Climate change, AI and misinformation are reshaping how young people experience the world - but science education hasn’t always kept pace. This conversation explores what teaching science looks like when uncertainty, complexity and change become part of everyday learning.
Climate change, AI and misinformation are reshaping how young people experience the world - but science education hasn’t always kept pace. This conversation explores what teaching science looks like when uncertainty, complexity and change become part of everyday learning.
In this episode, Sara Tolbert and Jesse Chambers explore what science education can look like in the Anthropocene - and why learning science today involves far more than simply memorising facts and formulas.
Together, they discuss how inquiry, experimentation and real-world problem solving can help students engage more deeply with complex issues, the role of uncertainty in learning and why creating space for curiosity, discussion and agency is more critical than ever.
(00:00) Teaching Science in a Changing World
(02:11) What the Anthropocene Means for Education
(05:05) Science Education Through a Youth Lens
(08:04) Moving Beyond Facts and Formulas
(12:41) Connecting Curriculum to Community and Place
(18:12) Student Agency and Real-World Problem Solving
(21:13) The Risk of Teaching Science Without Context
(22:32) Climate Change, AI and Cross-Disciplinary Learning
(26:22) What Engagement Looks Like in Practice
(29:58) Why Science Education Needs to Evolve
Special Guests:
Professor Sara Tolbert
Senior Lecturer, School of Learning and Teaching
Faculty of Education, Monash University
Professor and researcher specialising in science education, inquiry learning and the Anthropocene.
Jesse Chambers
Deputy Head, Learning Programs, Science Gallery Melbourne
Learning and engagement specialist designing public science experiences that connect young people with inquiry, experimentation and real-world issues.
Resources:
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[00:00] Rebecca Cooper: This podcast is recorded on the land of the Boon Wurrung people of the Eastern Kulin Nation. We'd like to pay our respect to elders past and present and acknowledge that this land was stolen and never ceded. Welcome to Let's Talk Teaching, the podcast created by teachers for teachers.
[00:19] Jesse Chambers: Young people don't live in a vacuum. They turn the news on and they can see everything that's going on.
[00:25] Sara Tolbert: It's time to take a moment to think about how do we educate in this particular time period and how do we help them use science in a way that kind of empowers them to navigate some of these real issues.
[00:39] Rebecca Cooper: Young people today are navigating challenges like climate change, AI, and misinformation in real time, not as future problems, but as part of their everyday lives. Many of these issues are complex are uncertain and don't have clear answers.
[00:55] But the way we teach science hasn't always kept pace with that shift. In science education, this is often framed through the idea of the Anthropocene, a way of understanding how these challenges are connected and what that means for how we teach and learn.
[01:11] Sara Tolbert: I do think a lot of these issues and challenges really require us to think from a more holistic perspective, to think with both science and humanities, with the arts, all kind of at the same time. And I know that's really difficult, especially in secondary settings, but I think it's a challenge that we have to take up.
[01:30] Rebecca Cooper: I'm Associate Professor Rebecca Cooper, Assistant Dean of Initial Teacher Education at Monash University's Faculty of Education. Each episode, we bring together education experts and alumni to unpack real challenges in the classroom. With insights you can apply in your own teaching practice.
[01:48] Joining me today is Professor Sarah Talbot, whose work explores how science education can move beyond content alone to help students navigate and respond to real-world issues. And Jessie Chambers from Science Gallery Melbourne, who designs learning experiences that connect young people with science through inquiry, experimentation, and public engagement.
[02:10] Jesse Chambers: G'day.
[02:11] Rebecca Cooper: Sarah, when we talk about the Anthropocene in education, what does that actually change about how we teach science?
[02:18] Sara Tolbert: Sure, and thanks for the invitation to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you and with Jesse about these important topics. It's really exactly what you just described, Bec. It's that idea that we're not necessarily teaching for certainty anymore, and I think students and young people and children are experiencing this on a daily basis.
