Capstone Presents Poster Presentation at Fall AGU Meeting

Exploring Climate Science with West Virginia Educators: A Regional Model for Teacher Professional Development was the title of a poster presented by the Capstone Group, Inc. at the 2014 Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Conference that is held annually in San Francisco, CA. Laurie F. Ruberg, Ph.D., co-Director of Capstone Group and Visiting Asst. Professor at West Virginia University attended the conference and conducted the poster presentation, which was part of the Climate Literacy: Approaches to Multidisciplinary Climate Education in Higher Education Institutions III poster session that was held Monday, 15 Dec 2014 from 1:40 to 6 PM.

Below is a copy of the abstract submitted for this poster presentation authored by Capstone co-directors, Laurie Ruberg and Manetta Calinger.

The National Research Council Framework for K-12 Science Literacy reports that children reared in rural agricultural communities, who experience intense and regular interactions with plants and animals, develop more sophisticated understanding of ecology and biological systems than do urban and suburban children of the same age. West Virginia is a rural state. The majority of its residents live in communities of fewer than 2,500 people. Based on the features of the population being served and their unique strengths, this project focuses on agricultural and energy vulnerabilities and adaptations to climate change and aligns climate data to WV (and its neighbors in the mid-Atlantic region) based on temperature, carbon dioxide, and projected rainfall trends.

The professional development model outlined shows how to guide teachers to use a problem-based learning approach to introduce climate data and analysis techniques within a scenario context that is locally meaningful. This strategy engages student interest by focusing in on regional and community concerns. The authors report on findings from a series of climate science education workshops followed by online webinars offered to West Virginia science educators free of charge with funding by the West Virginia Space Grant Consortium. This series of professional development offerings was coordinated in partnership with the West Virginia Science Teachers Association (WVSTA). The goal was to enhance grades 5 – 12 teaching and learning about climate change through problem-based learning.

Prior to offering the climate workshops, all WV science educators were asked to complete a short questionnaire. As Figure 1 (attached) shows, over 40% of the teacher respondents reported confident about the climate science content they are teaching. The face-to-face and online components of the teacher professional development will survey teachers again to see how their knowledge of climate science, approach to teaching climate science, and confidence in teaching this topic changes after the professional development sessions.