Abstract:

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development brings new challenges in the field of education research and its importance as a priority area for action. Climate change is one of these priorities. To solve or minimize the problems that arise, not solely public policies are needed but also new scientific, technological, and educational solutions. Not only it is urgent to know the importance that society is giving to this issue, but it is also essential to understand the perception and the current level of literacy of the population on climate change. In this context, we proposed to carry out a mixed methodology research. To know the perception of children in the first and second cycle of elementary education in schools in Portugal about climate change, we used a Likert scale questionnaire adapted to children, and this instrument was validated by the Portuguese Directorate General of Education. Based on the results, we intend to propose activities to enrich the literacy skills of the participants in this study. Since there are no studies of this nature conducted in Portugal with children of this age group, we believe that this study can be an added value, as it meets the 2030 agenda, particularly goal number 13, which refers to the mitigation of climate change issues and goal number 4, which refers to Quality Education. This theme is also addressed in the referential of education for sustainable development and in the national strategy of education for citizenship. The results of this kind of research may suggest the need for greater responsibility of governments and schools towards the sustainable development goals of the 2030 Agenda. The results are in line with the findings of other studies in the literature review, which show a lack of knowledge on this topic. There seems to be some difficulty on the part of the school in raising awareness about climate change, as alerted by a project done by the School Education Gateway in 2020, which showed that teachers in countries such as Spain, Turkey, Romania, and Canada do not have adequate skills to educate students about climate change, and such situation is reflected in the students' perception. Knowing this, we think that schools have the responsibility to contribute to the promotion of pro-environmental values, attitudes, and behaviors. So if we do nothing, our lives will be significantly affected by climate change. Society, schools, governments must prepare us to adapt to the climate crisis and must also enable us to contribute to solutions to achieve climate justice and mitigate the problem. In this context, it is essential to know the perceptions and literacy level of the populations and subsequently propose changes or educational reforms that meet Unesco's commitments to find solutions that help mitigate the climate crisis.

Acknowledgments:
This work has been supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UIDB/05777/2020
Affiliation: Research Centre in Basic Education (CIEB), Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Portugal

Keywords:

Education, sustainable development, climate change.