When citizens get involved in science
Suhirtha Muhil
As I write this article there has been an unprecedented amount of rainfall in South India – Bengaluru has broken its all-time record for the wettest year already in October, numerous crop fields in Tamil Nadu’s Cauvery delta have submerged. There are stories of displacement, migration and crop loss because of unusual climatic events. These facts can be dismissed as occasional erratic episodes, but the repetitiveness of such events is beginning to make even the most nonchalant person wonder if, indeed, climate change is the cause.
There is an ever growing disconnection and detachment of one’s life with nature. While things may seem hapless, there is hope when conversations and discussions are aimed at communicating climate change to be more direct and relatable. Engaging the younger generation to observe and look at their immediate environment, making them understand their local ecological history and the intricate connectedness of various phenomena in nature, can enable true appreciation of the larger picture and build a proactive climate change action.
Yet, do our school systems foster a curriculum that will drive a generation of students to be empathetic towards the environment they live in? These students will also be part of a generation that will witness more cataclysmic climatic events, unlike us. As the saying goes, ‘the starting point of caring is getting to know it’. Bringing about large-scale climate action must first begin with children getting to know their environment, with a sense of wonder, admiration, and empathy. However, school curricula provide insights on climate change with a broad view, with little or no association to our immediate environment.
Citizen science has been one of the modes of addressing this issue. Over the years, it has aided in engaging a large public audience and students to observe and document the environment around them. Citizen science can be a great tool in promoting climate change education among school students. It can also help make many concepts related to climate change more easily comprehensible and hands-on. SeasonWatch is one such citizen science programme for observing tree phenology – students and the public have been able to collect and observe trees over the last decade. Trees, especially from temperate regions, are known to be highly sensitive to climate change and demonstrate variations in flowering, fruiting and leaf flushing with change in larger climatic patterns. The programme provides much needed scientific data regarding tree phenology in India and also serves as a platform for children and the wider public to engage meaningfully with their surroundings and appreciate nature. More details on how one can participate as a citizen scientist are available on the project webpage – www.seasonwatch.in. In SeasonWatch, nearly 85% of the data comes from observations made by school children. Recently, as part of a study we wanted to assess how climate change education fares in India and what kind of nature learning resources teachers and educators use in their classrooms. We also wanted to know what kind of resources teachers envision in integrating climate change education in school curricula that are also age-appropriate and relevant to local contexts.
We developed a questionnaire that was shared among teachers and nature educators. The questionnaire comprised questions relating to the teacher’s experience of nature, if they had noticed any seasonal variations in trees, how they perceived climate change, and how they rate their students’ awareness about climate change. 191 respondents from 13 states took the survey. Nearly 37% of the respondents were teachers who taught middle school (6th-9th std), 33% taught high school (10th-12th std) and 30% taught in primary schools (1st-5th std). Around 49% of the respondents teach in government schools, 35% are from private schools, 7% from private government aided schools and 8% are independent educators. Nearly 71% of the respondents came from state board schools, followed by 20% of schools with CBSE or ICSE syllabi. Nearly 54% of the respondents had a postgraduate degree and 45% had an undergraduate degree. The language of instruction in school was English (40%) Malayalam (32%), and Tamil (8%). Around 12% use both English and the local language as a medium of instruction in classes.
To the questions whether the respondents are able to go outdoors and be amidst nature, almost 54% said that they get an opportunity every day to be outdoors. The most common activities respondents did when outdoors were – identifying plants, birds, mammals and insects, observing local weather patterns, and nature journaling.
Do students and teachers benefit from citizen science?
In the survey, we asked if the respondents’ schools have been registered with SeasonWatch and if they contribute to citizen science by making regular observations. About 37% of the respondents have registered their schools with SeasonWatch. Of these ~82.6% of the participants are from Kerala, followed by Tamil Nadu 11.5% and 7.2% from Meghalaya.
A school registered with SeasonWatch will have select students who regularly observe trees in their campus and surrounding areas once every week. Observations typically consist of noting the quantity of leaves, flowers, and fruits on trees and uploading the same on the SeasonWatch database via the project website or an Android phone app. Contributors can view these phenology patterns as graphical summaries on their project profile page. Many teachers who have been participating in SeasonWatch (88%) have observed changes in tree seasonality over the years of observations. Changes in the flowering period of the Indian laburnum tree (Cassia fistuala), mango (Mangiferaindica) and jackfruit (Artocarpusheterophyllus) have been observed. Long-term observation of trees both by students and teachers has aided in up-close observation of changes in tree phenology and other factors that cause these changes. Observations like this can help in conveying many key concepts within classrooms. The act of making systematic observations has been reported to trigger a cascade of behavioural changes in students that fosters an interest in learning and appreciating nature (What motivates a citizen scientist: SeasonWatchers answer some questions – YouTube). Teachers registered with SeasonWatch also felt that nearly 26% of their students are well aware of climate change related issues and associate it with their immediate environment compared to only 13% of non-SeasonWatch users.
