Understanding and Teaching Climate Change Concepts in Geography Curriculum at Secondary Schools in Senegal

Abstract

This study investigates into the teachers‘ and learners‘ understanding of climate change concepts in the secondary education from the geography curriculum in Senegal. As a solution to climate change, formal education has been identified as a major tool of changing people‘s attitude towards the environmental protection. The study is based on a cross-sectional survey of 101 geography teachers and 320 students selected from 16 secondary schools through multistage sampling methods, including simple random and purposive sampling techniques. Data for this study were also collected from 8 school principals and 8 school headmasters, 16 focus group discussions among students and 9 key informant interviews, including 3 senior inspectors of geography, 3 senior geography curriculum designers and 3 senior environmental education officers. The research used a thematic area content analysis template to quantify and analyse climate change content in the geography curriculum for the lower and upper secondary schools. To analyse the data obtained from respondents, a logistic regression model, climate change awareness index, chi-square and independent sample t-tests and descriptive statistics were used for this study. The results of the study reveal that 43% of identified relevant climate change content was not addressed in the secondary geography curriculum, indicating that this current curriculum is inadequate for effective climate change education in schools. Further, the average climate change awareness index for geography teachers was 0.6455 (64.55%), implying that geography teachers fairly understand climate change concepts while, climate change awareness index for students was 0.5343 (53.43%), showing that students scantly understand climate change concepts. There is no significant relationship between climate change content in the geography curriculum and climate change awareness of geography teachers and their students as revealed in the chi-square test for teachers (83.651>0.552) and for students (49.503>0.718). In addition, numerous gaps and misconceptions were found to exist in teachers‘ and students‘ understanding of climate change concepts, particularly the scientific processes of climate change causes and its remedies. The findings of the logistic regression model showed that frequency of teaching about climate change, teacher‘s experience, comprehensive geography curriculum, teacher‘s knowledge of climate change, and teaching and learning climate change resources positively and significantly influence the effectiveness of teaching about climate change concepts. The study recommends that climate change content should be explicitly integrated into all the geography topics from lower to upper secondary level across all grades. The research also recommends that the Government of Senegal should train geography teachers on climate change education both at in-service and pre-service level and providing the resources required for climate change education. It would be essential to establish environmental clubs in all Senegalese secondary schools with full engagement and active participation of teachers, headmasters, principals and students of all grade levels so as to promoting climate change education, therefore inciting pro-environmental activities in schools and communities.