Teaching Climate Change: Knowledge, Beliefs and Challenges of Primary-School Student Teachers

Teaching climate change is not yet an integral part of primary school curriculum, despite the social relevance of the topic and the interests of the students. Dealing with the complexity of the topic within a controversially discussed political and cultural context is a major challenge for (prospective) teachers. How requirements are perceived influenced by various factors is important for the process of professionalization of (future) teachers. To what extent this also applies to the willingness to teach climate change is examined in this study.

Based on the perception-based professionalization approach of Keller-Schneider (2020), which is based on stress and resource theory, it is multi-methodically examined to what extent specific components of the individual and contextual resources are important for the intention of prospective primary school teachers to teach the subject of climate change.

The following questions are examined:

1) What previous knowledge and what attitudes (individual resources) do the students have at the beginning of the course and what types can be worked out? (data base: questionnaire, pre-survey)

2) Which requirements do the students perceive as a challenge, to what extent are context factors and social resources important when dealing with the topic? (Data basis: interview).

The poster gives an insight into the research project and outlines the theoretical foundations, the design of the study, the instruments used and the analysis steps.