Teaching and Learning about Climate Change

A Framework for Educators

Daniel P. Shepardson, Anita Roychoudhury, Andrew S. Hirsch, Daniel P. Shepardson, Anita Roychoudhury, Andrew S. Hirsch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317245247
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Science & Technology

Responding to the issues and challenges of teaching and learning about climate change from a science education-based perspective, this book is designed to serve as an aid for educators as they strive to incorporate the topic into their classes. The unique discussion of these issues is drawn from the perspectives of leading and international scholars in the field. The book is structured around three themes: theoretical, philosophical, and conceptual frameworks for climate change education and research; research on teaching and learning about global warming and climate change; and approaches to professional development and classroom practice.

SECTION II
Research on Teaching and Learning about Global Warming and Climate Change

6
STUDENTS’ CONCEPTION OF A CLIMATE SYSTEM

Implications for Teaching and Learning

Daniel P. Shepardson, Anita Roychoudhury, Andrew S. Hirsch, and Sara M. Top

Climate change is indisputably underway and human modification of the landscape and the atmosphere is the dominant forcing (AGU, 2007; CCSP, 2008a; IPCC, 2013). These changes alter albedo, hydrology, and biogeochemical cycles (Pielke et al., 2011), influencing temperature, precipitation patterns, and more broadly the Earth’s climate. Changes in the Earth’s climate will likely have socioeconomic consequences that impact individuals and societies (CCSP, 2008b; IPCC, 2014). Thus, it is important that students understand the causes and implications of global warming in order to prepare for a changing climate: “Education is an essential element of the global response to climate change. It helps young people understand and address the impact of global warming, encourages changes in their attitudes and behaviour and helps them adapt to climate change-related trends” (UNESCO, 2013).

The climate of any given region is determined by the climate system, which consists of five components: atmosphere, oceans, land, life (plants and animals), and ice (Ruddman, 2001). From this perspective, climate change is the result of a modification in the components of the system and their relationships to each other, such that there is a change in the meteorological elements of a region and over time its climate. Thus, in order for students to understand global warming and climate change they must understand climate as a system and how changes to this system due to both natural and human influences result in climate and environmental changes. A climate-literate individual understands how humans influence the climate system and vice versa; it requires “a systems-thinking approach ... the ability to understand complex interconnections among all of the components of the climate system” (NOAA, 2009, p. 3).

But how do students understand the climate system? Although there is a great deal of research on how students understand the greenhouse effect, global warming, and climate change (see Shepardson et al., 2009, 2011) there is little research that examines how students conceptualize the climate system. In our earlier study (Shepardson et al., 2014) we found that students were able to identify at least three components of the climate system and make simple connections between these components. Thus, students conceptualized a climate system in a linear, cause and effect relationship that emphasized the atmospheric component of the climate system. Furthermore, proximity among components, especially the atmosphere, influenced the connections students made and their understanding of change within a climate system.

The purpose of the study reported in this chapter is to expand on our understandings of how students conceptualize the climate system. First we provide a brief overview on the need for system think and the research on students’ system thinking. Then we overview our study and present our model of students’ conceptualization of the climate system. We compare our students’ conceptions to that of the IPCC (2013) findings and to our conceptual model for teaching about the climate system. Finally, we describe the implications for teaching and learning.

The Need for Systems Thinking

A number of researchers (e.g., Booth-Sweeney & Sterman, 2007; Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo, 2006; Jacobson & Wilensky, 2006; Lesh, 2006) have stressed the need for students to develop understandings of complex systems, to engage in system thinking. The NRC (2012) framework for science education stresses the importance of students’ understanding of systems as a crosscutting concept and as a disciplinary core idea (e.g., physical systems, ecosystems, and earth systems). Furthermore, scientific practices involve modeling systems: “defining the system under study—specifying its boundaries and making explicit a model of that system—provides tools for understanding and testing ideas that are applicable throughout science and engineering” (NRC, 2012, p. 84). In its simplest view, systems are the organization of related components that are interdependent and that interact to form a whole; they have boundaries, components, resources, flow, and feedback (NRC, 2012). A key aspect of systems thinking involves the ability to think about the system in terms of:

component parts and their interactions, as well as in terms of inputs, outputs, and processes, gives students a way to organize their knowledge of a system, to generate questions that can lead to enhanced understanding, to test aspects of their model of the system, and, eventually, to refine their model.

