From the next school year, a common course on climate change will be made available to secondary schools in Flanders to bridge the gap between education and science and improve awareness of environmental challenges among young people.
'Klimaatlink' ("Climate link" in Dutch) is the name given to the four educational lesson packs developed by scientists at the University of Antwerp's Global Change Ecology Centre, the aim being to educate the next generation and provide them with solutions to the current climate crisis
Additionally, the programme was co-created with teacher teams from several schools and responds to a rising need for instruction on the subject, which Eric Struyf, manager of the Global Change Ecology Centre, has endeavoured to provide through Klimaatlink.
Klimaatlink's content
One of the project's coordinators, Arne Ven, provided further information about the courses' content, stating that "we start with basic science and then turn to more concrete solutions with regards to climate transition."
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This was done in order to "focus on sociological and economic difficulties," all while including a lot of practical theory, he said. "For example, we enable students to track climate change in their own environment, with the packages including a number of experiments."
In the long term, the plan is for further packages to be developed in conjunction with industry and non-governmental organisations.
