T208 Climate Literacy: Formal and Informal Education and Community Outreach Efforts to Enable Responsible Decisions I

Tuesday, 29 October 2013
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 405

EVALUATION OF A NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL ENTERTAINMENT-EDUCATION PROGRAM: THE ALLIANCE FOR CLIMATE EDUCATION

Paper number: T208-14
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 11:15 AM – 11:35 AM

Authors

Abstract

Global warming has created a societal imperative to reach and engage youth, whose futures, as they currently know them, are at risk. In this paper, we evaluate the climate science knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, behavior and communication impact of an entertaining high school assembly program in a random sample of 49 schools (from population of 779) and a panel of 1,241 high school students. Pre and post assembly surveys composed of questions from the Global Warming Six Americas segmentation and intervention-specific questions were administered in classrooms. We demonstrate that exposure to climate science in an engaging edutainment format changes youths’ beliefs, involvement, and behavior positively and moves them to more climate science-literate audience segments. The net impact of scaled multi-sensory engaging programs for youth could be a population shift in climate science literacy and positive engagement in the issue of climate change. In addition, such programs can empower youth for deeper engagement in school programs, personal action, political and consumer advocacy.