TEACHING CLIMATE CHANGE: PRESSURES AND PRACTICE IN THE
MIDDLE SCHOOL SCIENCE CLASSROOM
by
JENNIFER A. CRAYNE
A THESIS
Presented to the Environmental Studies Program
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Science
June 2015
ii
THESIS APPROVAL PAGE
Student: Jennifer A. Crayne
Title: Teaching Climate Change: Pressures and Practice in the Middle School Science
Classroom
This thesis has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the Master of Science degree in the Environmental Studies Program by:
Dr. Kari Norgaard Chairperson
Dr. Kathryn Lynch Member
and
Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School
Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School.
Degree awarded June 2015
iii
© 2015 Jennifer A. Crayne
iv
THESIS ABSTRACT
Jennifer A. Crayne
Master of Science
Environmental Studies Program
June 2015
Title: Teaching Climate Change: Pressures and Practice in the Middle School Science
Classroom
What are middle school science teachers teaching their students about climate
change? And why? This qualitative study examined the experience of middle school
science teachers from western Oregon, finding that while participating teachers accept the
science of climate change and express concern about it, many teachers are reluctant to
make the topic a priority in their classrooms. When they do include the subject, teachers
frequently address “both sides.” They also report that students have persistent doubts and
misconceptions about climate change. What accounts for these trends? I argue that the
way teachers address climate change is a result of complex interactions between
structural pressures, emotional pressures, and cultural pressures. I conclude that, in order
to promote the inclusion of sound climate science instruction in public schools, advocates
of climate change education need to address challenges at all these levels: structural,
emotional, and cultural.
vCURRICULUM VITAE
NAME OF AUTHOR:  Jennifer A. Crayne
GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:
University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon
Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington
DEGREES AWARDED:
Master of Science, Environmental Studies, 2015, University of Oregon
Bachelor of Arts, Environmental Humanities, 2008, Whitman College
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:
Environmental Education
Climate Change Communication
Nonprofit Management
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Graduate Teaching Fellow, University of Oregon, 2013-2015
Outreach Educator, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, 2010-2013
Conservation Science Educator, Columbia Gorge Ecology Institute, 2008-2010
GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS:
Barker Award, University of Oregon, 2014
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. TEACHING CLIMATE CHANGE: PRESSURES AND PRACTICE .......................... 1
Introduction................................................................................................................... 1
Why Is Climate Education Important? ................................................................... 2
Climate Education in the Context of Western Oregon ........................................... 5
Research Questions....................................................................................................... 7
Methods....................................................................................................................... 11
Participant Recruitment ........................................................................................ 11
Formal Interviews ................................................................................................. 13
Participant Observation and Informal Interviews ................................................. 14
Data Analysis ........................................................................................................ 15
Study Limitations.................................................................................................. 16
About the Researcher ............................................................................................ 17
II. CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE CLASSROOM: FOUR TRENDS IN PRACTICE .... 20
Teachers Acknowledge and Care about Anthropogenic Climate Change.................. 22
Climate Change Is Hard to “Fit In” ............................................................................ 25
Teachers Present Climate Change as an Issue with “Two Sides” .............................. 31
There’s a “Disconnect:” Doubts, Misconceptions, and/or Apathy Persist ................. 37
Persistent Misconceptions..................................................................................... 37
Persistent Doubts and Troubling Apathy.............................................................. 40
III. DIRECT BARRIERS TO CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION .............................. 43
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Chapter Page
Are Teachers Just Ignorant of Basic Climate Science? .............................................. 44
Are Teachers Limited by a Lack of Resources for Teaching Climate Change?......... 46
Do Structural Factors within the School System Limit Climate Change
Instruction? ........................................................................................................... 50
Administrative Pushback: Are Teachers Explicitly Pressured to Avoid Climate
Change or Teach It in a Particular Way? .............................................................. 56
IV. EMOTIONAL PRESSURES AND CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION ............... 62
Teachers’ Own Emotions............................................................................................ 62
Feelings of Fear or Sadness .................................................................................. 63
Feelings of Personal Responsibility...................................................................... 64
Emotions Affect Teaching Practice ...................................................................... 67
Managing Students’ Emotions .................................................................................... 71
Students’ Response to Negative Emotions ........................................................... 73
Fearing or Avoiding Interpersonal Conflict................................................................ 75
Pedagogical Strategies for Avoiding Controversy................................................ 77
Conflict-Avoidance in the Face of Climate Skepticism ....................................... 81
V. THE CULTURE OF SCIENCE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL BELIEFS AND
BEST PRACTICES .................................................................................................... 86
Hands-on, Student-centered Pedagogy ....................................................................... 87
Middle Schoolers Are Concrete-Thinkers and Self-Servers................................. 88
Utilizing Hands-on, Student-centered Pedagogy.................................................. 89
Teachers Struggle to Make Climate Change Hands-on and Student-centered ..... 91
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Chapter Page
Scientific Inquiry-based Pedagogy ............................................................................. 94
Teachers’ Beliefs about the Nature of Science ..................................................... 95
Utilizing Scientific Inquiry-based Pedagogy........................................................ 97
Inquiry-based Pedagogy in Education Literature ............................................... 100
Teaching Both Sides to Promote Inquiry............................................................ 101
Doubts and Misconceptions Persist with Inquiry-based Model ......................... 104
Teachers Are Reluctant to Correct Students’ Doubts and Misconceptions ........ 105
Successfully Adapting Inquiry-Based Pedagogy to Climate Change................. 107
VI. CONCLUSION......................................................................................................... 110
What Now? Strategies for Empowering Teachers of Climate Change..................... 111
Overcoming Direct Barriers................................................................................ 112
Dealing with Emotional Pressures ...................................................................... 114
Working within the Culture of Science Teaching............................................... 116
Many Thanks ............................................................................................................ 118
APPENDIX: INTERVIEW SCHEDULE....................................................................... 120
REFERENCES CITED................................................................................................... 123
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1. Logic Model........................................................................................................... 9
xLIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1. List of Participating Teachers ................................................................................ 13
2. “Fitting In” Climate Change .................................................................................. 25
1CHAPTER I
TEACHING CLIMATE CHANGE: PRESSURES AND PRACTICE
“But we obviously have got to inform our global population about this
huge, humongous threat—because it is… you can't do anything about it
until you know about it, so I think certainly you can't avoid talking about
it” (Isaac, middle school science teacher, rural Oregon).
Introduction
What should students know about climate change? And how should teachers
teach it? While scientists have come to a general agreement about the causes and effects
of human-induced climate change, educators continue to struggle with this topic, not sure
whether and how to convey this scientific information to students. Like the similarly
fraught topics of Sex Ed and evolution, climate change presents challenges to both
teacher and student, not only because the science itself is complex, but also because the
social forces affecting how participants communicate and respond to the science are
complex as well. Of course, one of the more significant social factors affecting climate
change communication is political controversy; climate change has become an
increasingly polarizing issue in the last decade, thanks in part to the concerted efforts of
the climate skeptic movement (Greenpeace, 2013; Oreskes & Conway, 2010). Political
controversy affects climate change at the state level, where policymakers dispute the
content of educational standards (Bidwell, 2014) as well as the local level, where
teachers, administrators, parents, and students must negotiate whether and how to include
this topic in schools (Reardon, 2011). Even in communities where climate change is not
2particularly politically divisive, other social and emotional factors—such as students’
feelings of hopelessness, or a teacher’s fear of instigating conflict—may further
complicate climate change in the classroom.
This study examines the issue of climate change education from the perspective of
teachers, in order to understand how certain educators address climate change in the
classroom and how structural, emotional, and sociocultural factors may affect their
teaching practice. Or, in other words: When it comes to climate science, what are
teachers teaching their students—and why?
Why Is Climate Education Important?
Despite the inherent difficulties of teaching climate change, climate education
advocates, like Mark McCaffrey and Joshua Rosenau at the National Center for Science
Education, insist that students should learn the scientific basis for climate change,
because climate literacy “provides society with the tools and shared basis for
understanding the science and solutions before us” (2012).  One oft-cited resource for
climate education, called “Climate Literacy: Essential Principles of Climate Science,”
confirms this assertion, adding that “Climate science literacy is a part of science literacy”
in general (U.S Global Change Research Program, 2009, pg. 3). If the primary goal of
science education is to help students understand how the physical world works, then
students should learn about the carbon cycle, the function of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere, and the effects of climate on humans and other species for the same reason
that they should understand plate tectonics, covalent bonding, and Newton’s laws of
physics—these phenomena are central to understanding the material world around us.
3However, the goals of climate change education are more than informative; as
most climate education advocates will readily admit, teaching climate change is different
from teaching the quadratic equation or King Lear because there is an explicitly
prescriptive element; the goal is not merely to produce knowledge, but to inspire changes
in attitude and behavior as well, preparing young people to become tomorrow’s (or
perhaps today’s) climate-conscious citizens, leaders, and problem solvers.
This normative aspect of climate change education is invoked in popular media,
teaching resources, and academic literature. For example, a 2014 press release describing
a new White House Climate Education and Literacy Initiative asserted, “Continued
progress into the future will depend on ensuring a climate-smart citizenry and a next-
generation American workforce… who understand the urgent climate-change challenge
and are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and training to seek and implement
solutions” (White House, 2014). The previously cited “Climate Literacy: Essential
Principals” stresses that education for climate literacy is essential for producing citizens
that “understand the climate system and know how to apply that knowledge in their
careers and in their engagement as active members of their communities” (U.S Global
Change Research Program, 2009, pg. 3). In scholarly journals, too, authors frequently
invoke the normative, as well as informative, goals of climate change education. In a
2014 review of 92 peer-reviewed studies on climate change education, Victoria Wibeck
observes, “Since climate change is expected to have severe consequences for many
citizens around the globe, considerable money and effort have been invested in educating
the public of the causes and effects of climate change and of how laypeople should
behave to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate” (Wibeck, 2014, p. 387). Another
4scholar notes, “Preparation for the responsibilities of citizenship in a global society, as
well as development of individual sustainable lifestyles, should dictate that global climate
change appear in formal education” (Fortner, 2000, p. 19).
While many have argued for the importance of science literacy in general—and
climate literacy in particular—for developing a concerned, climate-active citizenry,
others have questioned whether science education can actually fulfill this role. Some
sociological studies have found that scientific literacy is actually poorly correlated with
belief in anthropogenic climate change (see for example, Kahan, 2013). What’s more,
understanding the science doesn’t necessarily lead a person to feel more concern about
climate change; nor does knowledge automatically generate the kind of collective action
necessary to mitigate this global phenomenon (Norgaard, 2011).
