5 Issues in Geoscience Education

Thursday, 2 April 2009
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM

YEAR 2: 11th AND 12th GRADE STUDENTS' CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Paper number: 5-6
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 9:40 AM – 10:00 AM

Authors

Abstract

Recent concerns of the negative impacts of human-induced climate change provide science educators with a unique opportunity to study and understand the impact of climate change curriculum and programs on students' understandings of earth systems. With the support of the NSF, we have implemented and are analyzing the efficacy of a tiered-mentoring program designed to enhance secondary students' understandings of -- and career interests in -- the earth sciences. Science and education faculty from an urban research university and secondary science teachers from two inner-city schools have worked together to prepare 11th and 12th grade students to mentor 7th grade students for five weeks. Afterward, the 11th and 12th grade mentors and 7th grade mentees cooperatively present a “Road Show” to numerous middle school classes. Now in its second year, some general signs of students' interest and motivation in the program include 1) a high percentage of 11th graders from the first year's cohort returning to be mentors, and 2) all the year-two 11th and 12th grade mentors indicating during the program that they felt prepared to mentor 7th grade students.

Through the analysis of concept maps, student artifacts, and focus group interviews, we explore 11th and 12th grade students' conceptualizations of climate change: During the first year of this program, a baseline of 11th and 12th grade students' understandings of climate change was established and recommendations were made for subsequent practice (Schuster, Filippelli, Thomas, 2008). Analysis of data gathered from the second year of this longitudinal study shows that at the end of their training period, the returning mentors had more accurate conceptualizations of climate change than their first-year peers. Further analyses are being conducted to 1) identify persistent misconceptions among first and second year mentors and 2) explore the relationship between select mentors' conceptualizations and their mentees' understandings of climate change.