An Exploratory, Preliminary Report on United States Weather Education Trends and General Population Links Between Weather Salience and Systemizing

Abstract

Meteorologists have been interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education endeavors for many years. The present study’s authors recently observed an apparent trend in United States public schools away from weather content in physical science classes, especially at higher grade levels. Through the blending of multiple psychological theories, this study sought to examine when people in the United States are presented with educational weather content at the Kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12) levels and also investigated links between two psychological constructs: Weather salience and systemizing. Recent evidence among people on the autism spectrum suggests that weather salience—psychological attention to weather—is linked to systemizing, a psychological process that involves attention-to-detail and pattern recognition, thus prompting an investigation of this relationship in the general population. Results preliminarily suggest that K-12 weather education in the United States occurs most often in the elementary and middle school years, but that people receiving weather education only in high school, and intriguingly a combination of elementary and high school, but not middle school, have the highest weather salience levels. There was also a positive relationship between weather salience and systemizing. Results are discussed in light of the weather salience, systemizing, and social cognitive career theories.

Weather on the Brain I: A Theoretical View on Needs to Think About Weather

“…We believe that discerning the viability of this trait will be essential to furthering research into NEED FOR COGNITION ABOUT WEATHER 12 weather salience and its associated curiosities (Bolton et al, 2020;Bolton et al, 2021;Stewart & Bolton, 2021). Furthermore, we see such a construct as enabling a higher-resolution examination of nature connectedness and even potential nature-wellbeing factors.…”

“…Biophobia, however, is also associated with the inanimate aspects of nature: Orr (1993) suggested that biophillic or biophobic beliefs, feelings, and tendencies arise in early childhood as a result of positive or negative experiences with nature. There is some evidence for this (e.g., Bolton et al, 2020 on weather salience or psychological attention to weather; and Richardson et al, 2019 on nature connection). Kellert (1997) furthered this line of thought by suggesting dispositional nature connectedness is also developmentally influenced by lived experiences of weather, and by socio-cultural influences.…”

Digital Weather Information in an Embodied World

“…Scores on the weather salience questionnaire (WxSQ) have correlated positively with perceptual curiosity and the ability to attend to weather-related stimuli in the environment [15,112]; consulting multiple electronic sources for weather information [12]; detailorientation and pattern recognition [113][114][115][116]; trait openness, weather-warning awareness, storm preparation self-efficacy beliefs, and both generalized epistemic curiosity as well as epistemic weather curiosity [116]. Weather salient people thus bring an interest and acuity to the weather and to weather-related information products.…”

Weather on the Brain III: Archival Analysis from Weather on the Brain II: Quantifying the Need to Think About Weather Through the Development and Initial Validation of the Need for Cognition about Weather Scale (Bolton, 2021)

“…Future research may control for this by measuring the intensity and quality of weather interest, since these tend to have a typical distribution (Bolton & Lazarro, 2022). Weather interest starts early in life (Bolton et al, 2020;Bolton & Lazzaro, 2022;DeLoache et al, 2007;Rosen, 2023).…”