Where some educators might like to imagine a simple path connecting knowledge
about climate change to belief, concern and a set of certain “pro-climate” behaviors,
social scientists, meanwhile, see not one path, but a network of paths, constantly
branching, crisscrossing, and leading to innumerable destinations. From the perspective
of environmental sociology, it would be naïve to assume that scientific literacy, on its
own, will spur a widespread, appropriate, and timely response to climate change.
At the same time, however, it would be cynical to suggest that science education,
at its best, plays no role in developing the kind of “climate-smart citizenry” that,
according to the White House Climate Education and Literacy Initiative, might mitigate
the problem of climate change. While climate literacy may not be a silver bullet, it is still
necessary. This thesis is based on the assumption that science education is one essential
tool that, when implemented well, can promote both knowledge and action-oriented
5concern about climate change. This begs the question though: How are educators
incorporating climate change into their science education toolbox? And, to what effect?
Climate Education in the Context of Western Oregon
Western Oregon is a unique and timely place to study climate change education,
both because of its political diversity and because of the way Oregon, at a state level, has
promoted science education in general and environmental literacy in particular.
Compared to other states, Oregon’s educational standards are relatively
progressive in their treatment of climate change; this is an important fact to recognize
when considering whether and why teachers from this state include climate science in
their curricula. In 2014, Oregon adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS),
joining a group of now twelve states in establishing a new set of benchmarks for student
achievement in science (ODE, 2014). These new standards have received attention in part
because of their unapologetic treatment of socially controversial science topics, including
climate change and evolution (Bidwell, 2014). The older, Oregon State Standards (which
set benchmarks for the state from 2006 to 2014) included learning goals related to
atmospheric processes, but did not explicitly reference “climate change,” “global
warming” or human impacts on the atmosphere; as a result, they set no clear expectation
regarding what, if anything, students should understand about global climate change. The
NGSS, on the other hand, clearly state that middle school students should be able to “Ask
questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global
temperatures over the past century.” In case there remains any doubt about what those
“factors” are, the standards further specify: “Emphasis is on the major role that human
6activities play in causing the rise in global temperatures” (MS-ESS3-5). At the time that I
collected data for this study (summer and fall of 2014), the NGSS had only recently been
passed, and was not in full implementation throughout the state. For the purposes of this
study, the passage of the NGSS is significant because it indicates that the Oregon
educational system, at a state level at least, supports the inclusion of sound climate
science in classrooms. At a time when 40 percent of Americans express either outright
skepticism or ambivalence regarding the fact of climate change and/or its anthropogenic
origin (Leiserowitz, 2012), it is significant that Oregon’s state-sanctioned science
standards would express neither skepticism nor ambivalence on the subject.
In addition to the NGSS, which are specific to science, Oregon also passed the
Oregon Environmental Literacy Plan (OELP) in 2010, a supplementary set of learning
goals “designed to ensure that every student in Oregon becomes a lifelong steward of
their environment and community” (p. 3). The various learning strands listed in the
OELP are meant to “Prepare students to understand and address the major environmental
challenges facing this state and country, including the relationship of the environment to
national security, energy sources, climate change, health risks, and natural disasters (p. 3,
emphasis mine). The OELP is a set of “strands,” not “standards;” it is separate from state
standards in science, math, or literacy, and is designed to support and supplement
learning goals in each of these areas.
In the context of climate education, the NGSS and the OELP are significant
because they indicate that, at an administrative level at least, the state of Oregon is fairly
supportive of teaching sound climate science. This becomes especially apparent when
you compare Oregon to other states, where climate education is much more contentious.
7Lawmakers in Wyoming, for example, blocked the passage of the NGSS because of its
emphasis on anthropogenic climate change; as state board of education chairman Ron
Micheli, explained, "I don't accept, personally, that [climate change] is a fact" and the
standards are “very prejudiced in my opinion against fossil-fuel development” (Todd,
2014).
Despite having a unified set of science standards at the state level, Oregon
remains a diverse place at the community-level. From the relatively affluent,
metropolitan, and politically liberal cities of Multnomah County, to more rural, resource-
driven, and politically conservative districts like Curry County, western Oregon may
harbor diverse attitudes about climate change and its inclusion in public school curricula.
Thus, in this research I was careful to include the perspectives of teachers from the
suburbs of Portland as well as the logging towns of Curry County, and the agricultural
hamlets and university towns in between (see Methods, below). As I will show, teachers
from these diverse communities actually shared significant challenges and experiences in
regard to teaching climate change.
Research Questions
The following questions have guided my research:
 Practice: How, if at all, are middle school science teachers in western
Oregon teaching the subject of climate change? What successes or
challenges do they report?
8 Pressures: What factors, both tangible and intangible, pressure teachers to
address climate change in this way? How might these pressures explain
the successes and challenges teachers describe?
Comparing the science classroom to a theater, the first question essentially asks:
What’s happening on stage? What story is being told, and how? The second question
asks: What’s going on behind the scenes? And, how does this behind-the-scenes activity
shape the on-stage performance? Figure 1 illustrates how pressures (behind-the-scenes
factors) inform practice (what happens on stage). This diagram may serve as a road map
for the rest of this narrative, previewing both the topics I will cover and how those topics
are related.
With regards to the first question, I found that teachers use a variety of strategies
to teach climate change, and with various results. However, several trends emerged. In
Chapter II, I address four main trends that characterize climate change in the classroom.
These include: the fact that teachers acknowledge and express concern about climate
change; teachers report difficulty in making climate change “fit” into their curricula;
teachers often address “both sides;” and students persistently maintain doubts and
misconceptions about climate science. (See lower box in Figure 1).
With regards to the second question, I argue that not one factor, but many factors
influence teachers’ treatment of climate change and that these factors fall into three main
categories: direct barriers, emotional pressures, and norms of the culture of science
teaching (See upper three boxes in Figure 1). In Chapter III, I will address this first
category, illustrating how factors like educational standards, curricular resources, and
9teachers’ own knowledge of climate change may directly support or frustrate climate
change education.
Figure 1. Logic Model
In Chapter IV, I turn from these relatively tangible barriers to the more intangible
realm of emotions; here I will discuss how emotional pressures, including feelings of
anxiety, sadness, personal responsibility, or fear of controversy, may affect the way
teachers and students deal with the subject of climate change.
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Finally, in Chapter V, I discuss how teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding
climate change education are informed by a broader set of norms and narratives endemic
to their profession—what I’m calling the “Culture of Science Teaching.” Here I identify
certain assumptions that teachers and their peers hold about what constitutes good science
teaching. I then examine how these assumptions may inform the way teachers address or
avoid climate change in the classroom. For example, teachers repeatedly defended the
importance of “hands-on” learning, a best practice that is easily applied to topics like
stream ecology (where students can see, touch, and manipulate water in an actual stream),
but more difficult to apply to climate change, because students can’t rely on their own
observations or experiments to understand the science.
While it’s tempting to reduce the pedagogical problems of climate change to one
or two distinct challenges—Teachers are scientifically illiterate! Or, climate skeptics are
to blame!—I argue that the way teachers address climate change (and the way that
students, in turn, respond) is a result of complex interactions between structural
pressures, emotional pressures, and cultural pressures. Or, to return to the theater
metaphor, a stage performance isn’t shaped solely by the actors themselves, or even by
the script; it’s shaped by the available props, the behind-the-scenes relationships between
cast and crew, the actors’ own emotional states, norms of theater culture, and a thousand
other factors. By focusing on so many different pressures—rather than examining one
specific variable, like teachers’ knowledge of climate science—I sacrifice some depth for
breadth. In doing so, however, I hope to illuminate the complexity of this issue. The
implication for advocates of sound climate change education (and it should be noted that
I consider myself one of them) is that, in order to promote the inclusion of sound climate
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science instruction in public schools, we need to address challenges at all these levels:
structural, emotional, and cultural.
Methods
This study builds on the interdisciplinary field of climate education research and
is informed by science education studies, environmental education studies, and sociology.
In an attempt to address the research questions outlined above (that is, the how and why
of climate change in the classroom), I took a qualitative approach, combining formal and
informal interviews with participant observation.
Participant Recruitment
In order to understand how and why teachers address the subject of climate
change, I went directly to the source—recruiting 15 middle school science teachers from
western Oregon.
Teacher participants were initially recruited via emails distributed to 56 different middle
schools in 25 school districts in western Oregon. This initial recruitment process yielded
six participants from five different school districts. Those initial recruits, in turn,
connected me with additional teachers. These snowballing referrals, along with the
referrals of other friends and colleagues, generated a sample of 15 secondary science
teachers from western Oregon.
During the recruitment process, I intentionally avoided mentioning my interest in
climate change; instead I invited teachers to participate in a study about “teaching
environmental science topics and the Next Generation Science Standards.” This approach
12
was strategic in two ways. First, it mitigated somewhat the threat of self-selection bias: I
wanted to recruit teachers with a wide variety of interests and affiliations, not just those
who felt particularly passionate or informed about climate change. Secondly, in order to
answer the question of practice, I had to understand not only how teachers approach
climate change, but how they might approach climate change differently from other
topics included in middle school science. By beginning each interview with a
conversation about science teaching in general—i.e. how do you decide what topics to
teach? What activities or teaching strategies do you use? What challenges do you face?—
I could get a sense of what topics the teacher prioritizes in the classroom, and whether
climate change was one of those topics. Then, after prompting the participant to discuss
climate change specifically (usually after about 30 minutes of more general discussion), I
noted whether and how the respondent’s treatment of climate change differed from other
science topics, like plate tectonics or plant adaptation.
Admittedly, this sample is not random, nor is it representative of all public middle
school teachers in western Oregon. Rather, it represents a select group of educators from
a variety of communities both urban and rural, liberal and conservative. Teachers that I
spoke to came from university towns, farm towns, and busy suburbs. Some had taught for
thirty years; others had just finished their first year in the classroom. All of them where
white. Most of them (12 of 15) were women. All the participants expressed passion for
education, a love of science, and concerns about the challenges they faced as teachers.
Table 1 lists participating teachers (whose names have been changed), along with the
number of years they have been teaching and the kind of community they teach in.
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Pseudonym Location # of years teaching
Andrea Large, metropolitan suburb 1 year
Hailey Medium-sized suburb 1 year
Dan Medium-sized rural town 5-10 years
Elizabeth Small, rural town 5-10 years
Faith Small, rural town 5-10 years
Gabby Medium-sized university town 5-10 years
Lauren Large, metropolitan suburb 5-10 years
Nicole Medium-sized university town 5-10 years
Olivia Medium-sized university town 5-10 years
Paul Medium-sized suburb 5-10 years
Carly Small, rural town 10-20 years
Kathy Large, metropolitan suburb 10-20 years
Megan Small, rural town 10-20 years
Brenda Medium-sized university town 20-30 years
Isaac Medium-sized rural town 30-40 years
Table 1. List of Participating Teachers
Formal Interviews
Because my research focused not on quantifiably measurable phenomena like
student test scores, but on qualitative phenomena like emotions, social pressures, and
beliefs about the nature of science, I chose to adopt a qualitative approach to
interviewing. As qualitative sociologist Robert Weiss puts it, we can learn, “through
interviewing, about people’s interior experiences. We can learn how events affected their
thoughts and feelings. We can learn the meanings to them of their relationships, their
14
families, their work, and their selves” (1994, p. 1). Weiss identifies the heart of what I
hoped to examine through qualitative interviewing: the relationship between experience,
thoughts, feelings, relationships, and work, all in the context of teaching climate change.
