Science for Understanding Tomorrow's World: Global Change

Science for Understanding Tomorrow's World: Global Change is a book containing student activities and teacher guidance for courses for the 16–20 age range in biology, chemistry, earth sciences, physics and general studies. The resources were developed by the Education in Global Change Project and published by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) with support of UNESCO. The Education in Global Change Project was the result of a worldwide collaboration between science teachers, in schools, colleges and universities, and research scientists.

The units explore scientific principles in the context of key contemporary environmental issues in order to help students towards an understanding of issues such as the protection of the ozone layer, the impacts of enhancement of the greenhouse effect and the destruction of the rain forests.

The six units are: 

• The changing atmosphere
• Clues from the past: glimpses of our future
• The global carbon cycle
• Population and land use
• Oceans
• Remote sensing: window on global change Key features 

The six units are interdisciplinary.

Each unit has been designed to:

• cover key scientific concepts
• illustrate science in context of important environmental issues
• encourage student participation
• encourage skills such as data interpretation, decision making, and communication
• illustrate the positive role played by scientists in society How to use the units Each unit is made up of a series of student activities which include laboratory experiments, data interpretation and decision-making exercises.

There is also a variety of opportunities for writing - abstracts, commentaries, reports, proposals. Indexes show where different types of activities occur in the units and where key scientific concepts occur.

The units may be used in different ways:

• as a whole unit, occupying up to 10-12 lessons
• in existing courses, as single activities to illustrate a specific scientific principle or an environmental issue
• reassembled by taking components from more than one unit to produce a unit, specific to the school or college