Raising Awareness on the Complexity of Decision‑making through Climate Change Education

The increasing prevalence of poly-crisis events, such as geopolitical instabilities, forced migrations, and biodiversity loss, attributed to climate change, are changing how we think about the relationship between science and society. Despite the critical role in addressing these issues, science education often fails to align with social and ecological challenges. This study describes the co-design of a course on climate change focused on the interplay between science and society, emphasising uncertainty and complexity as key interdisciplinary concepts. The course lays its foundations on the work carried out by the research group in previous years on futurising science education, and utilises scenario building techniques to explore future-oriented approaches and sustainable values. The course included a board game designed appositely for the course, based on the En-ROADS global climate simulator to engage students in decision-making processes. Conducted with 34 Italian secondary students, the 20-h extracurricular course exploited various qualitative methods to assess the game’s impact. Findings indicate that the game enhanced students’ awareness of the complexities in policy negotiation, discovering how environmental, technological and scientific issues are intrinsically intertwined with social and economic aspects. This awareness fos tered the development of a more nuanced, conscious and multidimensional attitude in students toward climate change. At the same time, it demonstrated how, for some individuals, exposure to the complexities of climate change decision-making can result in a sense of hopelessness that must be addressed to encourage a willingness to act for a better future.