Thus, the bulk of the data informing this study came from fifteen formal,
qualitative interviews with the middle school science teachers listed above. I call these
interviews “formal” in order to distinguish them from shorter, “informal” interviews
completed during participant observation (addressed below). However, these
conversations were anything but stiff or prescriptive. Though I began each interview with
a few predetermined questions (see Appendix), participant responses also generated new
questions and drove the conversation in unexpected directions; as a qualitative researcher,
I happily indulged these diversions. Interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes, were
audio recorded, and later transcribed by the researcher.
Participant Observation and Informal Interviews
In order to provide some context for teachers’ reports about science teaching, I
supplemented data from formal interviews with field observations at a two-day science
teaching conference. This gathering, here fictionally called the “State Science Teachers
Conference,” drew together hundreds of formal and informal science educators from all
over the state of Oregon. As an educator myself, I comfortably joined other participants
in a variety of sessions focused on science pedagogy. Several of these sessions explicitly
addressed climate change; others did not. At all of the sessions, I participated in
discussion and hands-on activities while simultaneously jotting notes, which I developed
into full field notes at the end of each day.
15
Through participant observation, I was able to observe teachers in the context of their
professional community, engaging in practice and talking to each other (rather than an
outside researcher) about science teaching.
Between sessions and during breaks, I approached individual teachers and groups
of teachers, introduced myself as a researcher, and engaged them in conversations about
science teaching in general and climate change specifically; I refer to these conversations
as “informal interviews.” This on-the-spot recruitment gave me access to more teachers
than I would have otherwise had access to. Like with participant observation, I took notes
during these individual and group interviews (rather than audio-recording) and then filled
in these notes with more detail immediately following the conversation.
Data Analysis
As the sole interviewer, transcriber, and coder for this project, I developed an
intimate relationship with my data. In order to answer my relatively broad and open-
ended research questions, I used a strategy of data analysis informed by grounded theory.
According to ethnographer Kathy Charmaz, “grounded theory methods consist of
systematic, yet flexible guidelines for collecting and analyzing qualitative data to
construct theories ‘grounded’ in the data themselves” (2006, p. 2). Grounded theory
emphasizes inductive rather than deductive analysis, meaning, rather than pre-
determining relevant themes and assigning data to fit those themes, the researcher tries to
approach each piece of data without preconceived notions, assigning thematic codes as
they emerge. This emergent, open-ended method was appropriate for this study, as I was
not testing a specific hypothesis (i.e. “Resource deficits lead to lower rates of climate
16
change instruction,” or “political conservatism is correlated with negative views of
environmental education”), but rather exploring a broader network of connections
between teaching practice and diverse structural, emotional, and cultural factors.
With this goal in mind, after transcription, I used Charmaz’s method of first using
line-by-line coding to sieve through a random sampling of four transcripts; this process
generated hundreds of specific, descriptive codes, such as “expressing fear,” “using
textbooks,” or “getting pushback from parents.” I then analyzed these initial codes,
combining and distilling them into a smaller set of analytical, or “focused” codes. These
focused codes identified recurrent themes, like “negative emotions,” “pedagogical
practices,” and “pushback/conflict.” I then went back to my transcripts and applied these
new, focused codes to each interview and field note set, occasionally adding more
focused codes to my list, as necessary. This emergent process helped reveal unanticipated
ideas, which I have combined with ideas taken from existing literature to build the
argument I will present here.
Study Limitations
As with all research studies, this one has its strengths and limitations. Due to the
short time frame of this project, the sample size is modest, based primarily on data from
just fifteen individuals. That said, even within this modestly-sized sample, I was able to
identify recurrent themes, both in relation to the pressures teachers experience and the
educational practices they employ in response to these pressures.
Because this study is based on a small sample size and utilized selective (i.e. not
random) recruitment methods, it may not reflect the general views and experiences of
17
middle school science teachers in western Oregon. Even though I took pains to limit
recruitment bias by withholding my interest in climate change during recruitment and by
utilizing broad, email recruitment rather than relying solely on snowball referrals, it is
still likely that the teachers who agreed to participate in this study differ in certain
(though unknown) ways from the collective pool of middle school science teachers in
western Oregon.
Due to these and other limitations, this study does not claim to be random or
representative. Through this study, I hoped to better understand how various pressures
shape teacher practice in the context of climate change. While I won’t argue that all
teachers in western Oregon experience the same pressures my study participants report
experiencing (or that all teachers inevitably respond to those pressures in the same way),
I would argue that anyone concerned with promoting climate literacy should be interested
in the complex factors that may facilitate or frustrate meaningful climate science teaching
in the classroom. I believe that, despite the aforementioned limitations of sample size and
representativeness, this study does effectively assess these factors, and does so in a way
that helps answer the original research questions: How do teachers teach climate change?
And why?
About the Researcher
This discussion of methods would not be complete without addressing my own
background, biases, and interests in the subject of climate change education.
I first encountered some of the challenges of teaching climate change through my
own experiences as an educator. For several years, I worked as an educator at a science
18
museum. While in this position, I was part of a small team that developed and taught a
one-hour class about climate change for grades 4-8. At the time, it seemed like the
primary challenge was one of sheer information-overload: How do you consolidate a
mountain of scientific information into a 60-minute period? Upon implementing the
lesson, however, my colleagues and I discovered myriad other challenges, including
students who were bored or disengaged, complaints from parents that the material was
too depressing, and our own discomfort, as educators, about delivering politically
controversial content. Later, as a teaching assistant for a college-level environmental
studies course, I encountered additional challenges. I found for example that most of the
first-year students I taught were surprisingly ignorant of basic climate science. Many of
them harbored misconceptions—including the classic one, confusing global warming
with ozone thinning—and these misconceptions often persisted, even after my attempts at
re-instruction. I also found that students were much more comfortable talking about
environmental problems when they were able to cite simple, individualized solutions to
those problems, like riding a bike, buying organic produce, and using reusable grocery
bags. I realized that students’ misconceptions about climate science and about viable
solutions to climate change were informed not by science knowledge per se, but by their
own experiences and emotions, not to mention larger cultural narratives about climate
change.
What I learned through these and other experiences is that, while any subject can
be difficult to teach, climate change is particularly difficult—and, that part of the
difficulty came from the social, emotional, and cultural factors affecting both my own
and my students’ response to the material. Teaching climate change remains difficult
19
even though I have a solid understanding of climate science, a strong conviction about
the reality of climate change, a personal concern about the issue, and the full endorsement
of my academic institution to teach the subject.
My own experiences led me to wonder: Are other teachers experiencing these or
other challenges? What explains these challenges? How are teachers dealing with them?
One final word: This report is not meant to be a scathing critique of science
teachers nor a unilateral declaration of best practices in climate change education. Rather,
this work is inspired by the challenges I have experienced (and observed others
experiencing) in the context of teaching climate change; it is built on a limited, though
thoughtfully analyzed selection of data; and, it is presented with the hope that others—
particularly other educators—would read it and reflect on the meaning of climate change
education and its place in public school classrooms.
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CHAPTER II
CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE CLASSROOM: FOUR TRENDS IN PRACTICE
Teaching is not an easy job. Ask any middle school teacher what makes her
profession difficult and she will likely list off a litany of grievances: the classes are too
big, the days are too short; the work load is too high, the compensation is too low;
standardized tests are too onerous and resources too few. On top of these structural
challenges are the social and emotional challenges of dealing with students,
administrators, parents, and other teachers, all the while managing one’s own
psychological well-being. It’s in this context that teachers are faced with another difficult
task: teaching climate change.
Much of the literature on climate change education serves to document its
failures—from students’ faulty mental models of the greenhouse effect (Shepardson,
Choi, Niyogi, & Charusombat, 2009), to the tendency of teachers to teach “both sides” of
climate change (Wise, 2010). Based on my familiarity with this literature (not to mention
my own experience teaching climate change), I entered into this research with the
assumption that climate change, more than other science topics, is challenging for both
teachers and students.
At the same time, I was unsure of what sorts of challenges, exactly, these
particular teachers faced in the context of climate change. Perhaps teachers felt
inadequately educated on the topic or couldn’t find resources to help educate their
students. Maybe they faced pushback from climate skeptics in their community; perhaps
they were climate skeptics themselves. Or, perhaps my interviews with teachers would
21
reveal that climate change isn’t a particularly difficult topic—at least, no more difficult
than the water cycle or the periodic table.
In fact, teachers did report experiencing challenges unique to the topic of climate
change, but not always in ways that I expected. Naturally, every teacher’s experience of
teaching climate change was different; each experienced unique assets and limitations,
leading to unique successes and setbacks. However, out of this scatterplot of
individualized experience emerged several trends, which I will address here. These
include:
 Teachers acknowledge and express concern about human-caused climate
change.
 Teachers report that climate change is hard to “fit in.”
 Teachers present climate change as an issue with “two sides.”
 Despite teachers’ best efforts, students continue to express doubts,
misconceptions and/or apathy about climate change (“there’s this
disconnect.”)
The first trend is actually good news, not a challenge per se. The following three
trends presented more of a problem for teachers and students, and so I will spend more
time discussing them.
In this chapter, I will attempt to answer the question of practice—that is, what
teachers are actually doing in the classroom, and how students, in turn, are responding—
by describing each of these four broad patterns and commenting on their significance.
22
Teachers Acknowledge and Care about Anthropogenic Climate Change
While preparing for this project, I came across an article on the New York Times’
Learning Blog, a publication aimed specifically at educators. The post invited current
teachers to weigh in on the newly minted Next Generation Science Standards (Contaro &
Shulten, 2013). While the comments that poured in may not constitute a rigorous
sociological study, they certainly revealed a diversity of opinions on the issue. One high
school science teacher praised the NGSS’ focus on anthropogenic climate change,
explaining that “climate science [is] an example of one of the great scientific pursuits of
the day.” Countered another educator, “As a high school science teacher with over 20
years [sic] experience, I would think that literacy, numeracy and behaviour would take
priority over ‘climate change’ – especially when ‘climate change’ while compelling has
not yet been proven scientifically.”
