i am excited and happy to share that a poster co-authored with two of my students will be shared at this year's Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference (RPIC 2022), which will be held from the 30th of May to the 1st of June.
our poster is titled Thinking global, acting local: catalysing conversations on climate change through inquiry with Ipomoea Aquatica (Kangkong).
its abstract reads:
This paper describes an independent research project conceptualized and conducted by a pair of secondary school students under the mentorship of a Research Scientist at the National Institute of Education. Global warming, and increase in temperature due to excessive greenhouse gas emissions, is a threat to plants. A warming of 1.5 - 2℃ in the tropics is predicted to cause crop yield reductions in the region, including Southeast Asia, and increase the risks for both heat waves and flooding. An intermediate possible scenario of global warming would be the Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 (RCP 4.5). It is predicted that by around the mid-century period (2040 - 2069), the mean temperature in Singapore can increase by up to 2℃, to a mean temperature of 29.6℃ in a RCP 4.5 scenario. The temperature change can impact plants like food crops and heat-vulnerable plants, threatening our food supply and increasing the risk of extinction of vulnerable plant species, which are unable to adapt to the increasing temperatures. Ipomoea Aquatica, more commonly known as the Kangkong, is a heat-tolerant tropical vegetable, farmed in Southeast Asia and used in local dishes. Our experiment aims to observe whether this tropical plant that has adapted to be heat-resistant can grow well in global warming temperatures. We exposed the Kangkong to the predicted increase of 2℃ for three weeks. A range of climate variables was recorded through the use of Arduino sensors near the plant. Physical changes to the Kangkong plants were also measured and noted, such as the heights of the Kangkong in each set-up. By the 17th day, the Kangkong in the control set-up permanently overtook the one in the experimental set-up in height.