(NRC, 2012, p. 93)

Understanding cycles and processes within a system are also key aspects of systems thinking, for example the cycling of matter and the transfer of energy (see Chapter 3 by Roychoudhury, Shepardson, and Hirsch for more detail about systems thinking).

Students’ Abilities to Engage in Systems Thinking

Although little research has looked at students’ conceptualization of the climate system, there have been a number of studies that investigated students’ abilities to think in terms of systems. Ben-Zvi Assaraf and Orion (2005) in a review of the literature identified eight characteristics of systems thinking:

• The ability to identify the components and processes of the system.

• The ability to identify simple relationships between and among the components of the system.

• The ability to identify dynamic relationships within the system.

• The ability to organize the components, processes, and interactions of a system within a framework of relationships.

• The ability to identify the cyclic nature of a system.

• The ability to understand patterns and relationships within a system.

• The ability to generalize based on understanding of the system.

• The ability to think temporally, to think in terms of the past, present, and future.

Most students, however, struggle to understand complex systems because of their dynamic nature, the multiple levels of interactions among components (Hmelo-Silver et al., 2007). Booth Sweeney and Sterman (2007) found that students do not consider feedback processes and the impact of time and time delays within a system.

Hmelo et al. (2000) indicated that in order for students to understand a system they must understand how the entire system functions. This requires that students identify the components, recognize the interconnections among components, and are able to structure these relationships to form a system (Senge, 1990). The ability of students to organize the components and processes, however, is poor (Ben-Zvi Assaraf & Orion, 2009). Ben-Zvi Assaraf and Orion (2004, 2005) and Kali et al. (2003) found that students perceive the components of an earth system as unrelated discrete parts. If students make connections between components they tend to be simple, linear, and unidirectional (e.g., Ben-Zvi Assaraf & Orion, 2009; Grotzer & Bell Basca, 2000; Hogan, 2000). In essence, students fail to see feedback loops within a system. Students also tend to focus on the immediate effects of changes within the system, often ignoring or failing to consider extended or indirect effects of change. This likely creates “short-term” thinking about a system versus understanding the “long-term” impacts.

The Study

Our study surveyed students (Driver et al., 1996) collecting qualitative data (i.e., student written responses to open-ended prompts) that were analyzed for their content in an inductive manner. Inductive analysis as a qualitative methodology involves the immersion into the details of the data in order to identify codes versus the imposing of preexisting codes on the data (Patton, 2002). The benefit of a survey was that it allowed us to collect data from more students than individual interviews. This provided a wide range in student responses and access to a breadth of student conceptions with varying degrees of sophistication (Driver et al., 1996; Patton, 2002). We sampled seventh and eighth grade classrooms from three schools located in the Midwest, U.S.A., for a total sample of 461 students. The sample included a range in student academic ability from special needs students to high-ability students to English language learners.

The unit of analysis was the sentences or phrases. Sentences or phrases with different content were treated as separate responses. For example, these two sentences were considered to be two different responses because they focused on different content, and thus were coded separately: “Burning fossil fuels will increase greenhouse gases” and “An increase in air temperature will cause ice and snow to melt which will cause the ocean to rise and flood the land.” Given this unit of analysis there were 756 responses for the first prompt on the climate system task, 552 responses for the second prompt, and 587 responses for the third prompt.

The Climate System Task

The climate system task used three written prompts to elicit student responses about a scientific diagram representing the climate system. The students’ written responses are representations of their conceptions that contain a number of individual concepts (Alerby, 2000; Kress et al., 2001). The first prompt asked students to explain how the components of the climate system influence climate. The second prompt asked students to explain how an increase in greenhouse gases influences the climate system. The third prompt asked students to explain how global warming influences the climate system. The three prompts taken together give us a detailed look at how students conceptualize the climate system. The task was administered by the classroom teachers prior to any formal classroom instruction on the greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change, and the climate system.

Data Analysis

In general, data analysis involved a two-step process. Student responses were first content analyzed, from ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Section I Theoretical, Philosophical, and Conceptual Frameworks for Climate Change Education and Research
• Section II Research on Teaching and Learning about Global Warming and Climate Change
• Section III Approaches to Professional Development and Classroom Practice
• About the Authors
• Index