Canada: Educating in and for climate emergency

Climate change is the most urgent crisis facing our planet today. Youth have repeatedly called for action on tackling this crisis, including the implementation of climate change curricula in schools.

Canadian students are among those demanding improvement to the sparse and inconsistent delivery of climate change education. A study published in 2019 found that only about half of Canada’s ministries of education and about 60 per cent of school divisions in the country had sustainabilityspecific policy, with this understood to include governance, curriculum, facilities, research, and community outreach.

When climate change topics are taught, key concepts are often missing such as the scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change, or a focus on impacts or solutions.

A recent countrywide survey of 4,035 respondents across the country highlighted the consequences of inadequate climate change education in schools. One-third of Canadians failed a 10-question knowledge quiz. Only around half knew greenhouse gases were the main cause of climate change.

Few responded correctly that the average temperature has already increased by more than one degree Celsius. Despite their gaps in knowledge, the majority of survey respondents agreed that we are experiencing a climate emergency and that climate change education should be a high priority.

Ten percent of survey respondents were educators (406 people), and among this group, half said a lack of time is a barrier when attempting to include climate change education within the classroom. In fact, respected international organizations have noted that implementing climate change education in schools cannot continue to fall on the shoulders of overburdened teachers.

The traditional way of teaching doesn’t work for complex topics like climate change. Teachers need to shift towards student-directed inquiry and active, real-world learning. It’s not enough to simply quote scientific facts, as a focus on “doom and gloom” can intensify eco-anxiety. Best practices for climate change education include the opportunity to take personal and collective action.

(Karen S. Acton. http://theconversation.com, 07.03.2023. Adaptado)

Canada: Educating in and for climate emergency

Climate change is the most urgent crisis facing our planet today. Youth have repeatedly called for action on tackling this crisis, including the implementation of climate change curricula in schools.

Canadian students are among those demanding improvement to the sparse and inconsistent delivery of climate change education. A study published in 2019 found that only about half of Canada’s ministries of education and about 60 per cent of school divisions in the country had sustainabilityspecific policy, with this understood to include governance, curriculum, facilities, research, and community outreach.

When climate change topics are taught, key concepts are often missing such as the scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change, or a focus on impacts or solutions.

A recent countrywide survey of 4,035 respondents across the country highlighted the consequences of inadequate climate change education in schools. One-third of Canadians failed a 10-question knowledge quiz. Only around half knew greenhouse gases were the main cause of climate change.

Few responded correctly that the average temperature has already increased by more than one degree Celsius. Despite their gaps in knowledge, the majority of survey respondents agreed that we are experiencing a climate emergency and that climate change education should be a high priority.

Ten percent of survey respondents were educators (406 people), and among this group, half said a lack of time is a barrier when attempting to include climate change education within the classroom. In fact, respected international organizations have noted that implementing climate change education in schools cannot continue to fall on the shoulders of overburdened teachers.

The traditional way of teaching doesn’t work for complex topics like climate change. Teachers need to shift towards student-directed inquiry and active, real-world learning. It’s not enough to simply quote scientific facts, as a focus on “doom and gloom” can intensify eco-anxiety. Best practices for climate change education include the opportunity to take personal and collective action.

(Karen S. Acton. http://theconversation.com, 07.03.2023. Adaptado)

Canada: Educating in and for climate emergency

Climate change is the most urgent crisis facing our planet today. Youth have repeatedly called for action on tackling this crisis, including the implementation of climate change curricula in schools.

Canadian students are among those demanding improvement to the sparse and inconsistent delivery of climate change education. A study published in 2019 found that only about half of Canada’s ministries of education and about 60 per cent of school divisions in the country had sustainabilityspecific policy, with this understood to include governance, curriculum, facilities, research, and community outreach.

When climate change topics are taught, key concepts are often missing such as the scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change, or a focus on impacts or solutions.

A recent countrywide survey of 4,035 respondents across the country highlighted the consequences of inadequate climate change education in schools. One-third of Canadians failed a 10-question knowledge quiz. Only around half knew greenhouse gases were the main cause of climate change.

Few responded correctly that the average temperature has already increased by more than one degree Celsius. Despite their gaps in knowledge, the majority of survey respondents agreed that we are experiencing a climate emergency and that climate change education should be a high priority.

Ten percent of survey respondents were educators (406 people), and among this group, half said a lack of time is a barrier when attempting to include climate change education within the classroom. In fact, respected international organizations have noted that implementing climate change education in schools cannot continue to fall on the shoulders of overburdened teachers.

The traditional way of teaching doesn’t work for complex topics like climate change. Teachers need to shift towards student-directed inquiry and active, real-world learning. It’s not enough to simply quote scientific facts, as a focus on “doom and gloom” can intensify eco-anxiety. Best practices for climate change education include the opportunity to take personal and collective action.

