Visual Climate Change Communication: From Iconography To Locally Framed 3D Visualization

Climate change is an urgent problem with implications registered not only globally, but also on national and local scales. It is a particularly challenging case of environmental communication because its main cause, greenhouse gas emissions, is invisible. The predominant approach of making climate change visible is the use of iconic, often affective, imagery. Literature on the iconography of climate change shows that global iconic motifs, such as polar bears, have contributed to a public perception of the problem as spatially and temporally remote. This paper proposes an alternative approach to global climate change icons by focusing on recognizable representations of local impacts within an interactive game environment. This approach was implemented and tested in a research project based on the municipality of Delta, British Columbia. A major outcome of the research is Future Delta, an interactive educational game featuring 3D visualizations and simulation tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation future scenarios. The empirical evaluation is based on quantitative pre/post-game play questionnaires with 18 students and 10 qualitative expert interviews. The findings support the assumption that interactive 3D imagery is effective in communicating climate change. The quantitative post-questionnaires particularly highlight a shift in support of more local responsibility

Teaching in the Middle Grades Today: Examining Teachers’ Beliefs About Middle Grades Teaching

Since the beginning of the middle school movement in the mid-1960s, middle level advocates have called for a school experience for young adolescents grounded in adolescent development that engages students in meaningful learning (Eichhorn, 1966; Alexander & Williams, 1965). The aim of this exploratory multi-case study was to understand middle level teachers’ beliefs about middle level instruction in the current educational environment. To gain this understanding, researchers asked ten current middle grades teachers with varying levels of experience to discuss their beliefs regarding their primary purpose as a middle grades teacher, the current status of middle level teaching, their best and worst instructional lessons, and their perceived barriers to teaching at the middle level. The teachers described the role of teaching in the middle grades as challenging and stressful, but of great importance. In general, they described instruction that included discovery, student engagement, and relevance in an effort to address students’ academic development. There was minimal mention of the non-academic aspects of adolescent development. Finally, teachers viewed curriculum restrictions, students’ attitudes toward learning, difficulty with differentiation, and lack of technology as significant barriers to their success in the classroom

What Students Tell Us About School If We Ask

This article examines what school climate factors students perceive as helping them be successful in school, and what school administrators can do to aid the process. Specifically, the questions that drove this inquiry were How does sociocultural theory impact student voice and student engagement in the classroom? How does caring pedagogy impact student voice and student engagement in the classroom? What school climate factors do students perceive as helping them to be successful in school

Sustainable Energy Development in Canada's Mackenzie Delta–Beaufort Sea Coastal Region

The oil and gas sector is returning to the Mackenzie Delta–Beaufort Sea region of Canada’s western Arctic after a decade-long absence. If brought into production, the hydrocarbon resources in this region could generate significant long-term economic and social benefits for Canadians in general and for Northerners in particular. An evolving regulatory environment, the impacts of climate change, and a lack of infrastructure, however, are creating unanticipated challenges for industry and regulators alike. In addition, aboriginal and other northern stakeholders are largely supportive of oil and gas activity, but only provided they have assurances that communities will benefit and that any negative impacts will be mitigated. Regulators, industry, and stakeholders are, therefore, working closely together to ensure that resource management balances economic, environmental, and social considerations.Après dix ans d’absence, le secteur de l’exploration du pétrole et du gaz refait surface dans la région du delta du Mackenzie et de la mer de Beaufort située dans la partie ouest de l’Arctique canadien. Si les ressources en hydrocarbures de cette région entraient en production, cela pourrait se traduire par d’importantes retombées socio-économiques à long terme pour les Canadiens en général et pour les gens du Nord en particulier. Cependant, le milieu réglementaire en pleine évolution, les incidences du changement climatique et le manque d’infrastructure posent des défis imprévus, tant à l’industrie qu’aux organismes de réglementation. De plus, les parties prenantes autochtones de même que les autres parties prenantes du Nord se prononcent fortement en faveur des activités pétrolières et gazières, mais seulement s’ils ont la certitude que les collectivités en bénéficieront et que les incidences négatives seront limitées. Par conséquent, les organismes de réglementation, l’industrie et les parties prenantes travaillent en étroite collaboration pour s’assurer que la gestion des ressources donne lieu à un équilibre entre les considérations économiques, environnementales et sociales

