An educational strategy to Climate Change integrating three interconnected Perspectives

The format, illustrations and organization of the 6th assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have changed to fit the evolution of people's perception on Climate Change (CC). Educators face the same changes in the educational world even though CC remains an abstract concept that is challenging for learners to understand. To facilitate the educational process, we propose to tackle simultaneously three complementary perspectives:

• Climate,
• Biodiversity,
• Meteorology.

When carefully limited to a corresponding level of abstraction or difficulty, all the elements of one perspective enhance the understanding of the others, contributing to the consolidation of global knowledge. The pathway to CC is divided into three progressive conceptual leaps that correspond roughly to primary, middle and high school.

In primary school is built the basement of CC conceptual tower. Pupils rely mainly on their feelings and observations as they discover their planet: understanding the latitudinal and altitudinal zonation of "environments" from both biological and climatological perspectives. They perceive the effects of warm/cold dry/wet status of the atmosphere on life.

In middle school, they learn to measure temperatures, precipitations and describe meteorological situations, understand the origin of the climate zonation and the effects of solar radiation; they also learn how to recognize plants and biomes and discover the strong links between weather, seasons and ecological systems. They have a fist contact with risks threatening ecosystems.

In high school, students are initiated into models, come to understand that observations of the past can lead to formalizations and equations that enable to explain past phenomenon and open a window to the future. It's time to understand that the climate has changed in the earth's history, that the atmospheric behavior can be modeled for accurate weather forecast and long term climate projections, and time to understand that the evolution of ecological systems is linked to climate change.

A multidisciplinary approach carries many benefits and provide a transversal consolidation of knowledge, facilitating the understanding of Climate Change. It should maintain and gain a greater place in secondary school programs and teacher's training sessions.