Meeting Synthesis

During this session we heard from Abigail Aderonmu-Omunu about the ideas coming out of the Midwest Climate Research Agenda initiative. The process included developing a knowledge synthesis from the literature that synthesized the literature on climate change (climate change or adaptation or mitigation) and the Midwest or individual states and then clustered topics in papers by themes including forest, transportation and energy, health, agriculture, biodiversity and ecosystems. The knowledge synthesis also revealed that a search of Midwest specific climate literature produced very few Midwest specific education examples. Those included were largely in health where region specific challenges like preterm birth rates are linked with climate impacts and the interventions to reduce those impacts include education.

The Educator Community of Practice discussed: 1) the relevance of the list of these clustered categories to how they teach climate and 2) what opportunities the list or exploring the list or thinking about the gap in education research generated for them.

Groups reported:

•  They didn't always see research on areas where they were educating such as business, psychology, food and that most of the Midwest specific research done to date was in environmental systems and not human and social systems.   
• The lack of education research was not good, we need robust education strategies to support moving beyond isolated work on courses and informal education activities that help students learn what they need to know.
• We talked a little about what the needs were to help grow education now and that included supporting community and belonging and designing with the end users in mind, the practical solutions that students would need to know in multiple sectors (e.g. discipline specific ideas to business, and cross-cutting ideas like how to connect with what is at the forefront of community interests).