MAPPING CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES
A partnership between the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) and SEPN’s Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) Project is providing better data on climate change education (CCE) across all states in the US. The project is funded by the Woka Foundation.
To date, the US Landscape Analysis has included policy analyses of formal K-12 and higher education, as well as a nonformal education census and survey, which is being carried out in collaboration with the Centre for Sustainable Futures at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Key findings from the studies will be visualized on an interactive online platform.
The project is providing insights on the trends and opportunities to advance uptake of climate change in education policy by benchmarking whether and how states are currently including climate change in education policy materials, to support improved policy and practice. Strong inclusion of climate change in education policy provides an improved foundation for climate action.
K-12 Education
Explores the status of climate change education policy in the US by analyzing the extent and type of climate change inclusion in over 800 publicly available education policies from all state departments or boards of education. The study explores whole-institution and explores holistic CCE approaches.
Higher Education
Reviews over 750 publicly available policies from a sample of 230 public higher education institutions and nearly 40 state boards of higher education across all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. The study uses a whole-institution approach.
Nonformal Education
The project uses a web-based census and survey to further understandings of nonformal climate communication and education programming, as well as the challenges, best practices, and networks of organizations that nonformal CCE programming. Data collection will be expanded globally following US data collection as part of the MECCE Project’s indicator development project.
ACCESS the Interactive Data Platform
The data from the K-12 and higher education policy studies is available on our Interactive Data Platform!