This educator’s skeptical stance shouldn’t come as a shock, given that a sizeable
percentage of Americans continue to doubt the scientific consensus about climate change.
An April 2013 study by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication reported
that 13% of Americans believe that climate change is not occurring. What’s more, 33%
of Americans believe that, if it is occurring, the cause is primarily “natural,” not
anthropogenic. The amount of concern Americans express about climate change is also
mediocre; only half of Americans indicate they are “somewhat worried” or “very
worried” about climate change (Leiserowitz et al., 2013). Based on this data—and my
own memorable, personal experiences encountering climate skeptics—I entered into this
research prepared to meet a few teachers who rejected the science behind anthropogenic
climate change or who brushed it off as a non-threat.
23
In reality, I met none.
Admittedly, this study is small, and takes place in a relatively liberal region of the
United States. However, it is significant that all the teachers I interviewed expressed
concern about climate change, and all but one confirmed that humans are the primary
cause.  Gabby, a seventh-grade teacher from a university town, asserted that climate
change is “definitely one of the most important things for our kids to learn, because in the
next fifty years if it keeps going it's going to change a lot. Not so much for us in Oregon,
maybe, but other places are going to [see] big differences in their climate and their
culture and everything.” Several teachers referred to local evidence of climate change,
while simultaneously expressing their concern about those impacts. Elizabeth noted that
“climate change will drastically impact our water in a very, potentially scary way” and
Olivia voiced her fear about wildfires in southern and eastern Oregon, noting, “If we
don't change something soon, it will spin out of control.”
Far from being ignorant or ambivalent about the subject, these teachers
demonstrated their knowledge of and concern about the very real effects of climate
change. Similarly, teachers consistently expressed their wish that others, students
included, would share this same knowledge and concern. Faith noted, “more than half of
my students don't believe in climate change. And so my role is to convince them that, you
know, it exists; there is data.” Lauren, a self-described science nerd and environmentalist,
felt particularly frustrated with those who hold skeptical views: “I… don't understand
how other people don't understand about it—that it is a problem… how people can just be
like, ‘Yeah, it doesn't exist.’”
24
Throughout our conversations, teachers repeatedly confirmed, in both direct and
indirect ways, their respective beliefs in the reality and severity of climate change. And,
all but one clearly connected the phenomenon of climate change to human activities.
Notably, there was no discernable relationship between a teacher’s geographical location
(and by extension, the political climate in his or her community) and the likelihood of
that teacher expressing concern or skepticism about climate change. The only teacher to
express any remotely skeptical perspectives on climate change was Paul, a seventh-year
teacher stationed in a medium-sized suburb in the Willamette Valley. Paul explained,
“Well I don't think anybody debates if it’s happening. I don't even think that's remotely a
debate. I think the debate’s more about what the causes are, and if it can be reversed.”
Paul was careful to clarify that he didn’t consider himself a climate skeptic; rather, he
expressed some uncertainty about whether humans were solely to blame, or if natural
phenomena may also play a role in current warming. While Paul’s stance on climate
change is somewhat troubling, it’s significant to note that, out of the fifteen teachers I
interviewed, he was the only one to express such a stance.
This study’s findings are supported by other studies, which indicate relatively
high levels of climate change acceptance among educators. A survey by the National
Earth Science Teachers Association, for example, found that 89% of responding teachers
“indicated that they believe global warming is happening” (Johnson & Holzer, 2011)
compared to roughly two-thirds of American adults in general. For those who worry that
climate education may be thwarted by teachers who disbelieve climate science or dismiss
the significance of current warming, this and other studies should offer some relief; it
seems that most teachers both believe in and care about climate change.
25
Climate Change Is Hard to “Fit In”
The good news, I have argued, is that teachers in this study seem convinced and
concerned about climate change, and want others to feel the same. Also, most teachers
are taking steps to educate their students about this topic; with just two exceptions, all the
teachers I interviewed reported that they have addressed climate change at some point in
their classes. However, not all teachers fit the topic into their curricula in the same way.
As illustrated in Table 2, below, some teachers taught comprehensive, focused lessons on
climate change, while others, if they taught it at all, incorporated it in a more indirect or
passing way.
How do teachers fit climate change into their curricula?
Teach multi-
day unit
focused on
climate
change
Teach climate
change
indirectly, in
context of
other topics
Teach brief
lesson on
climate change
(one day or
less)
Taught climate
change in the
past, but no
longer do so
Don’t teach
climate
change at all
Elizabeth
Olivia
Lauren
Carly
Nicole
Brenda
Faith
Megan
Isaac
Paul
Kathy
Daniel
Gabby
Hailey
Andrea
Table 2. “Fitting In” Climate Change
A common refrain among teachers, when explaining why they minimize the topic
of climate change or why they do not currently teach it, was that climate change is hard to
“fit in.” Paul confesses, “We talk about it, but very briefly, only because I don't know
where it fits, to be honest.” His lesson on climate change consists of a single activity,
26
lasting less than one class period, in which he leads a discussion about the evidence for
and against climate change. Dan echoed Paul’s sentiment that climate change,
“unfortunately, doesn't really fit in my program very well.” He further explained that “we
talk in very broad, general terms about human impacts… greenhouse gases and the
amount of pollution, and what we do as individuals, how that contributes to the global
warming.” However, he does not teach a dedicated unit on climate change. In past years,
Dan showed students An Inconvenient Truth, but he reports, “it's been a while since I
even taught that unit at all.” Gabby and Kathy, similarly, admitted that while they have
taught climate change in years past, they haven’t taught it recently.
Three teachers reported that they address the topic indirectly, by incorporating
aspects of climate science into other lessons. Megan, for example, addresses climate
change during her units on energy and earth history; in these units, “we talk a lot more
about human impact on the earth,” she explains, “instead of having a section on climate
change.” Similarly, rather than emphasizing the mechanics or consequences of modern,
anthropogenic climate change, Faith addresses the subject in the context of geologic and
human history. When I asked her how she teaches her students about climate change—
“do you use discussions, do you use videos, do you have lectures, do you do
readings?”—Faith explained, “I spend a lot of time actually going through how the world
was in the past.” According to Faith, the goal is:
To be able to give students a foundation in the idea that the world is
constantly changing… So we talk about, ‘What was America like when
the Vikings came here? What about the medieval warm? How did that
help and hurt people in the past? How did our ancestors deal with this?
Hey look where the continents used to be.’ Trying to get into plate
tectonics. And, I’m pulling up a lot of that high-interest stuff that's
like, really old. I studied animals that lived in the ocean during dinosaur
time. So it's like—sea monsters! Awesome! And then you go into [how
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climate change affected the dinosaurs]. You know, the world is still
changing.
Faith’s approach to teaching climate change, like Megan’s, is somewhat indirect. Rather
than explicitly teaching students about the carbon cycle, fossil fuels, or current warming
trends, Faith prefers to weave some of this content into lessons on loosely related topics,
like paleozoology, plate tectonics, and medieval history. Based on Faith’s report, it’s
unclear whether she spends much time at all on the causes or consequences of modern,
anthropogenic climate change. Brenda, too, reported that she tries to incorporate climate
change in “all of our units… definitely in the water cycle, definitely in the weather cycle,
definitely in the salmon.” By her own admission though, Brenda’s strategy of “natural
inclusion” (her words), while broad, is sometimes lacking in depth. While she has used a
variety of instructional modes to present information about climate change (including
videos, discussions, and readings) she reports that when it comes to in-depth lessons,
“specifically tying it to climate change, I haven’t.”
In citing these examples from Brenda, Faith, and Megan, my intent is not to be
critical of an interdisciplinary or integrated approach to teaching climate science. Rather,
it is to suggest that teachers’ tendency to weave climate science into other subjects (rather
than teaching it directly, or devoting a whole unit to the subject) suggests, again, that
climate change can be difficult to “fit in.”
Five teachers did “fit” climate change into their curricula in a more substantial
way, but acknowledged the difficulty of doing so. Lauren has a full curriculum that
includes forces, matter, the periodic table, the atomic model, and plate tectonics. She
reported that “this past year…” for the first time in her six years of teaching, “I was [also]
able to get to weather and climate. That was very exciting.” Lauren suggests that climate
28
change, while important, could only be squeezed in after getting through a long list of
other topics. Carly, another teacher who taught several lessons dedicated to climate
change, notes that the topic is undesirable among her teaching peers: “I’ll tell you, I was
the first one voted to teach it! And the only one who’s ever taught it at this school.” Like
Lauren, Carly made climate change “fit,” but in doing so, set herself apart from her peers,
who were reluctant to do the same. Nicole reported spending a substantial amount of time
on climate change: “I always talk about climate change,” she reported, “—at least once a
week.” However, she admits that the topic is not a natural fit in her curriculum. When it
comes to teaching climate change, Nicole asserts, “I make it happen.”
The experiences of Lauren, Carly, and Nicole indicate that teachers can fit climate
change into their curricula. However, the challenges they experience also beg the
question: Why is it so difficult? Why, when time is short, would Lauren tend to cut out
weather and climate, but keep plate tectonics? Why were Carly’s colleagues eager to cut
climate change out of their own curricula, leaving Carly as the sole communicator of this
important topic? Why does Nicole feel that to teach climate change, she has to “make it
happen?”
At the heart of the issue is what teachers really mean when they say or suggest
that climate change “doesn’t fit.” My conversation with Kathy revealed some of the
deeper meaning of this claim. Initially, when explaining why she no longer teaches
climate change, Kathy explained, “Well it doesn't really fit into life science.”
Immediately though, she reconsidered, saying, “Well it sort of does. It's kind of like, it
would fit into the natural resources unit… Fossil fuels and…” Here Kathy trailed off and
moved to a different topic. We returned to this point later on in the interview, though,
29
when Kathy mentioned how people aren’t doing enough to combat climate change. “It's
really important,” Kathy said. “I think it is. But yet, if we're not doing anything about it,
we probably don't think it's very important. You know?” At this point, I reminded Kathy
that she herself doesn’t currently teach climate change, and suggested, somewhat
apologetically, “This might seem kind of pointed, but would the same logic apply to
teaching?”—as in, if you’re not teaching climate change, perhaps you don’t think it’s
very important. Kathy paused, and then responded, “Yeah! I think I should be teaching
it!”
My conversation with Kathy suggests that the claim, “Climate change doesn’t fit”
is more complicated than it seems. Implicit in this claim is the assumption that other
topics are a better fit, and that teachers, in determining what to include or exclude in their
curricula, are communicating what they think is essential material for the middle school
science classroom. As Kathy herself admitted, “if we're not doing anything about it, we
probably don't think it's very important.” If teachers aren’t making climate change fit, but
are making stream ecology fit, that would suggest that teachers think stream ecology is
more important than climate change—or  that stream ecology is preferable in some other
way (perhaps easier for kids to understand, less controversial, etc.). So again, what is it
about climate change, as a topic, that makes it hard to fit in and easy to cut out?