Situated solidarities and the practice of scholar-activism

Drawing on an analysis of an ongoing collaboration with rural peasant movements in Bangladesh, we explore the possibility of forging solidarity through practices of scholar-activism. In so doing, we consider the practice of reflexivity, reconsider forms of solidarity, and draw on the concept of convergence spaces as a way to envision sites of possibility. We mobilize the notion of situated solidarities to propose an alternative form of reflexive practice in scholarship. We then posit that there are six ‘practices’ that provide a useful schematic for thinking through the opportunities for the construction of these solidaritie

Food as Signifier in the Projection of Futurities in Climate Change Fiction

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A Grounded Theory of Teacher Sensemaking Processes in a Climate of Change

Teacher commitment and capacity are critical factors in school reform. However, school change models underestimate the complexity of teaching, which undermines teachers\u27 ability to implement and sustain changes. This grounded theory of teacher sensemaking explored teachers\u27 perceptions as they participated in school reforms targeting pedagogy. A multi-site sample was purposefully selected and included 12 elementary school teachers from eight schools. One-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with each teacher and analyzed using inductive analysis. The three analytical coding procedures were (a) open coding, (b) axial coding, and (c) selective coding. Open coding analyzed the concepts emerging from the data and pursued relationships among the concepts. Six categories emerged from the data: individual influences, student influences, relational trust, culture, leadership, and influences of institutional structures. Data were decontextualized and analyzed at a micro level in relation to the categories through axial coding procedures. The microanalysis revealed interrelationships among the data that were not originally evident. Finally, selective coding employed macroanalysis to provide an explanatory narrative. This narrative synthesized the relationships that had emerged from the data around a core category, labeled Teacher Sensemaking. The narrative report detailed the study\u27s findings and explored the interrelationships between all categories. The first finding from this study concluded that teachers perceive themselves as the leaders in their classrooms with the right and responsibility to provide an effective and engaging classroom learning experience for each of their students by mediating the effects of the other influences. Teachers are most committed to their students and to their classroom responsibilities. The second finding was that there is an interpersonal basis for teacher commitment to the organization. Interpersonal factors include principal leadership, relational trust within the organization, and the levels of collaboration available. The third finding reveals that structural conditions influence teacher perceptions of challenge versus overload. Inadequate structural supports and insufficient resources add to teachers\u27 burdens, creating strong feelings of being overwhelmed. Adequate supports and resources help new situations feel like positive challenges. This study concluded with a discussion of how teachers apply their sensemaking processes to create and protect a healthy classroom environment in a climate of change

How Dutch Institutions Enhance the Adaptive Capacity of Society

This report examines the adaptive capacity of the institutional framework of the Netherlands to cope with the impacts of climate change. Historically, institutions have evolved incrementally to deal with existing social problems. They provide norms and rules for collective action and create continuity rather than change. However, the nature of societal problems is changing as a result of the processes of globalization and development. With the progress made in the natural sciences, we are able to predict in advance, to a certain extent, the potential environmental impacts of various human actions on society, for example, climate change. This raises some key questions: Are our institutions capable of dealing with this new knowledge about future impacts and, more importantly, with the impacts themselves? Are our institutions capable of dealing with the inherent uncertainty of the predictions

Farming in the Face of Uncertainty: How Colombian Coffee Farmers Conceptualize and Communicate Their Experiences With Climate Change

Climate change is impacting agricultural systems around the globe, but little research has focused on how agricultural producers communicate their firsthand experiences with climate change impacts. Coffee, Colombia’s largest agricultural export (indirectly responsible for the livelihood of 2 million Colombians), is uniquely vulnerable to climate change. This study lays the groundwork for future adaptation communication efforts by analyzing 45 in-person, in-depth interviews of coffee farmers in Risaralda, Colombia. Dimensionalization, a grounded theory approach, is used to offer a theoretical data matrix to capture the major factors involved in Colombian farmers’ experiences with climate change from the farmers’ own perspective. The findings illustrate the conditions underlying Colombian coffee farmers’ belief that climate change impacts threaten their livelihoods and put farmers in a constant state of uncertainty