Changing the Channel on Climate Change: How Televisual Media Can be Used to Teach Children about Climate Change.
Zollman, Samuel E.
2015
- Climate change is the foremost threat to humankind, with a failure to curb emissions leading to disasters like flooding, mass extinctions, and global food shortages. Yet public understanding of climate change is poor, especially among children. So from where does our understanding of climate change come? At over 10-hours of media content consumed by children each day—the majority from televisual ... read moremedia—it is clear much of our information comes from media. Is it possible, then, to use televisual media to teach children about climate change? To answer this question, I conducted research on topics such as the public perception and understanding of climate change, the state of science education, prosocial media, educational media, child behavioral and cognitive development, the shift from broadcast to digital televisual media, and models of environmental children’s television. Additionally, I conducted semi-structured interviews with four science educators to better understand which science topics are taught in the classroom, how they are best taught, and the role of media in classroom education. And finally, I evaluated the environmental children’s television show Plum Landing to assess which environmental topics are deemed developmentally appropriate, the integration of televisual media onto digital platforms, and the need for accompanying hands-on and interactive learning materials. My research suggests that for children to best learn about climate change through televisual media, the program should inspire children to explore in nature, promote positive environmental behaviors, contextualize the issue in ways that are relatable to children, and must include additional hands-on activities that reinforce the concepts.read less
- ID:
- 6m312147b
- Component ID:
- tufts:sd.0000279
- To Cite:
- TARC Citation Guide EndNote
