… Listening for Silences in Curricula

Do curricula include knowledges needed for learning to design local climate change adaptations?

In a series of 6 posts, I explore this question by reporting on the findings of my curricular study using Listening for Silences research method. This method enabled me to identify silences that indicate a hidden curriculum.  

The scope of my search was limited to Ontario and Manitoba curricula for Grade 11 and 12 Social Studies courses: World Issues/Global Studies (Grade 12), Canadian Studies (Grade 11), First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Studies, and Study of World Religions. I selected Ontario and Manitoba for their strong curricula based on Bieler, McKenzie et al. (2017), who rated Manitoba high and rated Ontario slightly lower for climate change education.

1- Do curricula include knowledge of past climate change events?

• Finding: Curricula are silent on past climate change events. Neither Manitoba nor Ontario curricula name past climate change events.
• Detail. I searched for the following keywords from the field of historical climatology: 5.9 KY event, 4.2 KY event, Bronze Age Collapse, Migration Period, Little Ice Age (LIA), Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC). The Little Ice Age is not mentioned despite considerable information on this most recent climate change event. ON and MB curricula fail to contextualize The Modern Age in two climate events, specifically LIA and ACC. They do not provide a chronology of economic, philosophical, social, and religious transitions in Modernity that were driven by two climate change events.
• I conclude that climate illiteracy is embedded in curricula and that youth learners are not being prepared to understand the climate change cycle.
• Implication: Knowledge of past climate change events reduces fear and anxiety about ACC. The more youth know about past climate change events, the better they will navigate the current event. They will have realistic expectations related to the classical markers of climate change events: loss of prosperity, loss of literacy, pandemics, food shortages, intolerance, and invasions. Both ON and MB are silent on the impacts of two industrial periods on CO2 emissions that contribute to ACC. Until curricula are revised to include these knowledges in formal learning, I provide tools for informal learning about past climate change events at this link. https://terramandala.ca/cca/spiraling-story-of-culture-and-climate/

For more detail, follow this link: https://athabascau.academia.edu/IreneFriesenWolfstone or read my doctoral dissertation.