[02:37] And so what does that mean for science education? The Anthropocene is unofficially traditionally a geological period of time, epoch or era, what have you, that defines the moment, right? Which is that we're facing extreme ecological crisis that's also accompanied by sociopolitical crisis.
[02:59] We've got climate change that I think children and youth are seeing the effects of on a daily basis. So we're thinking about how to mitigate, how to adapt. We've got uncertainty in terms of the job market. It used to be that STEM degree programs and coursework was kind of a, a certain future in the job market, and that's less clear today because of the impact of AI and things like that.
[03:20] And so I think it's, it's just, it's time to take a moment to think about how do we educate in this particular time period, and how do we create contexts that are meaningful for, for children and youth through science education? How do we help them see science as a tool for empowerment?
[03:37] How do we help them see, um, the affordances and constraints of science as a knowledge system, and how do we help them use science in a way that kind of empowers them to navigate some of these real issues and attend to the ways that those issues play out in their own everyday lives and in their communities.
[03:58] Rebecca Cooper: And so are we seeing kids coming to class maybe a little concerned? Like, is there a sense of kids actually being very conscious and aware of the time and the space they're living in?
[04:14] Sara Tolbert: I think so. I think there's a range of experiences, right? I think you see children and young people who are very concerned and very upset. I've had young people refer to it as climate depression. But you also see young people who are— it's kind of too much.
[04:32] It seems overwhelming in terms of the kind of information that they're getting. They're trying to sort out and make sense of it all and maybe checking out a little bit because it just feels like too much. So I think there are a range of reactions and experiences. And then you have children and youth who are just trying to make it through their everyday lives.
[04:51] They've still got the same kind of daily tasks that they have to face. I know I have a daughter who's in year 11, and it's really just trying to study and get through the exams, right? So it's a range of experiences that they're facing right now.
[05:05] Rebecca Cooper: Which also means that it's a range of experiences that teachers are facing in classrooms. And so, Jessie, I'll bring you in here. Can you tell us a a little bit about your role and your work.
[05:16] Jesse Chambers: So I get to work with a fantastic group of people at a place called Science Gallery Melbourne, which is part of a global network of galleries that are located in universities. And it's really youth-led, and it's centred around youth voice. So we have a youth advisory group that tells us what they care about, what they don't care about.
[05:34] And one of the top issues that they tell us that they care about is the climate. And so when we're creating educational workshops and programs at Science Gallery, it's very front of mind the concept of trying to instill hope, especially in climate education.
[05:50] And so for our next exhibition, which is called Emergen-cy, and it's a very deliberate play on the word emergency with the Y in brackets, and we're leading with the word emergence because when we create programming, we want students to explore innovative ways, new technologies, new solutions that can instill that sense of hope in a world which is so uncertain, as Sarah was mentioning, because young people don't live in a vacuum.
[06:14] No. They turn the news on and they can see everything that's going on. And so when we're thinking about the types of programs that we make, we need to keep that at the front of our mind.
[06:26] Rebecca Cooper: As Sarah said, they're having that huge range of reactions to things. So you said you've got a youth advisory group?
[06:33] Jesse Chambers: A youth advisory group, that's right.
[06:34] Rebecca Cooper: Yeah, okay.
[06:35] Jesse Chambers: It's called Sci-Curious.
[06:36] Rebecca Cooper: Right.
[06:37] Jesse Chambers: And it's a group of young people aged 15 to 25.
[06:40] Rebecca Cooper: Okay, and where have they come from? How have they connected with you?
[06:44] Jesse Chambers: So they express interest in being part of that group. We do an intake every few years as young people age out of that group. And they tell us what they care about, what they don't care about, the issues that matter to them. And that leads the themes of the exhibitions that we put together.
[06:59] So they tell us that they care about climate, they care about the future, they care about technology. And we go through these big ideation sessions with them where they lay it out on the table. Yeah. They tell us what keeps them up at night. A really great example of that is actually in a previous exhibition that we had, we wanted to put a show on about dark matter and particle physics, and we were doing that in collaboration with Arts@CERN, so the Large Hadron Collider.
