A Proposal for Global-Change Education based on an educational board game: A Planet on the Abyss

Departamento de Didáctica de las Ciencias Experimentales, Faculatd de Ciencias de la Educación, Campus la Cartuja, s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain

^* Corresponding author: mmvaquez@ugr.es

Abstract

“Global change” is a complex term still widely unknown, and often confused with climate change. The Spanish Secondary School Curriculum indicates that the idea of global change is absent. Globalchange components are distributed among different subjects and courses. This scattering of the subject matter hinders students from gaining a cohesive understanding of global change and its implications. The main objective of this proposal is to develop an educational approach aimed at expanding children's knowledge regarding global change, and fomenting awareness of the interrelations between human actions and this environmental crisis. In addition, we seek to aid students in understanding that the adoption of certain practices could help them achieve a sustainable lifestyle. To this end, we have designed and manufactured a prototype board game called “A Planet on the Abyss”, with a cooperative play. The pilot study realized have showed that the students recognize that Global Change incorporates more components than climate change and the students related Global Change with an anthropocentric origin and they became to use new terms, such as habitats, ecosystems, deforestation, etc.