From Global to Local

The global scale of climate change may seem beyond many high school students' comprehension. To complicate matters, climate change has emerged as a political issue that pits candidates, neighbors, and sometimes teachers and students against each other (Kahan 2015). The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) call on science teachers to incorporate climate change concepts into their lessons, which can be a daunting task. This article describes one way to do so: an ecology unit that uses a socio-scientific issue (SSI) approach.