Instructional Practices in K-12 Climate Change Education Across Disciplines: A Study of Early Adopters from New Jersey

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development centers on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Among these goals, two address climate change education: Goal 13, Climate Action, and Goal 4, Quality Education. In order to build a more sustainable future, climate change education is critical. In 2022, New Jersey became the first state in the US to integrate climate change into learning standards across subjects and grade levels K-12. In an effort to better understand the way in which teachers began to include climate change in their instruction, 50 teachers were observed implementing a lesson of their choosing that included climate change throughout the 2023–2024 academic year. Though most of the observed lessons featured science, many subject areas were included in the dataset, such as art, technology, history, and physical education. Teachers engaging in climate change instruction tended to use a variety of instructional practices. In nearly all cases, a multitude of methodologies were used in each lesson. However, small group instruction was featured in nearly all observed lessons. Quantitative descriptions of the findings are followed by three vignettes of exemplar instruction to provide a clearer understanding of the context of this work. These findings provide a scope for how climate change can be integrated in instructional settings at scale and suggestions for leveraging the experiences of early adopters of this innovation to support widespread implementation.