The Danish Ministry of Education is making a special effort to encourage pupils/students, teachers and schools to put the climate on the agenda in the year 2008/09. It happens through a series of initiatives for primary and lower secondary education, youth education programmes and relevant tertiary education.
The initiatives are based on five key perspectives which will be dealt with differently depending on educational programmes, the proficiency of students and teaching context:
- Knowledge perspective - what do we know about Earth's climate and factors that affect it?
- Action and behavioural perspective - what can be done to limit global warming?
- Technology and community perspective - which technologies / production forms in existence could help limit the greenhouse effect? What are the socio-economic conditions for the spread of these technologies / production forms?
- Future Perspective – future sustainable technologies, practices and dissemination
- Socio-economic perspective - issues connected to climate change, including:
a) how will climate change and efforts to improve the climate influence economic growth?
b) security aspects of climate and energy policy.
The project includes:
- A national dissemination and networking project, which includes a learning tool database, network of climate teachers, network of climate facilitators (institutions offering advanced level programmes, museums, informal learning environments, enterprises etc.), conferences, teaching staff meetings etc.
- A special climate topic on the EMU - Denmark's educational website portal – aiming at primary and secondary school, vocational training and education and the general upper secondary programme.
- Cooperation between the projects "Climate Education" and "Education for Sustainable Development"
- Support for a number of educational projects, as they become ready for dissemination.