Climate change – a wicked problem for classroom inquiry

Wicked problems are problems that are incredibly complicated and difficult to solve. In fact, solving one aspect may reveal or create other problems – but that doesn’t mean we mustn’t try!

Often, wicked problems involve environmental, economic or political issues or combinations of each of these. One wicked problem that will impact us all is climate change.

Wicked problems as opportunities for cross-curricular and key competency learning

Classroom teachers have the opportunity to support students at all levels to think about issues that are large and complex and affect us all. Wicked problems can form rich, real-life contexts for developing students’ thinking, visioning and problem-solving skills as well as their action competence and an array of key competencies. Wicked problems also draw on knowledge relevant to many different curriculum areas, providing contexts for developing students’ literacy and numeracy as well as their science capabilities. Wicked problems are also value laden and so present opportunities to be utilised in a cross-curricular context for student inquiry and learning, with strong links to the social science learning area.

Using an inquiry approach to tackle the wicked problem of climate change

An inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning requires a degree of scaffolding tailored to the level and experience of the students. When used effectively, it increases student agency in learning and can strengthen authentic connections to the world around them.

With an inquiry-based approach, the teacher is not necessarily the expert but the facilitator of the process of inquiry. Providing the opportunities to unpack students’ prior knowledge about the issue will often uncover misconceptions as well as different levels of knowledge and students’ beliefs and values in relation to the issue. It will also give the teacher an insight into areas of student interest. By engaging in an inquiry process, the students will develop new understandings, often raising further questions driven by their own learning journeys and curiosity – much like practising scientists. Inquiries can also be scaffolded to support students to identify, articulate and justify their own views about complex issues.

Climate change – as a wicked problem that governments grapple with and disagree on – can be overwhelming for students to explore as a whole. One inquiry approach to tackling this large wicked problem is to start by developing a question (or questions) to guide the inquiry, whether for student groups or the class as a whole. These questions could start from a scientific basis, for example:

• What is the link between CO₂ and climate change?
• How does the ice melting in Antarctica change the oceans?

Alternatively, the questions could have a more social focus with some underpinning science that can be identified in the inquiry process, for example:

• How might climate change impact me and my whānau?
• Why is climate change important?

Another approach may be to have a larger inquiry question as an overarching inquiry that different student groups (or the whole class) could contribute to, for example:

• What are the impacts of climate change?

Students can then formulate a series of ‘What if?’ questions as a way of exploring smaller bite-size inquiries, for example:

• What if the sea level was to rise 3 cm?
• What if CO₂ keeps increasing at the same rate it is now?
• What if the oceans had a pH of 7?
• What if governments don’t believe scientists working in the field of climate change?
• What if decision makers do not have access to robust data from scientific climate change models?
• What if the world reduced carbon emissions to 350 ppm?

The important aspect of using smaller bite-size inquiries is bringing the knowledge together to explore how it fits into the initial inquiry’s overarching question.

A large number of climate change resources exist on the Science Learning Hub that can be used to help guide students in their inquiries.

Reflection and action as part of an inquiry

Often when students are investigating topics such as climate change, they can feel an overwhelming responsibility to fix things or an overwhelming sense of doom and gloom, and in some students, this can lead to emotional distress. It is the teacher’s responsibility when tackling wicked problems to create opportunities throughout the inquiry for students to reflect on new information. How does it make them feel? How are my peers feeling about this? What can be done?

It is important to guide students through a process of reflection involving scaffolded discussions that lead to creating opportunities for students to share with others and explore solutions or actions. Exploring different opportunities to get involved and take positive action is an important part of supporting students to feel empowered to be change makers and steers the emotions from being overwhelmed to being part of the solution – ‘let’s do our part’.

Taking action is often a crucial part of an inquiry cycle. Actions can be as simple as communicating student findings to a wider audience through to more complex action taking (such as organised plantings) or technology-based solutions. Building student action competence involves creating opportunities not only for students to think about what action they may take but how they will carry out the action, who they would involve and what impacts the action may have – and then putting all this into practice.

Making a difference

The film Thin Ice – The Inside Story of Climate Science was developed to tell the story of climate change and the scientists working in the field. It is a tool to stimulate thinking and engagement with this wicked problem.

Like the scientists featured in Thin Ice, students who engage with wicked problems will want to know more and will develop the skills to take action, no matter how small, in order to make a difference.

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.

Mother Teresa