IBSE approach to study climate change from 90 degrees

<p> </p><p>Scientific evidence of climate warming is today clear and well admitted within the scientific community. It is crucial to educate students about the climate crisis we are facing and the consequences that will occur at global level. Climate science is a complex topic, involving a cross-curricular learning experience linking biology, geology, physics and chemistry.  Within such a complex theme, Polar Science plays a crucial role to understand how global warming and climate change are affecting and will affect our planet. Polar Regions are indeed among the most fragile and vulnerable areas, regulating the equilibrium of the whole planet, and the effects of global warming are already showing great changes in these regions.</p><p>In this work, the IBSE (Inquiry Based Science Education) approach has been proposed to 14-16 years old students, to analyse how climate change is affecting the North Pole and South Pole, and which are the effects on the planet. Within this approach, students work independently, learning through experiments planned by themselves about the key role the Polar Regions play in the Earth’s climate system. They conducted some experiments regarding two major processes that contribute to sea level rise, by establishing whether land ice, sea ice or both contributes to sea level rise, and by determining whether the warming of the oceans contributes to sea level rise.</p><p>This test has shown valuable results about the involvement of the students and their understanding of the processes occurring at the Polar Regions and their links with the whole Earth’s climate system. With the IBSE approach, students practice and experiment several   skills they do not usually use such as working in a team, communicate and interact with other students to answer question, formulate hypothesis, share their ideas and collaborate in a group to find methodologies and possible solutions. Moreover, the design of the experiments made up by themselves has revealed to be a major advance to make the students more aware of the key role the Polar Regions play in the Earth’s climate system. IBSE approach, student-centered and problem-centered, has confirmed to be a valuable tool to encourage creativity, innovation and collaboration in the classroom, engaging and motivating pupils.</p><p> </p>