PCEP Update: June/July 2017

Pohnpei Teachers Learning Community (PTLC) goes National

In the PCEP March Update, we shared the story of the Pohnpei Teachers Learning Community (PTLC) and how their dedication to self-development and building their own capacities as climate educators lead them to share extended knowledge, skills and strategies with other teachers across Pohnpei during school year 2016-2017.  The group’s commitment to promote self-growth amongst peers in place-based and climate education lead to sponsorship of members by the Pohnpei Department of Education (PDOE) to showcase their presentation in the July 2017 Micronesia Teachers Education Conference (MTEC) in Colonia, Yap.

The presentation, Pohnpei Teachers Learning Community on Climate Change, focused on enhancing and expanding content knowledge on the issues of climate change and interactive sharing of teaching strategies and activities they have implemented in their own classrooms.

Major highlights from the repeated sessions were hands-on demonstrations the PTLC acquired from learning exchanges with University of Washington’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT). 

Exploring Intersections between Three Dimensional Learning and Place-Based Education

The Climate Change Education Partnership (CCEP) Alliance developed a webinar series in 2017 to compliment the newly released Climate Change Education: Effective Practices for Working with Educators, Scientists, Decision Makers, and the Public guide. PCEP and one of our Alliance-partners—the Maryland-Delaware Climate Change Education, Assessment, and Research partnership (MADE CLEAR)—gave a joint presentation on June 6, 2017, focusing on Working with Formal K–14 Educators.

The PCEP presenters were Corrin Barros and Dr. Emerson Odango (PREL), and the MADE CLEAR presenters were Pat Harcourt and Melissa Rogers (the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science). The overarching goal was for both projects to deepen understanding about the “Working with Formal K–14 Educators” chapter in the Effective Practices guide, and to explore the generative space between Three Dimensional (3-D) Learning from the Next Generation Science Standards context and Place-Based Education (PBE) as implemented in PCEP (see, for example, the PCEP resource Place-Based Education: Elements of Design)

The MADE CLEAR presenters discussed the outcomes of the Climate Change Academy, a professional learning opportunity for teachers. The Academy participants reflected on how elements of 3-D learning were incorporated into a learning activity about ice core samples. The PCEP presenters shared the Teacher Professional Learning Framework, wherein the cycle of planning for learning that is already familiar to formal educators is re-contextualized by emphasizing local places as starting points for inquiry.

All four presenters then facilitated an open discussion with the webinar audience, to explore what the intersections of 3-D Learning and PBE actually look like in the classroom. Participants identified connections between STEM domains and areas of culture such as oral narratives, storytelling, and communal memories. The presenters also posed a question for future directions for investigation—“What does 3-D and place-based learning look like in other domains or subject areas?” Exploring cross-disciplinary connections is a fruitful path, especially climate change education is not restricted to just STEM fields, but can include the social sciences, arts, and humanities, as well as domains outside of the formal K–14 context.