Another question that I asked nearly all of my interviewees early in our
conversation (i.e. before I revealed my own interest in climate change) was, “What
environmental science topics do you think are most important for middle schoolers to
learn about?” Most teachers responded first by broadly defining environmental science;
for example Dan said the most important thing was for students to understand
30
“stewardship and restoration … human impacts on the environment and what efforts we
can do.” Kathy responded, “I think getting kids outside, giving them an appreciation of
how everything is all connected together.” When I pressed teachers to be more specific—
what are some of the content areas you cover, or activities you do with students that
relate to environmental science as you have defined it?—teachers listed a range of topics
they focus on, from recycling to stream restoration, storm water management to school
gardens. Out of fifteen teachers, only two voluntarily suggested, before I did, that climate
change was one of the more important environmental science topics for students to learn
about. (These two teachers were Gabby and Isaac). This indicates to me that, while
teachers may verbally affirm the importance of climate science (particularly after they are
prompted to do so), this topic is not most teachers’ highest priority.
Thus, I began to see those four words, “Climate change doesn’t fit,” as another
way of saying, “I don’t prioritize teaching climate change.” This assessment, while
seemingly harsh, isn’t meant to condemn teachers for their pedagogical decisions. Rather,
it is meant to raise another important question: Why are teachers deprioritizing climate
change in the classroom, or reporting that incorporating climate change, while possible, is
a challenge? Is it that they lack curricular resources? Or is it the fact that climate change,
as a topic, is too depressing? What factors might lead teachers to prioritize other science
topics at the expense of climate change? I will return to this question throughout the rest
of this paper, as I describe how direct barriers, emotional pressures, and cultural
narratives may all play a role in teachers’ de-prioritization of climate change.
31
Teachers Present Climate Change as an Issue with “Two Sides”
For the vast majority of scientists, there is only “one side” to the story about
climate change: Human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, are increasing the
concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, causing an unprecedented rate of
atmospheric warming; this phenomenon has a significant and largely detrimental effect
on geophysical systems, ecosystems, and human society. The 2013 Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report confidently asserts, “It is extremely likely that
human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming” (emphasis
mine). Here, “extremely likely” is not a qualitative measure but a quantitative one,
corresponding to a 95-100% probability of accuracy (IPCC, 2013). Corroborating the
IPCC report is the oft-cited study alleging that, in a survey of peer-reviewed scientific
papers taking any stance on climate change, “97.1% endorsed the consensus position that
humans are causing global warming” (Cook, et al. 2013).
That scientific consensus, however, doesn’t keep climate change from being a
controversial issue in the public realm, where multiple “sides” of the climate change story
persist: On one side, climate change is happening, engineered by humans, and cause for
alarm; on the other side, climate change (if it’s even happening) is a product of natural
processes and not worthy of alarm. Indeed, a small but well-organized movement of
climate skeptics has kept this “other side” of the climate change story alive, leading
Americans to believe that climate change remains a matter of debate, rather than
scientific certainty (Greenpeace, 2013; Oreskes & Conway, 2010). In fact, one of the
major players in the climate skeptic movement, the Heartland Institute, has received
media attention in recent years for creating academic curricula discrediting the science
32
about anthropogenic warming, and distributing these curricula to public schools (Bagley,
2012).
While no teachers reported using these Heartland materials, in particular, I did
notice that, rather than exclusively presenting facts pertinent to the first story (i.e. the
scientific consensus on climate change), many teachers I interviewed do allow elements
of the second story to appear in their teaching on climate change. They do this in a
variety of ways and with a variety of intentions. What these teachers have in common,
however, is that, in some way or another, they are presenting climate change as an issue
with “two sides.”
Only one teacher presented both sides as having equal scientific credibility. Not
surprisingly, this teacher was Paul, the same teacher who doubted whether humans are
solely responsible for global warming. According to Paul:
I present both sides of it: ‘Here's what geologists think. Here's what
environmental scientists think.’… And then we do like a T-chart,
basically—or a Venn diagram, whatever you want to call it, compare and
contrast strategy—and then I have [students] actually debate about it:
Which one do you think it is?
For Paul, it’s important that students understand that some scientists see climate
change as part of a naturally occurring cycle, while others see it as a human-induced
phenomenon. “I don't view my job as giving my opinion,” he explains, “I view it as me
giving facts, having the kids argue about it, and letting them come to their own
conclusions.” It’s also important to recall that Paul was one of the teachers who taught
climate change “only briefly;” this single lesson, in which students compare and contrast
viewpoints, is the only time when Paul directly addresses the subject.
33
Other teachers present evidence from both sides, but unlike Paul, they do not
intentionally endorse skeptical views on climate change. For example, both Lauren and
Olivia taught inquiry-based lessons where students had to research evidence both
supporting and refuting the theory of climate change and use that evidence to defend a
particular position on climate change. As a final project for her unit on climate change,
Lauren required students to answer the question, “Are humans causing climate change or
not?” According to Lauren, students “had to research and they had to provide the
evidence about why humans are or are not causing climate change.” Even though
Lauren’s lesson resembles Paul’s somewhat, Lauren asserts that, “I'm definitely not like,
a ‘here's the information, you decide’ kind of person;” unlike Paul, she affirms the
anthropogenic causes of climate change and makes her stance known to students. Indeed,
she hoped that, by researching both sides, students would likewise understand for
themselves that climate change is real and caused by humans. At the same time however,
by delegating students to research evidence for and against the theory of anthropogenic
climate change, and by encouraging students to develop their own stance on the issue,
Lauren is still supporting the notion that climate change is a story with “two sides.”
Olivia’s approach also acknowledged “both sides,” but with some important
differences. Similar to Lauren, Olivia had students research three claims: “climate change
is human caused; climate change is not occurring; and climate change is not human-
caused.” However, unlike Lauren, who encouraged her students to choose and defend
their own stance on climate change, Olivia actually assigned her students positions.
“They didn't get to choose,” she explains, “they just drew a number: 1, 2, or 3 out of a
hat. So whether you believe what's on your card or not, that's the argument that you're
34
going to face and bring that in front of a panel.” After researching the evidence for their
assigned positions, students “sat on these small little panels and presented… what they
found.” After the debate portion of the activity, Olivia debriefed the whole class by
leading a discussion explaining “some things that are facts and why [other things] might
not be facts.”
Olivia’s approach is different from Paul’s approach in two important ways. First,
by assigning students positions (rather than letting students choose their own positions),
Olivia tried to detach students from their preexisting biases. Secondly, by ending the
activity with a debunking session (something neither Paul nor Lauren reported doing),
Olivia is more explicit about the fact that “one side” of the story is false. However, it
remains significant that Olivia acknowledged the “other side” at all. Neither she nor any
other teacher reported adopting this approach when teaching about other issues. (For
example, no teacher taught physics by having students analyze evidence supporting the
theory of gravity as well as evidence opposing the theory of gravity). Again, teachers’
differential treatment of climate change, compared to other topics, begs the question:
What is it about climate change that necessitates teaching “both sides” when,
scientifically speaking, there is really only “one side?”
Interestingly, the two teachers who declined to teach climate change at all, Hailey
and Andrea, reported that if they were to teach climate change, they would choose a
similar strategy where students analyze “both sides” in order to understand the scientific
position. Explained Andrea, “I think the first thing I would do is to try to address their
misconceptions. And they love, students love having roundtable discussions. They like
stating their opinion. So I’d love to get some great texts that maybe have the science
35
behind it, and maybe uh, an opinion article or skeptic article and have them [the students]
sort of decipher what’s in that text and what’s the data, and try to address some of those
misconceptions.” Similarly, Hailey thought back to some of her other lessons and
recalled, “I've checked out some books before that have, like, pro and con arguments;
they're short, persuasive essays by people and I use them for, like, alternative energy
sources. And so I think something like that could be interesting to use [with climate
change].” To clarify, I asked, “For like a ‘pro and con’ thing would it be like, ‘Pro: this is
why climate change is real. Con: this why we don't think so’?” Hailey confirmed,
“Yeah.”
It’s important to note, again, that Hailey and Andrea aren’t climate skeptics, nor
do they intend for their students to become skeptics. Rather, they suggest that for students
to understand and adopt the scientific perspective on climate change, the teacher needs to
acknowledge and even engage the skeptical perspective, if only to debunk it. Again, this
is significant because teachers don’t report teaching other topics by addressing
information that they themselves consider scientifically inaccurate. While the skeptic
movement may not have succeeded in making climate deniers out of these teachers, it’s
possible they have succeeded in making teachers feel that students should study “both
sides” of climate change. The way that these teachers very subtly validate the existence
of doubt echoes, if somewhat dimly, the not-so-subtle attempts by the climate skeptic
movement to manufacture doubt about climate change.
Other teachers entertained skeptical perspectives on climate change in more subtle
ways. Dan, for example, recalled that when he taught climate change using An
Inconvenient Truth, he would challenge students to critically discuss Al Gore’s evidence,
36
asking, “‘Is he [Gore] showing the whole graph? What is—is that graph really an
accurate representation… is there anything about it that could be misleading?’ So I try to
more ask probing questions and then let kids kind of come to their own conclusions.”
While Dan didn’t explicitly introduce skeptical material in class, he did encourage
students to view Gore’s argument suspiciously, and “come to their own conclusions,”
thereby implicitly validating contrarian arguments students may have heard outside of
class.
In short, whether or not teachers endorse “both sides” of the climate change story,
most teachers report at least acknowledging “both sides” in class. One might ask, is this
approach good or bad? On one hand, the “both sides” approach could be
counterproductive if it confuses students or validates scientifically inaccurate claims
(whether intentionally or unintentionally). On the other hand, this approach could be
productive if it ultimately leads students to better understand why the scientific consensus
about climate change is valid and the skeptical perspective is flawed. (However, as I will
point out in the next section, students do not always come to that conclusion).
At this point, however, my intent is not to argue that the “both sides” approach, in
any of its forms, is a good thing or a bad thing; rather, I simply intend to point out that
it’s a significant thing. It’s significant because teachers do not report taking this approach
with other subjects. Indeed, even with other disputed topics, teachers tend to stick to a
single, scientifically informed narrative, rather than addressing multiple “sides.” For
example, while many teachers reported controversies over topics like natural selection
and age of the earth, no teachers reported even entertaining creationist arguments in
class, let alone presenting them as having potential scientific validity. In some ways, the
37
practice of teaching “both sides” mirrors the “balance as bias” trend identified in the
media, where journalists presented climate change as a “debate” long after scientists
themselves had stopped debating it (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004). Like journalists, teachers
may be affected by the cultural climate of doubt surrounding global warming, and this
climate, along with other facts (which I will address in subsequent chapters) may compel
teachers to address contrarian theories, even though teachers themselves acknowledge
such theories to be false.
