STEP 2: Plan of Action

Once the problem/issue/challenge/wonder is identified and formulated, and the foundation of the student's climate change missions are clear, considerations regarding how to find out things must be identified. For that purpose, five general types of methods of investigation in science could come in handy, and are therefore here presented and briefly explained.

The descriptions are heavily inspired by the Danish site MetodeLab.

What usually happens is a mixed procedure were some of the students have an initial planning on the investigation and then when they start they have to re-schedule and re-plan mainly because they lack the experience on how to contact the investigation. The role of the teacher then is not to interfere on the initial planning but rather to help them re-plan.

Your role as a teacher

In general

The teacher must accept that he/she does not know everything in the field in which students make their climate change mission.
The teacher should avoid correcting the student with direct answers, but instead make questions that will make the students think about/act towards a solution. The teacher guides the students.
The teacher provides opportunities for learning on demand.

Methods

The five types of methods provide a framework from which you can get the students started and guide them in order to develop their investigational awareness and competences. The aims are that the students will be able to formulate climate change related questions that can be studied scientifically, and that the students will be able to design their own research and collect data in a scientific way, according to their levels.

1. Read, ask and search for information.

Basically, this is about seeking knowledge and information in books, online or asking questions to peers, or the teacher, and in a more formal way through interviews. This does not differ significantly from many other school subject research methods. Without knowledge, one cannot ask questions, and therefore this kind of method precedes and/or succeeds the other four methods described below. In addition, it is often necessary for the students to get back to this type of method throughout their entire work with their missions. The teacher’s role is to be ready to provide and point out for the students relevant and adequate sources and materials, if needed.

Where reading, searching and (in general) asking other persons for information are common ways to collect data, the interview is a more specific method of its own. The teacher’s role is here to guide the students to prepare the interview (interview guide) in order to ask relevant questions and to conduct the interview.

Here the teacher could point the students towards the 5 W and 1 H questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How
2. Trial and error

In this type of method, the main emphasis is on finding a concrete solution to a practical problem or a satisfactory answer to a question, and it lends itself to learning processes where ideas can be tested and rejected intuitively and without major systematics. However, data can be made tangible in the form of logbooks with ongoing notes on hypotheses, successes and failures. It is just important to keep the focus on the students’ trying out, pursuing ideas and gaining a lot of experience, rather than on focusing on a neat logbook.

For climate change related missions focusing on finding out how things work, the trial and error method can be relevant. It can also be used when students are in the process of designing or redesigning their investigations asking questions such as: How does this work? Or: What happens if? Teacher’s role is to encourage students to ask questions and to try things out, not being afraid of making errors, but also to guide the students in the right directions so that they can stay on track and things don't get out of hand.
3. Observation.

A common saying goes: "everything depends on the eye of the beholder“, and transformed into science this means that when you look for specific things or reactions in specific ways in the quest to find differences, similarities, details, and patterns, you are observing. Observations are careful recordings of what one senses, and they can involve all the senses. Various equipment such as binoculars, microscope, sound recorder, scale, measuring tape, pH-sticks etc. can be used to amplify what one senses.

Observation is an independent research method, but at the same time, it is an integral part of the other research methods. In contrast to the “Trial and Error Method”, the observation method includes thorough and systematized data collections. Therefore, the teacher's role is to guide students in what to look for and how, as well as help them to structure their recordings. The aim is to produce systematized data, which must subsequently be organized and interpreted so that it is possible for others to discuss the interpretation of the observation.
4. Models

Scientists use models for representational-, learning- and predicting purposes, and in science teaching models are equally an essential part. They can be found in textbook illustrations, infographics and maps as well as on the shelves and in cupboards in the classrooms.

Scientific models are simplistic, manageable representations of selected parts of the real world and one of the forces of the models in the science is that they allow one to talk about parts of reality without the phenomenon being concretely present in the classroom. The big challenge with models is that it requires a high degree of abstraction to understand what they illustrate.

