“It’s going to get hot and everything’s going to be on fire and the oceans will rise. That’s just like the worst of the worst. How do you combat that?” asks year 11 student, Josh Dorian.“Well, you fix it, you stop it from happening, you take preventive measures,” says Josh, who is studying VCE environmental science at Mount Lilydale Mercy College, a high school in Melbourne’s outer east. “Involving kids in that is scary, but I think it’s necessary.”In 2025, for the first time in nearly a decade, science will be the major focus of the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (Pisa) – which runs every three years (give or take Covid interruptions), with its focus rotating between reading, maths and science.This year it will measure the knowledge and ability of 15-year-old students from 92 countries and economies to act on climate change, under a new heading:Agency in the Anthropocene.
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Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s director of education, describes the refreshed science framework as a “small revolution”, addressing students’ capacity to distinguish scientific evidence from misinformation in the context of the “biggest challenge of our times – our environment”.“This is not about a few people who are going to be engineers or scientists in their later lives. This is the foundation we want to create for every student,” he says.Dr Goran Lazendic, who works with the Australian Council for Educational Research, is the international survey director responsible for delivering Pisa this year. He says the survey has never solely been about curriculum or content knowledge.“The purpose of Pisa is to understand how young people are prepared to take their position and role in the global world,” he says.That’s why the survey focuses on students approaching the end of their formal education and preparing to participate in further education or work.Giving young people agency and choiceAgency in the Anthropocene tests students’ ability to understand and explain human interactions with Earth systems, to make informed decisions based on evaluation of different sources and to demonstrate respect for diverse perspectives as well as hope in seeking solutions, he says.In responding to targeted questions, they will also have to show agency – an understanding of how individual and collective choices can make a difference.Dr Peta White, an associate professor at Deakin University who led the design of Agency in the Anthropocene, says climate change education recognises the Earth’s systems are being changed through human interaction.White, a former teacher, has decades of experience researching environmental science and climate change education.Many young people understand the problems, she says, but don’t know what to do about them.“We don’t teach an understanding by looking at what the most fearful climate impact is,” she says. “What’s import
Gio. Dic 26th, 2024