There’s a “Disconnect:” Doubts, Misconceptions, and/or Apathy Persist
Teachers from all different kinds of communities—urban, rural, liberal and
conservative—consistently reported struggling to address students’ doubts and
misconceptions about climate change. Not only did students bring skeptical and/or
inaccurate perspectives on climate change into the classroom, but in many cases these
perceptions persisted even after instruction.
Persistent Misconceptions
Several teachers, for example, reported that their students struggle to distinguish
between global climate change and perceived local weather patterns. Climate scientists
are careful to note that climate refers to long-terms patterns of atmospheric conditions,
while weather refers to the short-term behavior of wind, water, and air in the atmosphere,
usually at a much more local level. This distinction is important because day-to-day
weather fluctuations, while related to climate, aren’t evidence of climate change (or lack
thereof). Students, however, frequently fail to make this distinction. Dan reported that
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“Kids like to talk a lot about ‘global warming’ as part of climate change and it's really
hard to kinda differentiate, like, a heat wave, as opposed to global warming. Like,
[students will say], ‘It's really hot this summer, so it's global warming!’ And it's like,
‘Well, no, that's not exactly, those aren't necessarily correlated, you know?’” Gabby, too,
notes that “they just don't believe it. So they're always, they always go, ‘But it snowed so
much this year!’ And I go, ‘Yes, because of global warming.’ They go, ‘Whaa?’ So they
just have, like, this huge disconnect…” Gabby, like other teachers, noted a “disconnect”
between the information she’s giving her students and the knowledge (or lack of
knowledge) they, in turn, display about climate change.
As a participant observer at the State Science Teachers Conference, I attended a
roundtable discussion about teaching climate change, where several teachers shared that
their students, too, have persistent misconceptions about climate change. One participant
suggested that teachers simplify it for students, by showing them an actual greenhouse
and using it as an analogy for human-caused climate change. Another teacher responded,
“I’m still struggling with student misconceptions,” and that she’d tried this approach and
students “don’t understand how the actual greenhouse relates to the greenhouse effect.” A
third teacher agreed with the second, saying, “It’s a maturity thing… it’s totally a
maturity thing.”
Lauren expressed frustration that, even after several lessons on climate change,
some students still failed to demonstrate their understanding of the science. In the
previously described activity, where Lauren required students to write a paper about
whether or not humans were causing climate change, students were inconsistent in their
ability to cite valid evidence and come to scientifically accurate conclusions about this
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phenomenon. “And it was so strange…” Lauren recalled, “One girl brought up all of
these, like the increase in the amount of fires that are happening, and then she went
around and was like, ‘We're not doing anything.’” In other words, Lauren’s student was
able to cite some evidence that climate change is occurring, but that evidence didn’t lead
her to conclude that humans are the cause. Lauren recalled her exasperation with this
student: “And I was like, ‘But I saw you research! You did research! How can you—?’
So, I don't understand how that didn't, it didn't connect for her.” Lauren’s statement, “it
didn’t connect,” echoes Gabby’s assessment that students have “this huge disconnect;”
for some reason, students continue to misunderstand aspects of climate science, even
though some teachers, like Lauren, teach relatively comprehensive lessons on the subject.
These reports are consistent with a long list of studies documenting the
persistence of student misconceptions about climate change (Gowda, Fox, & Magelky,
1997; Boyes & Stannisstreet, 1998; Andersson and Wallin, 2000; Boyes & Stannisstreet,
2003; Gautier, Deutsch, & Rebich, 2006; Kerr & Walz, 2007; Rye, Rubba &
Wiesenmayer, 2007; Shepardson, Niyogibc, Choia & Charusombat, 2009; Boyes et al.,
2009; Hansen, 2010; Jeffries, Stannisstreet, & Boyes, 2010; and many more). Jeffries,
Stannisstreet, & Boyes (2010), three of the researchers who have been following trends in
student knowledge of climate change for over ten years, repeated a ten-year-old survey of
first-year college students and found that, a decade later, climate literacy among first-year
college students had not improved; this new cohort of students expressed many of the
same misconceptions as their predecessors, including the persistent conflation of climate
change and the ozone hole. The authors gloomily conclude that, “despite media publicity
and inclusion of the issue of global warming in the formal curriculum, insecure
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knowledge and misconceptions persist.” Rye, Rubba, and Wiesenmayer (2007)
interviewed 26 middle school students two weeks after those students had completed a
unit on global warming, finding that, even after instruction, students’ “alternative
conceptions” (i.e. inaccurate understandings) of the greenhouse effect persisted. Harker-
Schuch and Bugge-Henrickson (2013) also examined European secondary students’
conceptions of climate change before and after instruction and found that that while
students’ knowledge improved by 11% post-instruction, they still suffered from a poor
understanding of the science; even with this improvement, students scored, on average,
below 60% on a test of climate literacy. What’s more, while instruction seemed to have a
small effect on knowledge, it had no effect on students’ opinions regarding climate
change. For this reason, the authors perceive “an urgent need for improving climate
change science education” (p. 755).
Persistent Doubts and Troubling Apathy
In addition to misunderstanding the science, many students simply reject it, as a
matter of belief. Faith remarked, sarcastically, of her students, “Oh it's, it's wonderful,
because more than half of my students don't believe in climate change.” Gabby, too,
reported that her students “are really sure it doesn't exist.” For some students, doubt about
climate change is religiously motivated. Olivia recalled one student who would “bring in
scientific evidence from faith-based organizations” attempting to debunk climate change.
According to Nicole, “a lot of kids just say, ‘What will be will be; I don't have to worry
about it because this is God's earth and He'll take care of me.’” Other students, like a few
in Dan’s class, cite their parents’ views. Recalled Dan, “When we brought up things in
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class, kids will come back and be like, ‘My parents said... that you're feeding us a bunch
of crap,’ basically.”
These skeptical views wouldn’t be so troubling except for the fact that students
often retain them, even after instruction in climate science. According to Faith, there’s
not much she can do about those students; “That's just, you know, they decide that they
don't believe in it. And I have a few who, for evolution, decide the same thing.” Elizabeth
notes that, while she doesn’t have “that many students that argue it,” those who do argue
are unlikely to be swayed by her unit on climate science.  “And so,” Elizabeth confirmed,
“the kids who don't buy it, they're not going to buy it and they don't care.”
Of course, not all students express skeptical beliefs about climate change.
According to Brenda, most students “know all about it, they hear all about it, I think
they’re believers…” and according to Dan, “I think for the most part, in general, they
kind of buy into the fact that it's occurring…” According to teachers’ reports, plenty of
students do demonstrate an accurate understanding of climate change and believe the
scientific consensus that it’s human-caused; however, the frequency and persistence of
other students’ doubts is enough to make teachers take note.
Teachers also expressed frustration about the fact that, even when students were
able to demonstrate an accurate understanding of the science, they often failed to
demonstrate any concern about climate change. In this way, too, there’s a “disconnect.”
Explained Lauren, “elementary school kids, it's so easy to get them on board with
stewardship science… and by the time you get to middle school they really just don't give
a shit anymore. They can't think outside of themselves; middle schoolers
are incredibly narcissistic.” According to Faith, students of this age are “so ‘me-centered!
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In so many ways, they're just this perfect microcosm of the human race. We pretend to
care about other things, but really it's all about us! We're all just middle-schoolers!” In
response to sobering knowledge about climate change or other environmental problems,
students might “feel very sad, but that's not going to get the kids off the couch.” There’s a
sense of frustrated resignation in these teachers’ reports: middle school students are “just
kids,” they’re “so me-centered,” they “don’t give a shit anymore.” If the goals of climate
change education are partially normative—that is, interested in inspiring changed
attitudes and behaviors as well as knowledge—then, by teachers’ own admission, these
goals are not consistently being met.
In summary, this chapter addressed the question of practice, concluding that while
participating teachers generally agreed with the scientific consensus about climate change
and expressed general concern about it, their reports revealed three potentially
problematic trends in the classroom: 1) Many teachers spent a limited amount of time
teaching climate change (despite their professed concern about it); 2) Teachers’
pedagogical strategy often included presenting climate change as an issue with “two
sides;” and 3) Teachers consistently expressed frustration with the challenge of getting
students to correctly understand and/or express concern about this complex issue.  This
finding leads us to ask, what might keep teachers from delving more deeply into the
subject? What makes teachers feel compelled to address skeptical arguments about
climate change, and not just the scientifically sound ones? And, what might keep students
from adequately mastering the material? The next three chapters attempt to answer these
questions, by examining various pressures teachers experience in light of climate change
teaching.
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CHAPTER III
DIRECT BARRIERS TO CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION
I am by no means the first researcher to address the challenges of climate change
education.  A wealth of literature has examined various barriers that educators experience
when considering teaching climate change. Mostly, these include direct barriers—for
example, knowledge or resource deficits that prevent teachers from properly presenting
the subject, or explicit pressure from administrators to avoid climate change or address
skeptical perspectives alongside the science. These problems would seem to present the
most obvious obstacles to climate change instruction.
In this section, I will draw from my own data as well as published studies to
consider the degree to which direct barriers affect teacher practice and student learning.
Specifically, I will address four factors that may explicitly limit teachers’ ability to teach
climate change. These include: teachers’ own lack of knowledge about climate change, a
lack of curricular resources, structural barriers within the educational system, and
administrative pushback. Ultimately I will argue that, while these pedagogical barriers
are consequential, they don’t fully account for the experiences of teachers in this study.
Specifically, direct barriers like knowledge deficits don’t completely explain some of the
more problematic trends I identified in Chapter II—particularly, challenges relating to
making climate change “fit,” teaching it as an issue with “two sides,” and struggling to
get students to properly understand and care about climate science.
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Are Teachers Just Ignorant of Basic Climate Science?
A number of studies have found teachers suffering from patchy and/or
misconstrued conceptions of climate science. For example, a persistent source of
confusion for both schoolteachers and the public in general is the erroneous idea that
global warming is directly connected to ozone depletion. A long list of studies (Groves &
Pugh, 1999; Khalid, 2003; Papadimitriou, 2004; Boon, 2010; Hayhoe, Bullock &
Hayhoe, 2011; and others) indicate that educators carry this and other misconceptions
with them into the classroom. Research by Hayhoe, et al. (2011), for example, found that
a majority of pre-service elementary teachers surveyed in Ontario thought that nuclear
waste, along with “waste heat” from the burning of fossil fuels contributed to global
warming (p. 257). These data are significant because they provide one possible
explanation for the pedagogical problems of climate change; it could be that teachers’
own ignorance of climate science makes them reluctant to address the subject and/or
causes them to “pass their own misconceptions to pupils” (Papadimitriou, 2004, p. 300).
