Suchergebnisse

Purpose
This study aims to introduce a new instrument to assess the perception of the university community after the Climate Emergency Declaration (CED) and its application at the Universidad de Salamanca (USAL) in Spain. This CED includes a comprehensive program to reduce the carbon footprint and the introduction of the education for sustainable development in the curriculum. This study aims to understand the gap between perception and reality in the program's implementation and verify whether the student organization's initial push translates into higher approval ratings.


Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a cross-sectional analytical study. In this research, the authors used a sample of 731 people from the USAL community (67% students, 20% academics and the rest administrative and service staff).


Findings
The findings revealed that PhD students are the group with the highest perception of the policies implemented by the university to fight climate change, even higher than academics. In addition, the perception of the food, energy and sustainable mobility aspects of the program are good predictors: of the knowledge of the indicators and of the policy dimensions within the CED.


Originality/value
The university community perception survey for a CED process provides a gateway into the gaps between perception, expectations and reality. Moreover, it is helpful to engage its members in action plans to fight climate change and its impacts.

Purpose
This study aims to describe the process leading the climate emergency declaration (CED) at the University of Salamanca. In contrast to similar initiatives, this was achieved with the participation of students on the social movement Fridays For Future Salamanca.


Design/methodology/approach
The context of the CED is described. Statements in Spanish universities are used for comparison and internal reports and evaluations were analyzed to measure the progress. Testimonies from the proponents of the declaration and from the agents implementing actions were classified to describe the roles and dynamics involved in the participatory process. Twitter and newspapers are also used to complete the data triangulation.


Findings
The results show that Climate Emergency has been enriched by a bottom-up approach, generating challenges and opportunities to take into account when considering community participation. A university that aspires to be a role model for a low-carbon future needs to address how to construct efficient participatory mechanisms. In that matter, the authors propose their experience that might be useful for other institutions.


Originality/value
The CED is a common practice in universities but it is not always associated with specific actions and policies. In this case, the main feature is the students participation, in particular the social movement Fridays For Future.

AbstractEducation needs to be at the forefront of the efforts to mitigate and adapt to Climate Change (CC) effects. We have introduced the Climate Change Competence (C3) to provide a comprehensive route to include the topics of sustainability and CC into the curriculum. This paper analyses how different primary and secondary teachers can improve this competence using a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on the basic science of CC. While the improvement in knowledge is expected, we have observed important advances on abilities, and attitudes on CC which are also essential to teach about CC mitigation and adaptation. The present study used a pre-experimental design, with pre-and post-test measurements with a sample of 530 students. While the MOOC focuses on the Science of CC, the participants also advance in attitudes and abilities, revealing an important correlation between these three dimensions of competence. Also, the study reveals that the MOOC improves the C3 in all the participants, but it does in diverse ways for diverse groups.