OOS 32-10 - Technology supported cross-cultural conversations about climate change and environmental adaptation

Thursday, August 11, 2016: 4:40 PM
Grand Floridian Blrm D, Ft Lauderdale Convention Center
Sameer Honwad, University of New Hampshire
Sameer Honwad, University of New Hampshire

Background/Question/Methods

Climate-change is a not only a complex and challenging environmental issue, but also a socio-economic and political issue. Learning the cultural interplay between science and lifestyle is an important part of climate-change education. If this important and complicated problem of climate-change is to be tackled, we need to address the issue both at the government/policy level and at the individual/lifestyle level. Also climate-change is a global problem that requires local actions. Thus understanding of the issue needs to be scaled up from local to the global levels. This study reports on findings from a cross-cultural collaborative learning environment designed to help high school girls in the US and high school girls in India understand the impact of climate-change on their everyday life. The learning environment design focused on learners understanding their local environmental problems and expanding their understanding about these environmental problems to a global scale. The research design was set up to understand: 1. What are the student perceptions about the science of climate-change? 2. What are the student perceptions of how climate-change affects their everyday life (local)? 3. What are the student perceptions of how climate-change affects other communities in the world (global)?

Results/Conclusions

Our findings suggest that by having the students compare and contrast local perceptions of climate change with their global counterparts we increased the likelihood of conceptual change among the students. The study deepened our understanding of how culturally distinct communities balance everyday life GHG producing activities and understand the impact of climate-change on their communities. The project offered valuable direction for designing environmental education programs for other culture groups in the world. 1. The study provided an understanding of how socio-cultural and political discourse within a country might affect thoughts on climate-change. 2. The study provided a pedagogical approach that can be used to help students understand an environmental problem at both local and global scales. 3. Finally the study provided a window into how might youth in culturally distinct communities learn, think and act upon climate-change. In an interconnected world where environmental problems in one culture affect the environmental conditions in another culture, knowledge sharing across cultures becomes a very important activity. By comparing and contrasting how youth across two distinct cultures understand the impact of climate change on their communities the study provided a pathway toward knowledge sharing and dialogue to resolve urgent environmental problems.