How Climate Change Beliefs among U.S. Teachers Do and Do Not Translate to Students

Abstract

Research suggests climate change beliefs among science teachers mirror those of the general public, raising questions of whether teachers may be perpetuating polarization of public opinion through their classrooms. We began answering these questions with a survey of middle school science teachers (n = 24) and their students (n = 369) in North Carolina, USA. Similar to previous studies, we found that though nearly all (92.1%) of students had teachers who believe that global warming is happening, few (12%) are in classrooms with teachers who recognize that global warming is anthropogenic. We found that teacher beliefs that global warming is happening and student climate change knowledge were the strongest predictors of student belief that global warming is happening and human caused. Conversely, teacher beliefs about human causes of global warming had no relationship with student beliefs, suggesting that science teachers’ low recognition of the causes of global warming is not necessarily problematic in terms of student outcomes. These findings may be explained by previous research suggesting adolescents interpret scientific information relatively independently of ideological constraints. Though teacher polarization may be problematic in its own right, it appears that as long as climate change information is presented in classrooms, students deduce anthropogenic causes.

Student Teachers’ Knowledge to Enable Problem-Solving for Sustainable Development

“…According to Herman et al, "there need to be science teachers whose knowledge and perceptions are in line with those of vast majority of scientists" [23]. Investigations of student teachers', pre-service teachers', and teachers' climate change-related knowledge displayed deficits [23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. In their study, Herman et al [23] reported that only 14% of science teachers in Florida and 4% in Puerto Rico gave the correct definition of climate change.…”

Teachers’ Knowledge, Beliefs, and Attitudes about Climate Change

“…Therefore, along with the contribution of general media, the systematic instruction provided by teachers in schools about climate change is important for the construction of young people's knowledge and beliefs of young people in this field (Dupigny-Girouz, 2010;Ekborg & Areskoug, 2006;Schreiner, Henriksen, Kirkeby, & Pål, 2005). Strong knowledge about climate change is shown to help teachers succeed in this task (McNeal, Petcovic, & Reeves, 2017;Sadler, Amirshokoohi, Kazempour, & Allspaw 2006), and their beliefs about the causes of climate change are known to influence their pupils (Stevenson, Peterson, & Bradshaw, 2016). they motivated to fulfill their role.…”

“…The research questionnaire contained numerous items from two published questionnaires about global warming and several original items (see hereunder). The first questionnaire used was excerpted from the Six Americas' Survey developed by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication (Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, & Smith, 2011;Leiserowitz, Smith, & Marlon, 2012) which has been used in several recent research works with teachers (Lambert & Bleicher 2013;Shea et al, 2016;Stevenson et al, 2016;Valdez, Peterson, & Stevenson, 2018) as it reflects better than earlier designed questionnaires the knowledge that has developed recently in the global population about climate change. The second questionnaire was developed by Tobler, Visschers, and Siegrist (2012) in Switzerland and contains more items concerning beliefs.…”

A framework for climate change engagement through video games

“…Schools are an obvious channel through which to engage young people in the key issues associated with climate change, although formal education about the issue is not without its challenges. These include the one-way communication models that separate transmitter and receiver; the lack of critical approaches, evidenced by the absence of spaces for reflection and debate on possible alternative lifestyles; and the lack of opportunities to participate in bringing about in-depth learning (Lombardi and Sinatra 2013;Plutzer et al 2016;Stevenson, Peterson, and Bradshaw 2016). Furthermore, climate change is surrounded by 'fake news' promoted by sceptics, a phenomenon that has put teachers on the alert and encouraged them to embrace media literacy: 'the ability to access, understand, evaluate, and create media content' (Cooper 2011).…”