Teachers’ sources of information about climate change: a scoping review

Journal article

This paper sheds light on an important and under-researched issue: The sources of information about climate change that teachers use. Utilising a ‘scoping review’ methodological approach, we analysed over 600 papers to address two main questions: What sources of information about climate change are teachers using? In what ways are teachers using these sources of information? Through our use of inclusive search terms and detailed analysis of papers, we found only 13 studies of relevance, none of which primarily focus on the sources of information teachers use. The 13 studies are all located in the Global North, and within this nearly half are in the USA. Methodologically, all apart from two rely on teachers' reports rather than observation or other methods. Four types of sources of information were frequently mentioned: The Internet; government sources; mass media and professional development courses. The ‘superabundance’ of information now available to teachers (particularly online), the importance of high-quality information for students' understandings of climate change, and the limited research on the sources of information about climate change that teachers use makes this is a significant blind spot for research to address.

Authors: Puttick, SP; Talks, I

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Curriculum Journal
• Volume: 33
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 0958-5176
• Publication date: 2021-10-18
• Acceptance date: 2021-10-04
• DOI: 10.1002/curj.136
• EISSN: 1469-3704
• ISSN: 0958-5176
• Language: English
• Keywords: information teachers; curriculum making; FFR; climate change education