[07:25] And of course, as the science nerds that we are, we thought that was fantastic.
[07:30] Sara Tolbert: Yeah.
[07:30] Jesse Chambers: But we presented this idea to young people, and they said, "Look, that's great. We'd love to learn about particle physics." But we know that there are so many more issues at stake. So why don't we add the S to the end of that show? So Dark Matter became a show called Dark Matters.
[07:47] And they explored all manner of issues that they cared about. So taboo science, the science that we don't talk about, climate that may not be spoken about as much in classrooms, but there are ways that we can teach that in our classrooms that provide students with a sense of hope.
[08:04] Mm-hmm.
[08:04] Rebecca Cooper: Sense of hope seems really important in your work, Jesse. What do you think in your work helps bring that hope? What is it that actually, I suppose, inspires or activates that sense of hope?
[08:19] Jesse Chambers: I think back to the curriculum. There's this part of the curriculum in design and technologies which talks about preferred futures. And with young people, when we use speculative thinking, it's our bread and butter at Science Gallery. We love to use speculative thinking because it encourages young people to think about a world which they would want to live, a preferred future which may include emerging and speculative materials that don't even exist yet.
[08:44] And so getting them to think in new and innovative ways about how they could solve the challenges that they've inherited from the past and that we're facing in the present. So there's that speculative element that gets them thinking really big, and then we use design thinking to help them craft the solutions to solve those challenges.
[09:02] Rebecca Cooper: So there's some sort of strategy, Sarah, that I can see transferring really nicely into the classroom. But what else are you seeing happening in classrooms at the moment in terms of teaching to support that sort of future version of, or future vision of science?
[09:18] Sara Tolbert: Right, I think, well, I mean, like Jessie mentioned, I think one of the biggest challenges is the challenge of imagination. And I think children and youth are really great at that. And I think sometimes as adults, we get caught up in the constraints, we get caught up in the formalities, we get caught up in the way things always have been. That we forget that we can use the power of imagination to bring about a different type of teaching and learning, to bring about a different type of classroom experience.
[09:44] What can we do within the four walls of a classroom? There's actually quite a bit that we can do that's pretty powerful and can be empowering for children and young people. So I think there's that. The work that I've done has always mostly been in partnership with educators so that we can put our heads together alongside youth and say, okay, what is it that we can do in the context of the classroom constraints that we're all facing.
[10:08] What does that look like? What kinds of things might we like to study while still meeting the criteria that we need to meet as formal science educators? And, and there really is a lot, I think, in the area of speculative, speculative fiction, for example. I mean, kids love that.
[10:23] But also partnering with community organizations that often will come to the classroom and are incredibly eager to do so. University partners. So a lot of times I've acted as a liaison and being the communicator between the school, the young people I often work with, with a youth research group within the classroom, the young people who tell me what, you know, how they're feeling about what we're doing in the classroom, the teachers who tell me what they'd like to see happen and the resources they wish they had, and then the community partners who are looking for the teachers who wish, you know,
[10:53] who would like to partner with them. How can we get this out into the schools who are developing amazing resources and really want to do more what they would call outreach, right? Mm-hmm. And so it's just bringing, it's connecting the dots and being the liaison.
[11:09] So a lot of my work really is about that. And then from there, kind of building exemplars. So this is what is possible, right? So I think teachers are also very creative, actually, when they're given the opportunity. And so this is what is possible. This is what we did here. Here's a case study. What does that look like for you?
[11:25] How might we be able to make this work for you? And so I've done a lot of work across the world, really, in Arizona. I started teaching in New York City, and I worked at Arizona with teachers for a while in South Tucson, looking at how we can develop science curricula and science learning experience around local matters of concern, I guess, that are connected to global challenges as well.
