Abstract

Science education bears the broader objective of nurturing students today to be scientifically-literate citizens of tomorrow who are able to foresee challenges, invent solutions and make responsible decisions for global issues. As a prelude to the new focus of agency in the Anthropocene, this paper presents an intervention on climate change with upper secondary students in a museum of natural history in England. Instructional strategies such as infusing scenarios and arts into scientific discussions were adopted to induce imagination, future-oriented thinking and emotional responses. Statistical results showed that the intervention significantly enhanced participants’ futures literacy, environmental agency and positive emotions. However, it did not increase their interests in learning science in out-of-school context. Implications of this study will shed light on futurising science and climate education in research and practice.

Publication Date

2024-11-09

Publication Title

Research in Science Education

ISSN

0157-244X

Acceptance Date

2024-10-28

Deposit Date

2024-11-20

Funding

The research reported in this paper has been jointly funded by (a) the FEDORA Project which has received funding from the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement no. 872,841, and (b) ESRC AII granted to University of Oxford, UK.

Keywords

Agency, Climate change, Emotion, Future-oriented learning, Futures literacy, Informal or non-formal learning

Download

Share

COinS