Earth Observation as a Facilitator of Climate Change Education in Schools: The Teachers’ Perspectives
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- Making climate change information personally relevant and meaningful for learners.
- Using active and engaging teaching methods.
2. Materials and Methods
- Record teachers’ awareness, prior knowledge, and possible experience with EO information and tools;
- Identify teachers’ levels of interest in incorporating EO-based material in their teaching of climate change;
- Map EO thematic areas to school subjects for future educational material development;
- Catalogue teacher needs, requirements, and preferences on how to best integrate EO in CCE;
- Collect new ideas and allow unforeseen aspects to emerge (gain quality information).
3. Results
3.1. Profiles of the Study’s Participants
3.2. Main Findings
3.2.1. Didactic Engagement with CCE Topics
3.2.2. Awareness and Prior Use of EO Data in CCE
3.2.3. Level of Interest for the Utilization of EO Data and Tools in CCE
3.2.4. Preferred Content for Future Educational Material.
- Local climate change impacts, including forest fires, floods, droughts, etc.
- Global climate change impacts and causes, including temperature rise, greenhouse effect, polar ice melting, and sea level rise.
- Land: forest fire scar regeneration, land use changes.
- Air: desert dust outbreaks, air pollution from anthropogenic activities.
- Ocean: oil spills, ocean garbage patches, phytoplankton growth.
- War zone desertification: detecting war zone devastation from space and comparing pre-war and post-war visualizations including possible desertification of areas depleted by war.
- Rubbish dump: detection of illegal rubbish dumps (mainly proposed by rural schools; non-rural west Attika schools were mostly interested in monitoring the expansion rate of legal rubbish dumps).
- Water supply lakes: monitoring lake level variations.
- Stone quarries: identification of local stone quarries and how the landscape is transformed over time.
3.2.5. User Requirements for Future Educational Material Format
4. Discussion and Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A
Appendix A.1. Greek Teachers’ Initial Education
Appendix A.2. In-Service Teacher Training Program on the Use of ICT
Appendix A.3. Types of Environmental Education Projects Implemented in Greek Schools
- Optional school activities. These are extracurricular activities teachers can undertake at the beginning of the school year (they can choose between actions on Environmental education, Health education or Culture and arts-oriented topics) [68].
- Programs implemented by a nationwide network of local Environmental Education Centers—KPE
- eTwinning programs. These are extracurricular projects designed and implemented collaboratively by groups of partner schools from the eTwinning community. eTwinning is a free online community for schools in Europe and some neighboring countries, which allows schools to find partners and collaborate on projects within a secure network and platform [69].
- UNESCO’s Associated Schools network—ASPnet projects
Appendix A.4. The Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Approach
Appendix B
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Section No. | Section Content |
---|---|
1 | Introduction of the survey’s objectives and scope (frequently presented verbally by the interviewer). |
2 | Interviewee profiling questions. |
3 | Questions for recording the level of didactic engagement with CCE topics in the teaching process. |
4 | Awareness, prior knowledge, and experience with EO material, and resources, questions. |
5 | Questions for recording the level of interest on the potential utilization of EO data in CCE. |
6 | Questions on teacher preferences, regarding the thematic content of the future EO-based educational material for CCE. |
7 | Questions on teachers’ requirements regarding the format of future EO-based educational material for CCE. |
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Asimakopoulou, P.; Nastos, P.; Vassilakis, E.; Hatzaki, M.; Antonarakou, A. Earth Observation as a Facilitator of Climate Change Education in Schools: The Teachers’ Perspectives. Remote Sens. 2021, 13, 1587. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13081587
Asimakopoulou P, Nastos P, Vassilakis E, Hatzaki M, Antonarakou A. Earth Observation as a Facilitator of Climate Change Education in Schools: The Teachers’ Perspectives. Remote Sensing. 2021; 13(8):1587. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13081587
Chicago/Turabian StyleAsimakopoulou, Panagiota, Panagiotis Nastos, Emmanuel Vassilakis, Maria Hatzaki, and Assimina Antonarakou. 2021. "Earth Observation as a Facilitator of Climate Change Education in Schools: The Teachers’ Perspectives" Remote Sensing 13, no. 8: 1587. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13081587