Climate literacy on the move: Understanding shifts in student perceptions of the causes, impacts, and solutions to climate change
Abstract
As the world grapples with the increasing severity of climate change impacts, science educators find themselves spearheading efforts to increase science literacy. Mapping the assumptions students enter the classroom with, as well as the ways that student understandings develop in response to instruction, may help educators in this effort. To identify the impact of instruction on student conceptions about climate change, we surveyed students in an introductory science course at a large, Midwestern research university. Our mixed methods study 1) identified students' initial understandings and misconceptions about climate change, and 2) tracked how students' conceptions about climate change developed during this course. We investigated these student conceptions along two axes: a) the causes and potential solutions to climate change, and b) the impacts of climate change on humans, other organisms, and the environment. After taking the course's climate change module, almost two-thirds of respondents indicated the course shifted their views on climate change. Students became more confident that climate change is occurring, that scientists understand why climate change is happening, that humans are the primary cause of climate change, and that impacts of climate change are already occurring. Even with this increased confidence, qualitative analysis of short-answer responses suggests that students continue to endorse a highly limited conception of climate change. Preliminary results indicate that students persist in thinking of climate change in terms of its effects on a narrow set of geographic areas, and when discussing climate change, students rarely reference specific actors as causing or addressing climate change. Additional research is necessary to determine whether these limited conceptions constrain the kinds of actions that students imagine as appropriate responses to climate change. By investigating students' changing climate conceptions, we begin identifying ways that future instruction can better target and address student misconceptions—aiding efforts to develop a more scientifically-literate citizenry.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMED33B..06C
- Keywords:
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- 0805 Elementary and secondary education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0810 Post-secondary education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0815 Informal education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0840 Evaluation and assessment;
- EDUCATION