(Karen S. Acton. http://theconversation.com, 07.03.2023. Adaptado)

Assessment is perhaps one of the least understood areas of language teaching and learning. Students may see tests as a threat to their competence because they are afraid they will not perform well. Teachers often do not like to construct tests and are not altogether satisfied with the results when they do.

A more constructive view of language testing exists when (a) testing is undertood as an opportunity for interaction between teacher and student; (b) students are judged on the basis of the knowledge they have; (c) the criteria for success on the test are clear to students; (d) students receive a grade for their performance on a set of tests representing different testing methods (not just one!); (e) the tests are intended to help students improve their skills; (f) the results are discussed.

The seminal efforts by Canalle e Swain (1980) to operationalize Hymes’ (1972) communicative competence have provided a relevant set of criteria for describing tests.

Tests should be seen as tapping one or more of the four components making up the construct of communicative competence: grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic and strategic competence.

(Andrew D.Cohen. Second language Assessment. IN: Marianne Cerce-Murcia(ed). Teaching English as a

second or foreign language. Boston, Massachusstes: Heinle&Heinle. 2nd edition. 2001. Adaptado)

Assessment is perhaps one of the least understood areas of language teaching and learning. Students may see tests as a threat to their competence because they are afraid they will not perform well. Teachers often do not like to construct tests and are not altogether satisfied with the results when they do.

A more constructive view of language testing exists when (a) testing is undertood as an opportunity for interaction between teacher and student; (b) students are judged on the basis of the knowledge they have; (c) the criteria for success on the test are clear to students; (d) students receive a grade for their performance on a set of tests representing different testing methods (not just one!); (e) the tests are intended to help students improve their skills; (f) the results are discussed.

The seminal efforts by Canalle e Swain (1980) to operationalize Hymes’ (1972) communicative competence have provided a relevant set of criteria for describing tests.

Tests should be seen as tapping one or more of the four components making up the construct of communicative competence: grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic and strategic competence.

(Andrew D.Cohen. Second language Assessment. IN: Marianne Cerce-Murcia(ed). Teaching English as a

second or foreign language. Boston, Massachusstes: Heinle&Heinle. 2nd edition. 2001. Adaptado)

Assessment is perhaps one of the least understood areas of language teaching and learning. Students may see tests as a threat to their competence because they are afraid they will not perform well. Teachers often do not like to construct tests and are not altogether satisfied with the results when they do.

A more constructive view of language testing exists when (a) testing is undertood as an opportunity for interaction between teacher and student; (b) students are judged on the basis of the knowledge they have; (c) the criteria for success on the test are clear to students; (d) students receive a grade for their performance on a set of tests representing different testing methods (not just one!); (e) the tests are intended to help students improve their skills; (f) the results are discussed.

The seminal efforts by Canalle e Swain (1980) to operationalize Hymes’ (1972) communicative competence have provided a relevant set of criteria for describing tests.

Tests should be seen as tapping one or more of the four components making up the construct of communicative competence: grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic and strategic competence.

(Andrew D.Cohen. Second language Assessment. IN: Marianne Cerce-Murcia(ed). Teaching English as a

second or foreign language. Boston, Massachusstes: Heinle&Heinle. 2nd edition. 2001. Adaptado)

Assessment is perhaps one of the least understood areas of language teaching and learning. Students may see tests as a threat to their competence because they are afraid they will not perform well. Teachers often do not like to construct tests and are not altogether satisfied with the results when they do.

A more constructive view of language testing exists when (a) testing is undertood as an opportunity for interaction between teacher and student; (b) students are judged on the basis of the knowledge they have; (c) the criteria for success on the test are clear to students; (d) students receive a grade for their performance on a set of tests representing different testing methods (not just one!); (e) the tests are intended to help students improve their skills; (f) the results are discussed.

The seminal efforts by Canalle e Swain (1980) to operationalize Hymes’ (1972) communicative competence have provided a relevant set of criteria for describing tests.

Tests should be seen as tapping one or more of the four components making up the construct of communicative competence: grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic and strategic competence.

(Andrew D.Cohen. Second language Assessment. IN: Marianne Cerce-Murcia(ed). Teaching English as a

second or foreign language. Boston, Massachusstes: Heinle&Heinle. 2nd edition. 2001. Adaptado)

Assessment is perhaps one of the least understood areas of language teaching and learning. Students may see tests as a threat to their competence because they are afraid they will not perform well. Teachers often do not like to construct tests and are not altogether satisfied with the results when they do.

A more constructive view of language testing exists when (a) testing is undertood as an opportunity for interaction between teacher and student; (b) students are judged on the basis of the knowledge they have; (c) the criteria for success on the test are clear to students; (d) students receive a grade for their performance on a set of tests representing different testing methods (not just one!); (e) the tests are intended to help students improve their skills; (f) the results are discussed.

The seminal efforts by Canalle e Swain (1980) to operationalize Hymes’ (1972) communicative competence have provided a relevant set of criteria for describing tests.

