produced 3 Climate Education Module consisting of hands-on science experiments and non-experimental complementarycontents* Digitalizated produced contents and developed digital platform* Tested and validated produced education modules and platform with international participation* Local implementations of modules in schools* 3 dissemination events in partner countries* Digital and physical dissemination and communication efforts<< Results >>* High-quality and up-to-date 3 Climate Education modules for 8 - 12 years old students* Teacher guides and instructions regarding modules* Needs assessment methods, including state of the art about climate education in partner countries* 12 hands-on science experiments and 12 non-experimental education materials in different formats* 266 students participated in local implementations* 9 teachers implemented activities in 3 partner schools* 13 teachers participated in international pilot training activity* Reached out more than 60k people and 400 organizations