It's Our Future, Ask Us: Including The Voices of Children & Teenagers in Geoscience Research

Abstract:

The world is facing a future of rising temperature, rising sea levels, and rising incidences of natural disasters. Decisions in environmental, scientific, and educational policy being made now will determine what kind of world today’s children and teenagers will inherit when they come of age in an era of climate change. This paper arises from ongoing educational research undertaken in Irish secondary schools, examining student engagement with and understanding of geoscientific topics, and particularly climate change. Central to this research is the use of Children’s Research Advisory Groups (CRAGs). Building from the work of Lundy & McEvoy (2009) and Murphy et al. (2013), CRAGs are a method of including and centring children’s and teenagers' voices in research that will affect them including geoscience/climate education research, policy-oriented research on climate-related issues, or local environmental research. This paper will detail the implementation of this highly successful method for sharing all phases of geoscientific and climate-focused research with children and teenagers, from initial scoping, to research instrument design, to data analysis, and right through to dissemination. A recent study on Earth Science in the Irish formal education system will be used as an example. A key finding from this study is that an overwhelming majority of current junior secondary school students in Ireland, irrespective of demographics, consider climate change an important issue, one that worries them. They want to be better equipped to engage with it and tackle it. The CRAGs method shares power and influence with young people, equipping them with knowledge, skills, and purpose to respond to a changing climate, in their role as co-researchers. In turn, the young co-researchers improve and deepen the data collected, providing valuable insight and a different perspective. Building climate engagement among young people, without burdening them with fear, guilt, and hopelessness, is vital. In order to do that, the voices of children and teenagers themselves must not only be included, but centred, and the use of CRAGs is a practical method for doing just that.