Tests should be seen as tapping one or more of the four components making up the construct of communicative competence: grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic and strategic competence.

(Andrew D.Cohen. Second language Assessment. IN: Marianne Cerce-Murcia(ed). Teaching English as a

second or foreign language. Boston, Massachusstes: Heinle&Heinle. 2nd edition. 2001. Adaptado)

Through practice and experience in an increasingly wide range of communicative contexts and events, learners gradually expand their communicative competence, consisting of grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociocultural competence and strategic competence. All these components are interrelated. An increase in one component interacts with other components to produce a corresponding increase in overall communicative competence.

Grammatical competence refers to sentence-level grammatical form, the ability to recognize the lexical, morphological, syntactic and phonological feature of a language and to make use of these features to interpret and form words and whole sentences. One demonstrates grammatical competence not by stating a rule but by using a rule in the interpretation, expression or negotiation of meaning.

Discourse competence is concerned not with isolated words or phrases but with the interconnectedness of a series of utterances, written words and/or phrases to build a text, a meaningful whole. Two familiar concepts to talk about discourse competence are text coherence and cohesion. Text coherence is the relation of all sentences or utterances in a text to a single global proposition. Local connections or structural links between individual sentences provide cohesion.

Sociocultural competence extends well beyond linguistic forms and is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry having to do with the social rules of language use. Sociocultural competence requires an understanding of the social context where language is used: the roles of the participants, the information they share, and the function of the interation. And although we are far from an adequate description of sociocultural rules of appropriateness, we use them to communicate successfully in many different contexts of situation. Sociocultural competence also includes a willingness to suspend judgement and take into consideration the possibility of cultural differences in convention and use. Thus the importance of the term cultural flexibility or cultural awareness.

The ‘’ideal native speaker,’’ someone who knows a language perfectly and uses it appropriately in all social interactions, exists in theory only. None of us knows all there is to know of English in its many manifestations, both around the world and in our own backyards. Communicative competence is always relative. The coping strategies we use in unfamiliar contexts, with constraints due to imperfect knowledge of rules or limiting factors in their application such as fatigue or distraction, are represented as strategic competence. With practice and experience, we gain in grammatical, discourse, and socio-cultural competence. The relative importance of strategic competence thus decreases. However, the effective use of coping strategies is important for communicative competence in all contexts and distinguishes highly competent communicators from those who are less so.

(Sandra J. Savignon. Communicative language teaching for the twenty-first century. IN: Marianne

Celce-Murcia. Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston, Massachusstes:

Heinle&Heinle. 3rd edition. 2002. Adaptado)

Through practice and experience in an increasingly wide range of communicative contexts and events, learners gradually expand their communicative competence, consisting of grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociocultural competence and strategic competence. All these components are interrelated. An increase in one component interacts with other components to produce a corresponding increase in overall communicative competence.

Grammatical competence refers to sentence-level grammatical form, the ability to recognize the lexical, morphological, syntactic and phonological feature of a language and to make use of these features to interpret and form words and whole sentences. One demonstrates grammatical competence not by stating a rule but by using a rule in the interpretation, expression or negotiation of meaning.

Discourse competence is concerned not with isolated words or phrases but with the interconnectedness of a series of utterances, written words and/or phrases to build a text, a meaningful whole. Two familiar concepts to talk about discourse competence are text coherence and cohesion. Text coherence is the relation of all sentences or utterances in a text to a single global proposition. Local connections or structural links between individual sentences provide cohesion.

Sociocultural competence extends well beyond linguistic forms and is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry having to do with the social rules of language use. Sociocultural competence requires an understanding of the social context where language is used: the roles of the participants, the information they share, and the function of the interation. And although we are far from an adequate description of sociocultural rules of appropriateness, we use them to communicate successfully in many different contexts of situation. Sociocultural competence also includes a willingness to suspend judgement and take into consideration the possibility of cultural differences in convention and use. Thus the importance of the term cultural flexibility or cultural awareness.

The ‘’ideal native speaker,’’ someone who knows a language perfectly and uses it appropriately in all social interactions, exists in theory only. None of us knows all there is to know of English in its many manifestations, both around the world and in our own backyards. Communicative competence is always relative. The coping strategies we use in unfamiliar contexts, with constraints due to imperfect knowledge of rules or limiting factors in their application such as fatigue or distraction, are represented as strategic competence. With practice and experience, we gain in grammatical, discourse, and socio-cultural competence. The relative importance of strategic competence thus decreases. However, the effective use of coping strategies is important for communicative competence in all contexts and distinguishes highly competent communicators from those who are less so.

(Sandra J. Savignon. Communicative language teaching for the twenty-first century. IN: Marianne

Celce-Murcia. Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston, Massachusstes:

Heinle&Heinle. 3rd edition. 2002. Adaptado)