The teachers I interviewed did, on occasion, express concern about their own
knowledge of climate science. For example, Olivia noted that, “As information and
technology changes, to stay abreast of that is really difficult when you're in the
classroom.”
More often though, the teachers I spoke with demonstrated their scientific literacy
and expressed confidence in their knowledge of climate change. While, in my own
research, I made no direct effort to assess participants’ knowledge of climate science, I
can say that nothing in my fifteen interviews indicated that these teachers suffered from
major misconceptions about climate science; for example, no teacher I interviewed
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expressed confusion about the relationship between climate change and the ozone hole,
or weather and climate. Paul, the one teacher who voiced some uncertainty about the
cause of climate change, was the only participant to express any view that directly
contradicted scientific consensus.
Another problem with the hypothesis that teachers “pass their own
misconceptions to pupils” is that this hypothesis may not apply at the middle-school
level. Most of the studies identifying knowledge deficits have assessed either elementary
school teachers or teachers-in-training (“pre-service” teachers), not active middle school
teachers—like those who participated in this study. Meanwhile, at least one study
(Lombardi & Sinatra, 2013) confirms that, on average, active, secondary-level science
teachers have a better grasp on climate science than their peers in elementary education
or teacher-training programs. Interestingly, the study also compared middle school
teachers who reported teaching about climate change with those who reported not
teaching about climate change, finding that the two groups scored comparably on
indicators of climate knowledge. This finding further suggests that knowledge of climate
science (or lack thereof) does not predict middle school teachers’ treatment of the subject.
Because both my own data and the existing literature suggest that middle school
teachers may, in fact, be reasonably literate in climate science—certainly more so than
the average person or the average elementary school teacher—I am unconvinced that a
mere lack of knowledge explains why teachers de-prioritize the subject of climate
change, or why students’ confusion about the subject persists.
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Are Teachers Limited by a Lack of Resources for Teaching Climate Change?
Whether or not teachers properly understand climate science, the inability to
access educational resources could prevent them from adequately teaching the subject
and hinder students’ ability to adequately understand it. A 2011 survey of 1900 educators
by the National Earth Science Teachers Association found that teachers express a strong
reliance on outside resources and training for teaching climate change. When asked what
would improve their ability to teach climate science, 54% mentioned curricular resources
and teaching materials, 36% requested professional development, and 35% indicated a
need for more current data and information (Johnson & Holzer, 2011, pg. 2). A separate
survey, published by the broader National Science Teachers Association, also cited
teachers’ need for better resources. Said one educator, “Links to actual data sets that I
could bring up to show students, or ask them to look at, would help a lot” (Petrinjak,
2011).
Despite some teachers’ concern about insufficient resources, it should be noted
that many resources do exist to aid climate science educators. One such resource is a
guide to climate science education called “Climate Literacy: The Essential Principals of
Climate Science.” Created by a consortium of public and private agencies (including the
US Climate Change Science Program, NASA, NOAA, and the NSF) this highly readable,
17-page document lays out what a collaborative panel of educators and scientists have
deemed “the basics” in climate literacy; it is also based on the common-core standards,
on which the NGSS are based. NASA, too, has also developed a separate website for
educators called NASA Innovations in Climate Education; in addition to providing
resources for understanding the Next Generation Science Standards and the Climate
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Literacy Essential Principles, the website also offers peer-reviewed curricular resources,
compiled data for use in the classroom, and online professional development seminars on
various topics relating to climate education. There are even resources out there to help
teachers handle the controversial aspects of climate change; the National Center for
Science Education, which was originally formed to defend and equip teachers of
evolution, now provides similar support for teachers taking on climate change. In
addition to offering various resources related to the science itself, NCSE also provides
tools for teachers responding to controversy over climate change. The resources
mentioned here represent just a tiny fraction of the material available to teachers from
federal and local agencies, nonprofit organizations, research institutions, science
museums, and more.
While attending the State Science Teachers Conference, I again noted the
opportunities for educators to learn about climate science and climate change pedagogy.
Of the 88 hour-long breakout sessions offered, four of these sessions directly related to
teaching climate change.
For anyone seriously seeking out resources for climate change education, there
seems to be no shortage. Of course, it remains possible that teachers are unaware of these
resources, can’t easily access them, or feel they are unsuitable in some other way. Indeed,
a few teachers in this study indicated that more resources for teaching climate change
would be helpful. In explaining why she doesn’t teach climate change at all, Hailey noted
that climate change is “not something that my school has really tackled and we don't have
good curriculum provided to us for it; and so if we want to do it, we're going to have to
develop our own curriculum.” Megan, Isaac, and Gabby all expressed frustration with
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their assigned textbooks, which failed to address climate change in much depth. Gabby,
for example, noted that climate change is “not really in textbooks yet” at all, and the one
she uses “doesn't give good depth to what's going on.” Beyond textbooks, Faith lamented
that climate-related resources are lacking in general; “there are zero, like zero hands-on
activities that anybody ever directs you to… other than, ‘Look at the graph, with the little
upturn… And that's why I come at it from the paleo focus, because that's what I know.”
For Faith, the challenge is not simply a lack of resources, but a lack of resources that fit
her preferred method of hands-on instruction—a problem that I will address in more
depth in Chapter V.
While teachers frequently mentioned the need for more resources related to
climate change, it should also be noted that they had similar complaints about other
subjects, too. Andrea, for example, lamented the lack of quality science readings for
middle school students and insufficient funding for supplies to teach engineering. Hailey
noted that textbooks are “terrible” for all her subjects, not just climate change. The lack
of quality resources is a real problem for teachers; however, this problem isn’t unique to
the subject of climate change, which means it doesn’t fully explain why teachers
experience significant and distinct challenges with this topic.
What’s more, my interviews revealed that, even though teachers sometimes
wished for more resources, many of them were able to overcome this barrier, either by
creating their own resources or utilizing outside sources. I was amazed by some teachers’
resourcefulness when it came to educating themselves about various science topics and
gathering the resources they needed to teach them. Andrea asserted, “that’s something
that I sort of thrive in; I’m sort of resourceful and can figure out how to make it work.
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But it’s a challenge. You know, you’ve got to go spend your own money. I have to go
dumpster-diving.” Another resourceful teacher, Lauren, dealt with a lack of curricula in
evolution by developing her own, using stuffed animals to teach her students about
natural selection and jelly beans to teach them about gene transfer. Lauren, Andrea, and
others affirm that resource deficiencies can be a challenge for any subject, but one that
can be overcome, if the teacher is willing to commit the extra effort.
Many teachers were similarly resourceful when it came to accessing or
developing curricular materials related to climate change specifically. For example,
several teachers described taking advantage of Youtube and other online resources to
help them teach climate change. Explained Isaac, “teachers are getting away from
textbooks… there's so much available on the internet… I think there's enough to do a
focused unit [on climate change] at least a week or two.” Elizabeth, Olivia, and several
others made use of teacher professional development opportunities provided by outside
organizations. Elizabeth recalled attending a session on climate change at a previous
year’s State Science Teachers Conference, where she received “this disk of PowerPoints
and videos and resources” on climate change that she uses “all the time.” Olivia, too,
described participating in a teacher professional development program related to climate
change. These reports from Elizabeth, Olivia, and others, undermine the assumption that
teachers simply can’t get their hands on the knowledge or tools they would need to teach
climate change.
Curricular resources for teaching climate change do exist. What’s more, teachers
consistently demonstrate, via other subjects, that they are capable of accessing scant
resources and/or creating new ones as necessary. That said, climate change is different
50
from other subjects; it is emotionally burdensome, politically controversial, intangible,
and scientifically complex. These factors—which I will address throughout subsequent
sections and chapters—may explain why teachers find existing resources to be
insufficient, inaccessible, or unsuitable.
Do Structural Factors within the School System Limit Climate Change Instruction?
Even when teachers are themselves knowledgeable about climate change and able
to access pedagogical resources necessary to teach it, they are not entirely the masters of
their own classrooms; structural factors at the state-, district-, and school-level determine,
in part, what teachers can include in their curricula.
State educational standards serve as one such factor. Kastens & Turrin (2008)
examined educational standards nationwide and found that, as of 2008, all but one US
state had science education standards, but only 30 included any mention of climate
change. Fewer than 10 of those mentioned anthropogenic causes or mitigation efforts.
This fact has led many, including McCaffrey & Buhr (2009) to note that “climate in
general and climate change in particular continue to fall through disciplinary cracks and
are often missing from state science education standards;” this fact is significant, since
state standards “to a large extent drive what teachers must focus on in K–12 classrooms”
(p. 514).
Until March of 2014, Oregon’s science standards were somewhat vague on the
subject of climate change. As described in Chapter I, these standards included some
references to weather, climate, and human impacts on the environment at the middle
school level, but didn’t explicitly use terms like “global warming” or “climate change.”
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Certainly, a teacher wanting to teach anthropogenic climate change could have linked the
topic to these standards. On the other hand, however, the same teacher could just as easily
avoid the mentioning anthropogenic climate change without crossing official policy. In
other words, while Oregon’s longstanding standards don’t exactly present a barrier
against teaching climate change, they don’t present a strong incentive, either.
As Oregon transitions to the Next Generation Science Standards (adopted in the
spring of 2014), teachers may feel more pressure to include anthropogenic climate
change in their curricula. As previously explained, these newer standards directly
reference “global warming” and are explicit about the human causes and consequences of
this phenomenon. Andrea, for one, indicated that this change might motivate her to
address climate science where she hasn’t before. She explained that with the new
standards, “now, I have less fear about talking about climate change because it’s
explicitly stated.”
When I interviewed teachers (during the summer of 2014) most reported that their
schools were still in the early process of transitioning to the NGSS. This means that, if
the new standards can be expected to increase or change teachers’ treatment of climate
change, that effect has yet to occur.
It’s important, though, to not overstate the significance of state standards on the
day-to-day practice of science teachers. State standards, by definition, provide a
framework around which educators can build their curricula, but they do not constitute a
curriculum in and of itself. The former Oregon standards address this fact directly,
clarifying that standards “do not specify courses, teaching methods, or instructional
materials” (p. 1). Rather, standards lay out a set of expectations regarding what students
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of a certain age should know and be able to do. This holds true for the newer, Next
Generation standards, too. A few teachers noted this accountability gap between official
standards and classroom practice. This hands-off approach is especially relevant for
smaller schools. Faith, for example, noted, “the good thing about small schools, is there's
so little oversight, that I can almost do whatever I want.”