The survey responses show that most of the participants agree that the use of the available educational resources in the SeasonWatch portal promotes scientific temper among students and a few felt that the resources can be used to teach concepts in interesting ways. Most respondents felt using SeasonWatch has aided in teaching lessons within the classroom. While aiding lessons in biology and geography are expected, some respondents have also said that they envision using SeasonWatch in teaching concepts in mathematics and literature.
Climate change perception and understanding
Almost all survey respondents felt that the world’s climate is drastically changing and felt the importance of teaching about climate change in schools. To understand the way in which teachers perceive climate change, we asked a series of questions on this topic and if they teach climate change related topics in their classrooms. Most respondents were able to accurately define what climate change is. Newspaper articles and TV are the most common mediums through which information about climate change is gathered.
The respondents were asked ‘how concerned are you about climate change?’, with options ranging from ‘Very concerned’, ‘Fairly concerned’, ‘Not very concerned’, ‘Not concerned’, ‘Don’t know’. Teachers, from diverse educational backgrounds ranging from arts to science, were equally concerned about climate change with a majority (~60%) choosing the ‘Very concerned’ option. Respondents were also asked to rate their students’ awareness of climate change, with the options ‘Well aware’ (Relational knowledge – they are aware of the causes and consequences of climate change including the environment around them), ‘fairly aware’ (Causal knowledge – they are aware of the causes and consequences of climate change but do not relate it to their immediate environment)’, ‘To some degree’ (Factual knowledge – they may have heard of climate change, but do not have a deep understanding)’, ‘Not aware’ and ‘Not made an assessment of the students’. A majority of the respondents felt that their students had ‘Factual Knowledge’ about climate change, i.e., they might have heard about climate change but do not have a deep understanding about it. Looking at the responses according to the demography of the respondents and type of school, it is interesting to note that teachers from private schools (30%) felt that their students are well aware about climate change compared to their counterparts in government schools (12%). Similarly, students from urban schools and CBSE/ICSE boards were perceived to be more aware compared to their counterparts studying in state boards. While the disparity in knowledge and opportunities among different demographic sections already exists, one should understand that climate change is likely to disproportionately impact people with lower incomes in vulnerable areas such as cities, coasts, islands, and forests, causing displacement and migration due to calamities. This necessitates that climate change education and action is accessible to everyone, across all gradients of privilege in society.
Climate change education in classrooms
The respondents reported that many topics from the lessons they teach could be linked to understanding climate change, and 64% of the respondents reported that textbooks also have information on climate change. From the responses it is apparent that climate change is taught in classrooms as a very large-scale, distant, global phenomenon and that students are unable to associate their immediate environment with climate change.
We had posed questions to our respondents asking if they had heard of any anecdotal stories from their families or ancestors, through folklore or any cultural references of seasonality that are not observed today. It was interesting to note that most respondents had anecdotes to share, reinforcing the fact that climate change and its implications are felt by people from all walks of life. Here are some interesting anecdotes from our respondents about the changes in seasonality they have heard/observed:
The cry of the frog inside the house and the dried plant in the pot are enough to recognize the month of ‘Karkidakam’ – second half of July to first half of August – Madhu*, high school teacher, Kerala
There were many Areca Nut around Salem district, Attur, greenery everywhere, nice cool, pleasant smell, all disappeared due to severe drought – Senthil*, primary school teacher, Salem, Tamil Nadu
Locals have noticed that the summer season is longer and rainfall during monsoons has become more erratic and unpredictable. This can affect their ability to stock up grass for the winter – Aruna*, Nature educator, Kulu, Himachal Pradesh
Changes in fruiting and leafing of Cherry blossoms – Doris*, high school teacher, Meghalaya
These are just a few examples; given the vast diversity of our country one can expect innumerable historical and local accounts of changes in climate and seasonality as yet unheard of! Getting to know their local ecological history is a way for the student and teacher to connect with their local environmental context. Creating a climate change curriculum that caters to this untapped knowledge is one among the several ways to make a seemingly intangible problem more relatable. Among students, cultivating an interest for exploring their immediate environment can help them understand the links between what they see outdoors with what they study in their classrooms. These are some factors that can aid in creating a holistic climate change education curriculum that is the need of the hour. At the moment, there is a need for a vibrant teacher community to come together, brainstorm, deliberate and engage on this pressing topic, and make climate change education accessible to all.
Note: If you are interested in being a part of this project, where teachers will co-create a resource module that will make climate change education more hands-on and relatable, you can participate in this survey or reach out to us at the email id given.
*Names of all teachers and educators have been changed to protect their privacy
The author is a project manager with NCF’s SeasonWatch programme. She is currently involved in a project of including citizen science in school curricula that will facilitate climate change education in schools. She can be reached at suhirtha@ncf-india.org.