[11:47] And then we did a lot of partnering with community organizations, College of Public Health, College of Science, for example, at University of Arizona. But then in Aotearoa, New Zealand, where I was more recently for 6 years, had a similar approach where I worked with a school and— Mm-hmm. A secondary educator, science educator, who wanted to do more work around bringing Indigenous knowledge into the classroom.
[12:08] And so I was sort of the liaison in that space. And I started by going to talk to the people that I needed to talk to, who had the authority to kind of let us know who we should talk to next, right? And develop the curriculum around what, you know, mana whenua, the local Indigenous iwi, for example, had in mind for their students or for that area.
[12:29] And then we developed science curricula around those issues, around that kind of place-based learning and environmental challenges, but from an Indigenous perspective.
[12:41] Rebecca Cooper: So what I'm really hearing is that it's about bringing together the curriculum, which yes, can be a bit constraining sometimes, with the issues that kids are interested in and something local, something community-based or an industry group that's got the resources to bring into the classroom and putting all of those together to get that richness.
[13:03] Fantastic. And is that the sort of things you're seeing happening in your space, Jesse?
[13:09] Jesse Chambers: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's something really special that can happen when you have formal learning contexts and non-formal learning contexts overlap with one another. And so we see that with the partnerships that we have at Science Gallery. We have partnerships with 25 schools funded by the Victorian Government.
[13:26] Where we're providing educational experiences for those schools on a regular basis. So it's not just a one-off excursion to a gallery or museum in a traditional setting. It's actually supporting their learning back at school. We see 200 other-plus schools that come and visit us throughout the year to support the learning that happens in classes.
[13:44] One of the great things about cultural organizations is that, like Sarah was saying, they're always looking to connect with people. And we are and can be a conduit for connecting schools to other people. In our case, we like to say that we are a school in a gallery in a university, and so we're at the nexus of academics, we're at the nexus of industry, and we have this unique opportunity to connect students with these amazing exhibitions that we,
[14:15] we have twice a year at Science Gallery. So a really good example of that is a program that we run for the Mary Beck North Education Plan. So there are a series of schools, 4 schools in the Mary Beck Council area that we connect with industry partners and they present real challenges to those schools that they're trying to solve.
[14:36] And so it's an inter-school program where the students, they're not bogged down by adult brains. They see things through a youth lens and are able to see solutions that adults may not be able to see. And it's really lovely because at the end of that program, they close the loop and they get to present their ideas back to those industry partners.
[14:53] And in doing so, they see immediate relevance. Mm-hmm. And so it connects to, you know, what they care about for their own future.
[15:02] Rebecca Cooper: Sarah, what have you seen in your work in terms of kids then, you know, perhaps in the way that kids respond to these sorts of opportunities for their learning?
[15:13] Sara Tolbert: Yeah, I think this— I was just talking with someone the other day about like, well, how do you measure the impact of this work? And that's such a challenge because the impact is so layered and nuanced and it's really hard to capture and often very individualized, right? On who you're talking to.
[15:28] And this student or this child might experience it one way, whereas someone else will have gotten something else out of it, right? So, and I think in science, we're often looking for like, what are the improvements to their scientific literacy? And I'm like, that's so narrow though, right?
[15:44] Like, there's so much more that's happening that you can't necessarily measure in the same way, but it's really about collecting the stories. And I think that's the most powerful impact that we can have when we wanna share what this type of work does and how it changes both youth and educators and the communities and the industry partners.
[16:03] It's those stories. And I think what I've seen is, as I was telling someone from CIRO actually the other day about a young girl that I worked with, she was 14 years old, and the impact of this kind of learning that she took away was like, "I feel smart now.
[16:18] I feel like I can go home and talk to the adults, like my dad's friends who come over, and I have something to say. I feel smart," you know? And then another student, in the same program who said, "Now I understand why my grandmother does what she does." And this was a Native American student, Tohono O'odham, and like, "Now I understand like what they're doing and why they say what they say," and things like that, you know, or the conservation practices, the household conservation practices.
