Innovative Climate Pedagogy: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Teaching Climate Change

Abstract

As a “wicked problem,” climate change requires interdisciplinary understanding and collaboration in order to prepare future leaders to develop solutions. To this end, as an ecologist and an anthropologist at a mid-sized university in the southeastern U.S., we designed a pair of interdisciplinary, research-intensive courses for first-year Honors students with the goal of improving understanding and communicating the urgency of climate change. We employed High Impact Practices (HIPs) and Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) to accomplish learning outcomes during both years of the course. Gains in scientific knowledge and climate change-specific knowledge were assessed with quantitative and qualitative analysis of pre and post-tests. Analysis suggests that the course improved climate change knowledge and sophistication of interdisciplinary thinking and increased student confidence in understanding of the process of science. This course structure offers an approach to providing a practice space for developing multifaceted solutions to wicked problems.

Keywords

• climate change
• interdisciplinary
• co-teaching
• hips
• cure
• environment
• anthropology
• ecology