Educating for climate awareness at a primary school level setting

• Autor(a) principal: Caldeira, Luis Filipe Pereira
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.22/20386
• topic: Pprimary school; Sustainability; Nature; Global citizenship; 1.º ciclo; Sustentabilidade; Natureza; Cidadania global; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Ciências da Educação

We live in a global world surrounded by constant changes, and it is urgent to make children aware of their role in the society in which they are inserted, increasingly aware of their macro-system. Using English, the global language, and by varied resources and a multidisciplinary approach, it was sought to teach a group of 4th grade students topics related to our planet’s sustainability, respect, and appreciation of its diversity. This project aims to foster in students a taste for the nature that surrounds them, demonstrating that life as we have known it for centuries depends on its yields to endure, and that humans, to a large extent, display an integral part towards its proper functioning. Thus, this study, based on a didactic intervention project developed in a 4th year primary school education class, aimed to understand how, and to what extent, it is possible to educate for global citizenship, namely through teaching about climate change and environmental awareness in an English as a foreign language class setting. Through the use of a mixed methodology, data was created allowing to conclude that pupils showed to be receptive and highly motivated to learn about the proposed themes, usually not tackled inside a primary school context, always demonstrating positive attitudes and willingness to participate, thus being able to develop new knowledge, achieving set learning outcomes, both on the topics discussed, and, naturally, developing skills in the target language used simultaneously throughout the project.