The value of a model in a teaching context thus depends on students’ ability to decode information within and, furthermore, to interpret this information to build up knowledge. The teacher’s role is to guide the students in succeeding in those processes.

Models can be the point of departure for the student’s climate change missions; the local area thus serves as the exemplification of the model, or part of it. In this way, the model becomes a predictive tool and may help generate ideas of what and how to investigate.
5. Experiment

When you carry out an experiment, it is to investigate relationships between a particular cause and effect. In an experiment, you only change one variable and keep all other variables constant. An experiment is also called a fair test.

When students perform an experiment much of their work and their learning are connected to the “variable control”. In their hypothesizing and discussions about the relations between the variables they develop their understanding of both how to find things out in a scientific way, and about the matter they are dealing with.

Teacher’s role

Teacher’s role is to encourage and guide their work and their reasoning as well as to ask questions about their understanding. Below is a 6-stage guide for structuring an experiment:

1. What is it that we want to find out? (conceptualization stage in the Climate Change Education Model).

2. What are our hypotheses? (Conceptualization stage in the Climate Change Education Model)

Hypothesis should state something about the relationship between the variables, which leads to point 3:

3. What are the variables of the experiment?

Three types of variables can be detected: The variable we change (the cause), the variable we want to observe/measure (the effect) and the variables we keep constant (because they can influence the effect).

4. How do we control the constant variables?

In this stage the actual design of the experiment is formed. This involves the tools and equipment, the way the experiment will be conducted according to procedure, and how data are collected. As mentioned above the “Trial and Error Method” may be relevant here for the students to tune in on a reliable and valid design.

5. Doing the experiment (investigation stage in the Climate change education model)

Once the setting of the experiment is clear, it is carried out, and data collection is initiated.

Traditionally when we think of the experiment as a concept it is something that belongs in a lab. However, experiments can very well be carried out as fieldwork. This is in particular important to keep in mind in connection with open science schooling and students’ climate change missions.

6. Data processing and analyzing (investigation stage in the Climate change education model)

Can we detect relations between cause and effect? Can we then confirm or reject our hypothesis? In the latter case a new hypothesis is formulated, and the procedure is repeated. In case the hypothesis is confirmed, the students can be more sure that their thinking about the relationship between cause and effect in this particular case is right and thus this will be the knowledge they carry with them in their further work on their mission.

Investigations may also encounter both fieldwork and lab-work, e.g. data collection/sample collection in the field and then to further processing in the laboratory. In those cases samples must be secured when carried home as an integral part of the variable control.

Teacher’s role

Teacher’s role in connection with creating the plan of action for the students’ missions is to make them aware of the variety of activities that make up a scientific investigation. The teacher scaffolds and encourages students' thinking and discussion about which investigational methods to use and to engage in predictions, hypothesizing, and design and redesign processes as well as carrying out practical procedures in relation to their missions. This will strengthen the students’ capabilities, increase their sense of what science is, and thus make them connect better to science as a provider of ways of thinking, of working methods, and of reliable information.

The teacher also facilitate the process with contacting stakeholders.

Before next step

Students and teachers will have a common understanding of the concepts listed above before they enter the next step of “data collection.

Recommendations and comments

- from the teachers in the project to teachers who would like to start working with Climate Change Education:

“Climate change missions motivate me more than regular classes because there is more communication and practical experience rather than sitting in class and being given answer” (Student).

“… it does motivate us to participate more in our science class” (Student).

“… the lesson in class is more boring but learning through the project is more fun” (Student).

“These missions show us that we can help the Planet by doing simple things. Everyone can do that, no matter how old are you and who you are” (Student).

“We all agree that missins motivate us to learn and work with science because it shows us that science could be really cool and interesting, we learn how to use science in a way that we help climate change and enjoy at the same time” (Students).

“On the stage two it is beneficial to brainstorm about what could become the specific mission in our case concerning the water problem in our town. The students together with the teachers develop the solution that could help reduce the water problem such as in our town the idea of small retention and three different ways the misssion could be implemented. Our students created three working groups” (Teacher from Poland).