Science With Purpose: What My Research Taught Me About Teaching Climate Change

by Marina Baltikian, St Paul's College

This year at St Paul's College, our school theme is With Purpose, a theme that resonates deeply with SASTA's July focus on Science with Purpose. I am a science teacher here in South Australia, and I have recently submitted my PhD dissertation to the University of Eastern Finland, researching scientific literacy and how young people think about climate change. Before joining St Paul's College, I taught science across three countries, including China. That experience across different classrooms and educational contexts has given me a perspective I want to share, one grounded equally in research and in the day-to-day realities of teaching secondary science.

The problem in the room

Ask most secondary students whether climate change is real and urgent. The majority will say yes. Ask them to explain the greenhouse effect, rising sea levels, or the carbon cycle; many can do that too. But watch what happens when you ask them what they actually feel about it, or what they think should be done. That is often where the conversation stalls.

This gap between knowing and caring is not a failure of effort. It is a signal that something in how we teach climate science needs to shift. And I now have three peer-reviewed studies that help explain why.

What the research found

My PhD research examined scientific literacy and the socio-scientific issue of climate change attitudes among Lebanese secondary school students, 130 students across Grades 10 to 12 in private schools in Beirut. Three studies emerged from that work, and together they tell a story that I believe is directly relevant to science classrooms here in South Australia.

The first study, published in the EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education (2024), found that the majority of students had very low scientific literacy. Most struggled to evaluate scientific arguments, interpret data, or assess the credibility of sources. These are foundational skills, and they were largely absent.

The second study, published in the International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology (2025), complicated that picture in a revealing way. Despite low scientific literacy, students showed strong awareness of climate change and broadly recognised it as urgent. They knew it was a problem. The knowledge was there, at least in part. But something else was missing.

The third study, published in the International Journal of Science Education (2025), brought it all together. When I examined which factors actually predicted students' sense of climate change urgency, scientific literacy, socio-scientific attitudes, grade level, and gender, only one emerged as statistically significant: their attitudes toward socio-scientific issues. Not their content knowledge. Not how long they had been studying science. Just their attitudes.

In plain terms, students who were more engaged with the ethical, societal, and values-based dimensions of science were more likely to acknowledge that climate change demanded urgent action. Students who had simply learned more content were not.

It is worth noting that the student groups across grade levels were not evenly distributed, so these findings should be interpreted with appropriate caution rather than as definitive conclusions. That said, the pattern they reveal is consistent with a growing body of international research pointing in the same direction.

What this means for your classroom

If attitudes drive urgency more than content knowledge, then the way we frame and facilitate climate lessons matters enormously. Here are three practical shifts worth considering.

1. Use climate change as a socio-scientific issue, not just a science

Socio-scientific issues sit at the intersection of science, ethics, society, and values, and climate change is the most prominent example of our time. When we teach it purely as content (causes, effects, evidence), we are activating only one dimension of student engagement. When we treat it as a socio-scientific issue, asking who is responsible, what is fair, whose voices matter, what should we prioritise, we activate the attitudinal dimensions that my research suggests are far more powerful in building genuine urgency. Even a single discussion question reframed this way can shift the energy in the room.

2. Build values-based reflection into your lessons alongside factual

Rather than ending a climate lesson with a comprehension check, try ending it with a reflection prompt: What does this make you feel? Who do you think bears the most responsibility? What would you be willing to change? These are not soft add-ons to the real lesson; they are the pedagogical core of what my research suggests actually moves students from awareness to concern. Science and ethics are not competing priorities. They belong together.

3. Make urgency personal and local

My research found that urgency did not increase simply because students knew more facts. It grew when students connected the issue to something that felt real, relevant, and morally significant to them. Here in South Australia, we are not short of locally grounded climate stories,

heatwaves, bushfire seasons, changing agricultural conditions, and coastal pressures. Anchoring climate science in the world students actually inhabit is not a distraction from the curriculum. It is precisely the bridge that research says we need to build.

A final thought

Science with purpose means more than teaching science well. It means teaching science in ways that help young people feel equipped and genuinely compelled to act. My research suggests that the missing ingredient is rarely more content; it is more deliberate engagement with the values, ethics, and societal dimensions that make science matter in the first place.

That feels very much in the spirit of what With Purpose means to us at St Paul's College this year. And I hope it resonates with science teachers across South Australia, too.

If you would like to explore the research behind these ideas, all three studies are openly accessible:

• Baltikian, M., Kärkkäinen, S., & Kukkonen, J. (2024). Assessment of scientific literacy levels among secondary school students in Lebanon: Exploring gender-based differences. EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and           Technology Education. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/14279
• Baltikian, M., Kärkkäinen, S., & Kukkonen, J. (2025). Exploring secondary school students' attitudes toward socio-scientific issues with a focus on climate change attitudes. International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology. https://doi.org/10.46328/ijemst.4735
• Baltikian, M., Kärkkäinen, S., & Kukkonen, J. (2025). Adolescents' attitudes toward climate change urgency: the role of scientific literacy and socio-scientific engagement. International Journal of Science Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2025.2573050