Through the various activities with school children and workshops with teachers, I hope to identify climate champions who will become agents of change in their schools, homes and communities.
Prolonged periods of excessive heat in Ghana disproportionately affect school teaching and learning. Yet little knowledge is available of how school children adapt to extreme heat and how the coping mechanisms they adopt in their day-to-day experience can be co-developed and integrated into action-oriented teaching and learning to enhance resilience and improve well-being.
What have been some of your most significant findings about how pupils and teachers in Accra and Tamale experience extreme heat and humidity?
The preliminary findings show how building design and materials, ventilation, tree shade, and classroom characteristics influence extreme heat and thermal comfort in schools. For example, classrooms with poor ventilation and no ceiling tend to measure temperatures of 5.8 degrees Celsius higher than those with better ventilation and classroom characteristics.
Has your system of Tiny Tag sensors worked well, and what has the data you have downloaded told you?
The Tiny tag sensors record temperature and humidity measurements in schools. The data shows how school temperature and humidity measurements vary from city-level measurements from the Ghana Meteorological Agency. Such discrepancies in data have implications for formulating bespoke policies that reflect the reality and experiences of schoolchildren. The data shows a trend in prolonged daytime high temperatures, which typically rise after 8 am and decline after 3 pm.
High prolonged daytime temperature.
How are you progressing with the development of thermal comfort and heat stress indicators?
The Tiny tag data has helped identify parameters that inform school heat stress and thermal comfort. The preliminary analysis has revealed several parameters, including building and roofing materials, ceiling insulation, ventilation, classroom design and characteristics, and pupils' and teachers' socio-demographic factors (age, gender, weight, etc.) that can affect thermal comfort.
Which components contribute to indoor thermal conditions most affect thermal discomfort and heat stress?
The structural factors, including building and roofing materials, ceiling insulation, ventilation, and classroom design, tend to significantly affect thermal discomfort and heat stress more than individual factors and socio-demographic characteristics.
Temperatures experienced in schools.
What can be done about this?
Relevant stakeholders, including metro education directors, school authorities, and head teachers, must understand how school buildings and classroom environments interact with temperature and humidity to affect thermal discomfort and heat stress in schools. Such an understanding will inform the required interventions such as building modification, classroom and behaviour adaptations and adapting teaching and learning schedules and practices to reduce heat stress and improve thermal comfort.
You are preparing for events like a quiz-essay competition, drama, visual sketches and workshops with students and teachers to elicit their understanding of extreme heat experiences and adaptive strategies. How do you plan to roll this out, and what do you hope to learn from this phase of your research?
Preparations for the school events are ongoing. The teachers and school administrators will supervise the events under my guidance. Different activities will be held for children at different levels (lower and upper primary and junior high school). Some activities will be self-learning, while others will be for schoolchildren from various schools participating in competitions. Awards will be given to the winning schools and contestants.
I hope to democratise the conversation about climate change in a way that schoolchildren can comprehend and relate to in their own lives. Through the various activities with school children and workshops with teachers, I hope to identify climate champions who will become agents of change in their schools, homes and communities.
Have you had any positive surprises during your research?
We have always known that classrooms are hot, making school children endure heat stress. But they never expected the classroom temperature and humidity recordings to be extremely high. It is interesting to note how school children learn under such high temperatures. School children are aware of extreme heat, and this awareness and their awareness and knowledge have informed their coping struggles against heat stress.
Dr Ebenezer Amankwaa’s FAR-LeaF research project is titled: “Analyzing Dynamic Adaptation Strategies of the Urban Poor to Extreme Heat to Improve Well-being (ADAPT)”.
Ebenezer Amankwaa, in conversation with Heidi Sonnekus
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