Content Analysis of Science Courses, Climate Change Contexts, and Critical Thinking Skills in the Elementary School

Abstract

The current study aims to investigate the relationship between topics of science curriculum and climate change in the elementary stage in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The current study examines how climate change is addressed in the science curriculum, and whether creative and critical thinking skills are included. Employing the content analysis method, the research shows that there is a significant relationship between the themes of the science curriculum and the topics of climate change. To be more specific, the highest relationship between the topics of science curriculum and climate change is found in Grade 2 curriculum, followed by Grade 1 and Grade 4 respectively. The results also show that there is an overlap between the science curriculum and climate change topics ranging between 83% and 100%, which indicates that it is possible to employ the topics of climate change in the science curriculum. However, the current analysis shows that climate change topics are rarely initiated in the science curriculum (0-17%). Examining the content of science topics as well as activities, the results finally indicate that critical thinking skills are moderately included in the science curriculum while involving creative thinking skills is still poor and insufficient.