[16:46] "I understand why I'm always being told to do this, that, or the other," or just their home and community experiences being reframed as, as knowledge holding. And so that's really impactful for some of them. And for others, it's just, they'll say things like, "Now I feel like inspired to do things.
[17:07] Like, I want to go and solve all the, you know, all the other problems in my community because I feel like, hey, I actually can do this in partnership with others." And I think that's the biggest piece of it. So that often comes back as a sense of like collective empowerment. Oh, when you work with with this organization or this partner or with these other, you know, people like that, they have some knowledge and resources and we have some knowledge and resources.
[17:28] And when we, when we come together, like we can actually do, we can make a real difference, even if it's small. You know, there was a group of students who ended up fundraising and presenting to the local neighborhood council to get some money to create, to get funding for a bridge. So when they were walking to school, that the area that they would walk through would be flooded.
[17:46] And so they got funding to create a pedestrian bridge in that area is very small. Thing, but the impact of that was being able to work with and look at the science and engineering of everything, of course, but also being able to work with local government, again, industry partners, community organizations alongside their teacher who was a real advocate for them in that space to actually make a difference for themselves and their families.
[18:11] Yeah.
[18:12] Rebecca Cooper: Jesse, does that resonate with you, that sense of empowerment and agency from students when they're engaging with your exhibitions?
[18:19] Jesse Chambers: Yeah, definitely. I think we're really fortunate in that because we're youth-led and already young people are telling us what they care about, there's an immediate hook that they're able to latch onto when they come into a science gallery exhibition. And just picking up on something that you said, Sarah, as well, about measuring the impact and looking for the impact that these kinds of programs can make, there's sometimes a lag time between the experience happening and when that impact can happen.
[18:46] And I think about my own experience of visiting science centres and galleries and museums as a young person and how formative they were in the career trajectory that I took myself. So I think there's some real benefit in looking longitudinally at how can these relationships actually impact learning in schools.
[19:05] Rebecca Cooper: So then how do we transfer some of this into classrooms so that it's happening on a more regular basis?
[19:15] Sara Tolbert: Well, my approach has always been, it's, it's gotta be a grassroots movement-based kind of approach. So thinking like a movement and connecting one teacher with another teacher with another teacher. And so a lot of the work that I've done has been just that. So starting small, working with one school or a couple of schools or a couple of teachers, and then coming together and it has kind of a snowball effect where they'll bring others who are interested in the work and, and come along.
[19:39] And that's the approach and the methodology that we're actually using right now for the science education in the Anthropocene Impact Lab here at Monash essentially is how can we connect Victorian educators to this work? How can we connect the different universities together? 'Cause we're all doing amazing work in our own spaces and then enhance our impact by bringing in all of those resources and experiences together, building collectives and also, you know, building power because at, at a certain level we need to be able to have some
[20:10] impact on education policy.
[20:11] Jesse Chambers: Mm-hmm.
[20:11] Sara Tolbert: So I think that is a really important aspect of this work. But it's always hearts and minds for me, yeah, first and foremost.
[20:18] Jesse Chambers: I would agree with Sarah. I think that for us, it's about two-way relationships. And so when we form partnerships with schools, we have to go at the pace of the school. You might have a really passionate teacher who's really keen to engage with us, and we take it very slow. And over time, like you were mentioning, Sarah, it can snowball within the school.
[20:38] I think getting leadership buy-in is really important as well because that can make such a difference in terms of where whether the partnership lasts. All too often you see cases of really passionate educators who will set something up like a sustainability group or like a partnership with a cultural organization or community group, and then when they leave the school setting, that partnership leaves with them.
[21:00] And so being able to get a team of people together and generate that interest within the school setting and then getting the student buy-in who— Yeah. Do that for you over time is really important as well.
[21:13] Rebecca Cooper: So what's the risk then if we don't start to think about science in relation to the Anthropocene?
[21:22] Sara Tolbert: That's a big question.
