Update on PCAPS Comms summer project
During this Northern Hemisphere summer, our two PCAPS Communication Fellows, Linn Bolin Haakenstad and Amanda Skogjordet have been looking at the standard course objectives in the Norwegian high school curriculum, to see if there are potential opportunities for students to learn about polar research. Looking through all the course objectives, Linn and Amanda have made some interesting observations so far. The next step in the project will be interviewing teachers in Norwegian high schools to understand more if and how polar research is taught in their classrooms.
Linn working on the project this summer. Photo credit: Linn Bolin Haakenstad
The plan this summer was to find out if polar research is taught in Norwegian high schools. This was done by first categorizing the course objectives, used across the Norwegian high school system, to get a more in-depth understanding of each objective.
We have categorized the course objectives into the following categories: polar, weather, climate, environment, health, Indigenous people, literature, infrastructure, agriculture, economics, and social.
The observations we made suggested that very few of the course objectives directly mentioned polar research. We needed therefore to look at the course objectives a bit differently. Since teachers ultimately decide how to structure their classroom topics, we looked at the course objectives that could potentially be linked to polar research.
There are some course objectives that have a direct link to the polar regions, such as those related to the Indigenous people of Norway. These objectives can be found in the following courses: Geography; Norwegian; Social Science; Religion and Ethics; History and Philosophy; Legal Studies; Politics and Human Rights.
There were also some course objectives that could be relevant in the natural science courses, but these were mostly found in courses such as Physics and Earth Science. We also found it interesting even in courses like Chemistry and Biology, there were very few opportunities for links to polar research.
For the relevant course objectives, we wanted to look at how these course objectives also relate to PCAPS’ Objectives. For example, most of the relevant course objectives found in Earth Science 2 mostly relate to PCAPS’ Predict Objective. For relevant course objectives in social sciences, most of them could be linked to PCAPS’ Partnership Objective.
Relevant course objectives divided into the different PCAPS Objectives. Figure by Linn Bolin Haakenstad
However, we believe that polar research can be relevant for many different course topics in Norwegian high schools, due to the fact that 9% of the Norwegian population lives above the Arctic Circle. We look forward to getting a more in-depth knowledge about the specific topics used in the classroom via interviews with Norwegian high school teachers.
Interviews with teachers will take place in late August and early September. The interviews will help determine if polar research is taught in Norwegian schools, and/or if there is a possibility that polar research may be taught more in the future. We are excited to share the outcome of our work later this year!