ACCRA, Jun 2 (THE AFRICAN PORTAL) – The Government has been urged to introduce climate change education into the basic school curriculum to improve teachers’ understanding of climate issues and equip students with accurate knowledge on climate change.
The Principal Investigator for the Climate Change in Health Time Project, Samuel Cornelius Nyarko, said many teachers still had misconceptions about climate change because climate-related concepts in schools were limited.
Dr Nyarko, who is also an Assistant Professor at Indiana University, made the call in Accra yesterday during a training workshop on approaches to teaching climate change in schools.
According to him, climate concepts in the current basic education syllabus from Primary One to Junior High School (JHS) Three were shallow and inadequate.
“If you look at the syllabus for basic education from Primary One to JHS Three, the climate concepts students are supposed to learn are very shallow, and there are not many such concepts in it as well,” he said.
Dr Nyarko noted that some teachers wrongly linked climate change to ozone depletion and certain diseases that were not directly related to climate change.
He stressed that strengthening climate education at the basic school level would help teachers and students better understand the causes and effects of climate change.
The Programme Manager for Indiana University Ghana Gateway, Abigail Mercy Oppong Tetteh, said discussions ahead of the workshop revealed a disconnect between public discussions on climate change and what teachers taught in schools.
“Climate change is always discussed at conferences and workshops that do not involve teachers, so there is a disconnect between what people hear on the radio and what teachers teach in the classroom,” she said.
Dr Oppong Tetteh said the workshop was organised to build the capacity of teachers through a curriculum developed within the Ghanaian context.
She added that the three-day workshop sought to deepen teachers’ understanding of climate change and related issues.