[21:22] Rebecca Cooper: It is a big question.
[21:24] Sara Tolbert: Oh, there's so many. Let's see, where do you want me to start? I feel like, and I think that evidence shows that we are in a sense pushing students out of science who are actually otherwise really interested, interested in science and interested in, like Jesse was talking about, some of these issues that are very much connected to science and socio-scientific issues, for example.
[21:50] Because we, if we continue to teach science, in a lot of ways we still do, as a set of decontextualized facts and theories, then even if, I mean, even if and when we use constructivist approaches to teaching that way, without the connection and the meaning and the purpose behind it, I think we are losing students who we shouldn't lose, you know, and I see that a lot on a regular basis.
[22:14] Yeah.
[22:15] Jesse Chambers: Discipline-specific knowledge is absolutely important. I think we can sometimes fall into the trap of leading with content before curiosity. So starting with that and starting with issues that matter to young people, they have their finger on the pulse and they know the issues that matter to them.
[22:32] And so, you know, I think about— we've just created an AI program at Science Gallery and we went in with great great intentions of wanting to create a program that teaches what AI is to young people and sort of the how to use it.
[22:48] But we presented that to our youth advisory group and they said, "Jessie, we already know about it. We use AI every day. So what do we want to explore about it?" Well, it's the ethical considerations of AI. What sets humans apart from AI? They want to get to the crux of that rather than leading with, "This is what machine learning is.
[23:07] Sara Tolbert: Let's unpack that." And I think that speaks to the need for more cross-disciplinary connections because I do think a lot of these issues and challenges really require us to think from a more holistic perspective, to think with both science and humanities, with the arts, all kind of at the same time.
[23:25] And I know that's really difficult, especially in secondary settings, but I think it's a challenge that we have to take up and in small ways and in all of the ways that we talked about through, um, a partner, uh, a partnership that's emerging right now with a teacher who teaches both science and humanities is, is gonna bring together some other teachers who are also kind of teaching across those subject areas to think about how we can address this, because a lot of these problems do require us to think about ethical issues.
[23:51] And I think it was Forbes magazine the other day just published something about how in the age of AI, we do need science-educated young people who have a, a robust foundation in the humanities at the same time. So making these connections is really important. Strengthening our relationships with other educators, maybe in the same school or thinking more programmatically around some of these big issues, how do we, first of all, first and foremost, I think this is critical, finding out what young people care about because, and I've used this, this quote
[24:21] several times, probably in the last session that we had together, but, um, that children and young people are always motivated to learn. I think sometimes we sort of see, oh, this, this is a science person and this is not. They're always curious about the world. Every, it's human nature to be interested in learning about the world, but we have to figure out what motivates them and what engages them and where that sense of curiosity, concern lie.
[24:44] And starting from that place, I think then there are multiple leverage points that we can draw from in order to kind of bring them in. And then you get the deep conceptual learning and then you get the really, you know, because you have to create that context, that need to know, that desire to know and understand, but that comes from the things the burning questions, the things that keep them up at night, that's where that starts.
[25:06] Jesse Chambers: Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's things that schools can do at a structural level that allows that innovation and that collaboration to occur. So whether it's, you know, having meetings across disciplines at the same time that facilitates that collaboration between teachers, starting with a small unit of work before you chew off more than you can swallow, I suppose.
[25:28] Starting small and then finding examples of where you could do something together. We had a school that came in and used one of the works in the gallery to explore the crossover between science and English, for example, and science fiction as a genre. And so there are many ways that you can do it, and I think with the support of school leadership, that can be made even easier.
[25:48] Sara Tolbert: Absolutely. And I think that point about starting small is really important because sometimes it can feel really overwhelming on top of everything else, and teachers are incredibly overworked. So starting with the— what is the one unit that we could focus on together this year, right? And then maybe next year we'll refine it a little bit, and then the following year we'll move to another one.
[26:06] I mean, I know we have the sense of urgency, but it's like we have to start somewhere, and that somewhere can be small, you know, because the one thing we're doing here at the school and compounded by the other thing that they're doing at the school, you know, down the street, those, those things add up and they do matter.
[26:22] Rebecca Cooper: So the world's moving pretty fast in terms of the way we're generating and getting information in. So you were talking about AI. They don't want to know how to use it. Got that, how are we going to deal with that moving forward?
[26:34] Jesse Chambers: I think the rate of technological and societal change is happening so quickly that as educators, we need to keep up with that change and keep on top of it. And so the role of an educator, in my view, is changing away from being that person who's the font of all knowledge and the expert to being the facilitator who asks the right questions.
[26:56] Sara Tolbert: Yeah, I agree with that. But I think also, you know, There's a lot of talk sometimes about back to basics and knowledge-rich curricula and things like that. And I think what we're seeing in the world with this fast pace is the way we access knowledge is inevitably changing, and that is fundamentally true, right?
[27:17] That's not going to be different. We're not going to go back to a situation necessarily where it is imperative that we all be encyclopedias. So I think that I think that is something that we can take with us as educators, but also I like to kind of flip the whole back to basics on its head because I think back to basics also means that we need to go back to what really matters underneath it all, which is the sense of connection and meaning.
[27:43] So how do we build connection? Because that's what we're gonna need. If we talk about adaptation and riding the storm together, Like, it's really about that sense of community working through all of this together, and we can do that.
[27:59] That's how science is done. So this is absolutely relevant to science education, and that's where I often start with, with pre-service teachers, especially in their first year, is it's collaboration, collective inquiry, learning how to have divergent perspectives, bring to bear multiple knowledge systems on these common complex problems that we all don't think the same way about this phenomenon.
[28:24] And that's great because that's how scientific progress happens, right? That's how we understand what we, what we do about the world around us. But we have to build the connection in order to be able to do that well. And so we have to work together as a community. And so what does that look like?
[28:39] And that is essential, like from, you know, early childhood, although early childhood, they're great at that. I wish, I wish we could do more collaborations across the, across the years, you know, with, with each but early childhood all the way to Year 11 and 12 and tertiary education, that is absolutely critical.
[28:59] And to me, that's back to basics.
[29:01] Jesse Chambers: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I think sometimes we draw arbitrary lines as well between young people. It's why our youth advisory group is 15 to 25. There isn't much difference between a Year 12 student and an undergraduate student at university. And they are generationally— they do care about very similar issues.
[29:18] And so I think in And adding to what Sarah was talking about, from an educator's point of view, also shifting away from not only content— and as I say, content is so important. It's really hard to solve the climate crisis if you don't know what the greenhouse effect is.
[29:35] Sara Tolbert: Yeah. Yeah.
[29:36] Jesse Chambers: But also developing the attitudes and dispositions in young people and the skills for asking the right questions and solving the challenges that they're going to face now and into the future.
[29:47] Rebecca Cooper: Thank you both for an incredible conversation. That was really wonderful and so insightful. Thank you both so much.
[29:55] Jesse Chambers: Thank you so much.
[29:56] Sara Tolbert: Thank you, Bec.
[29:58] Rebecca Cooper: It really highlights that students are already engaging with complex issues, often outside the classroom, and making sense of them in their own ways. For teachers, the question becomes how we create space for that kind of thinking, especially when there aren't clear answers.
[30:14] And what we've heard is that when students are given the chance to explore ideas, ask questions, and work through problems in more open-ended ways, their engagement shifts, and they start to see that they have a role in shaping what comes next.
[30:29] We've included a wealth of practical resources in our show notes that support your teaching journey. Be sure to check them out. If you're enjoying the show, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review, and follow us on social media. We are grateful for the support of Monash University's Faculty of Education in producing this podcast.
[30:49] For more information on short courses and undergraduate and postgraduate study options, head to monash.edu.au/education/learnmore. Thanks again for listening to Let's Let's talk teaching.