My intention is not to imply that state standards have no effect on the way
teachers address climate change. For some teachers, like Andrea, they may provide more
incentive to include the topic. However, standards certainly won’t dictate specific
practices, like the kinds of materials, language, or lessons teachers should use when
teaching about climate change; these decisions generally occur at the district- or
classroom-level.
Another major structural factor for science teachers is the problem of disciplinary
boundaries; in a disciplinary curriculum where science is segregated from math, language
arts, and social studies—and science, in turn, is frequently divided into subsections of
chemistry, physics, biology, and earth science—how do you teach a subject like climate
change, which is inherently interdisciplinary?
Freierband, Jokmin, and Eilks (2011) address this question in a qualitative study
of 20 German chemistry teachers. The authors found, just as I did, that while teachers
unanimously affirmed the importance of climate change, they didn’t consistently teach it
in a substantial way. The authors note that:
the number of classroom periods explicitly dealing with climate change
among the majority of the interviewed teachers remains quite low. Only a
handful of the teachers address climate change as a full, independent
teaching unit equally ranked with other, more traditional topics in the
chemistry curriculum. Most teachers deal with climate change solely in
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single classroom periods within units having their central focus on other
topics (p. 88).
The authors attribute this pattern largely to structural barriers within the German
educational system. Here, like in many US middle schools, science is taught in a
disciplinary fashion, with chemistry, physics, and biology separated by classroom and/or
grade-level. Because climate change is interdisciplinary by nature, teachers were hesitant
about connecting it to chemistry-specific topics, like the periodic table. And, while
certain aspects of climate change (i.e. combustion, ocean acidification) are relevant to
chemistry, teachers were unsure whether students would understand these phenomena
without first understanding relevant material in biology and physics. Rosanne Fortner
comes to a similar conclusion in her 2000 assessment of climate education literature,
noting that, “with an overcrowded curriculum and with little interdisciplinary training,
teachers may be reluctant to infuse information about a topic that is inherently intangible
and uncertain” (Fortner, 2000, p. 28). In this way, structural barriers like disciplinary
boundaries might give literal meaning to teachers’ claims that climate change “doesn’t
fit.”
For teachers in this study, disciplinary boundaries do seem to affect practice.
Gabby, one of the teachers who reported that she has taught climate change in the past
but hasn’t taught it recently, explains that her school used to teach science in an
interdisciplinary fashion, where students studied some life science, some earth science,
and some physical science in each grade. A few years ago, however, her school switched
from this “spiraling” system to a “layered” system with life, earth, and physical sciences
divided by grade. Gabby explained that she used to include climate change in her
“weather unit, which we don't really do anymore because it got kind of pushed back
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when we went to the layered teaching.” According to Gabby, one of the reasons she is
looking forward to the implementation of the NGSS is because, in addition to including
more content about weather and climate, these new standards call for a return to the
interdisciplinary, or “spiraling” model of science teaching at the middle school level.
Disciplinary boundaries also seemed to affect Nicole, who teaches both sixth-
grade life science and eighth-grade physical science. Nicole frequently brings up climate
change in her eighth-grade class (“weekly,” according to her own estimation), but barely
addresses the topic in sixth grade life science. Similarly, Kathy used to teach climate
change, back when she taught eighth-grade earth science, because “Eighth grade's
supposed to do weather.” Now, however, she teaches seventh-grade life science, where
the connection to climate change seems weaker. While there’s no reason science teachers
couldn’t teach climate change in the context of biology—indeed, Kathy acknowledges
several units where it could theoretically fit, including natural resources and fossil
fuels—it could be that teachers feel they needn’t address it in one grade if it’s already
being addressed in another grade.
Teachers cited other structural barriers as well—large classes, short periods, and
too many curricular requirements, to name just a few. These factors, while challenging in
the context of any subject, could be especially challenging in the context of complicated,
interdisciplinary topics like climate change, particularly if teachers already feel pressured
by insufficient resources or other, social and cultural factors. Said Brenda, “Our calendar
year has become so short and our curriculum expectations are so broad…” Elizabeth and
others cited the problem of time: “other teachers I've talked to, they don't have time. It's
like, okay, we're going to do climate change: boom, boom, boom, boom, boom … I've
55
got an hour a day to plan for four classes… So, it's just never enough time in the day. It's
just terrible.”
These structural barriers, like those presented by state standards and disciplinary
boundaries, certainly pose a challenge to teachers. However, just as teachers were adept
at overcoming a lack of curricular resources, many teachers demonstrated their ability to
overcome structural barriers too, teaching complex, interdisciplinary subjects even when
factors like grade-level divisions and bell schedules might discourage them from doing
so. Dan, for example, helps organize thirty different environmental science field trips for
his school, ensuring that every student gets out in the field multiple times per year. On
these trips, students are assessing stream health, doing botany transects, collecting marine
debris, and more. When I asked Dan how he managed to accomplish this kind of field-
based, interdisciplinary teaching, given the constraints of time, money, and bell
schedules, he responded, “I think just, you know, it takes passion from a teacher. It takes
a lot of extra kind of personal time, to do those extra things that are really gonna get kids
engaged and make a difference in the environment.” Once again, this indicates to me that
structural barriers are not insurmountable, and thus fail to fully explain why some
teachers fail to “fit in” climate change.
In short, structural realities may partly, if not fully, justify teachers’ claims that
climate change “doesn’t fit.” However, these same structural factors don’t logically
explain why, when teachers do teach climate change (whether briefly or extensively),
they tend to engage “both sides” and why students, in turn, retain persistent doubts and
misconceptions about the science.
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Administrative Pushback: Are Teachers Explicitly Pressured to Avoid Climate
Change or Teach It in a Particular Way?
A wealth of popular news articles has documented conflicts over climate change
in the classroom, both at a local and statewide level. Louisiana and Tennessee, for
example, have made headlines in recent years for passing legislation protecting teachers’
right to present skeptical perspectives on both climate change and evolution (Morello,
2013). Similarly, in South Dakota, the state legislature passed Resolution No. 1009 in
2010, urging that “instruction in the public schools relating to global warming” include
the principle that “global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact” and
that the study of various impacts to “world weather phenomena” is “largely speculative.”
Teachers in these states are experiencing direct, administrative impositions pressuring
them to either avoid the topic or address “both sides.”
These kinds of pressures are also occurring at a local level. In 2011, the journal
Science made the worrisome observation that the “U.S. political debate over climate
change is seeping into K–12 science classrooms, and teachers are feeling the heat.” The
article highlighted several cases where teachers experienced administrative pushback
over the subject of climate change. In one case for example, a school board in southern
California (led by a conservative climate skeptic) passed a new policy “requiring teachers
to explain to the school board how they are handling such topics in class in a ‘balanced’
fashion” (Reardon, 2011, pg. 688). This policy effectively required teachers to leave
room for doubt when teaching about anthropogenic climate change.
Having read reports of legislators, administrators, and parents successfully
pressuring educators to teach (or not teach) climate change in a certain way, I was
57
prepared to hear many similar stories from the participants in this study. However, I
heard very few. While all fifteen teachers I interviewed that either they or a peer had
experienced disagreement with a parent, colleague, or student over the subject of climate
change, no teachers reported being explicitly barred from presenting the subject, nor
given a mandate to teach it in any particular way.
This finding contradicts the message of popular news reports, but corroborates the
findings of other academic studies; for example, a survey by Wise (2014) found that, in
response to the question, “Has anyone suggested to you, that you should NOT teach
about global warming?” 87% of 183 earth science teachers responded, “No one.” The
2011 National Science Teachers Association Survey, mentioned earlier, indicated that
while 82% of teachers had “faced skepticism” from students, only 26% had faced
skepticism from administrators.
According to teachers in this study, students often presented skeptical
perspectives during class, and while these claims served as a frustrating reminder of
students’ persistent doubts and misconceptions about climate change, they did not create
major conflict in the classroom. Some teachers, including Megan, just laughed about it:
“kids you know, sometimes just ridiculous things will come out of their mouths and you
know that they're hearing it from home.” A student might say, for example, "Oh, well, it
was a colder-than-usual winter, so climate change is just stupid…” Interestingly, there
was no observable correlation between a teacher’s location (i.e. rural, urban,
conservative, or liberal) and the likelihood of encountering skeptical claims from
students; all teachers reported encountering such claims on occasion.
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Teachers in this study also reported occasional pushback from parents. Again,
however, this kind of conflict was usually brief and mild, and it almost never involved
administrators, or anyone else with authority. Even Elizabeth, who works in a small, rural
town, noted, “I haven't had—surprisingly, being a conservative community as they are—I
haven't had much. I can't think of a parent that insisted, ‘I don't want my student taught
this!’” Recalled Brenda, “only one time I did, maybe 3 years ago, get some fallout from a
parent… a student had taken this article home to read on climate change and rising
temperatures and [the parent] wrote all over it and said, ‘you’re teaching our kids—you
know, whatever.’” I asked Brenda, “How did you respond to that?” Brenda laughed, “I
didn’t! You know, I just didn’t respond to it. And he didn’t—this parent didn’t follow up
on demanding a response to it.” Isaac also experienced some pressure from parents seven
or eight years ago, when “one family, extremely conservative, called me into the
principal's office” after he showed a Tom Brokaw special on climate change. Isaac
recalled that “the principal and we had to talk it over and nobody was happy, but I wasn't
told not to [teach it].” The parents “made their position clear that they didn't believe it
and they thought it was a bunch of baloney and, you know, [the situation] passed. I didn't
like it, but it passed.” Isaac proceeded to teach his lesson, as planned.
The only respondent to report experiencing significant pushback for teaching
climate change (or any other topic, for that matter) was Carly. Carly lives in a fairly
liberal city but works thirty minutes away, in a small, conservative town. Noted Carly:
It’s definitely controversial in our community. Definitely controversial in
our community. And definitely I’ve had some parent calls that said, [here
Carly adopts the low-pitched voice of a stern, male parent] “You don’t
have to teach that. You shouldn’t be teaching that sort of a thing.”
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Carly recalled that several years ago, “we had a very religious principal, from a church
that doesn’t support global warming. And so the people who belonged to this church
were very able to target me.” She was placed on drop-in observation three times per
week. Notably, Carly was targeted not solely for her treatment of climate change, but for
other subjects too, including such seemingly banal topics as invasive species. While this
intrusive monitoring undoubtedly affected Carly’s treatment of sensitive topics, including
climate change, it didn’t ultimately prevent her teaching them, nor did she suffer any
actual disciplinary action. I asked Carly, “When you do get that sort of pushback… how
do you respond?” Carly paused, adopted an expression of serene humor, and replied,
“Deep inside I smile.” We both laughed. Fortunately for Carly (and for her students), the
contentious principal later left, and has since been replaced with an administrator more
supportive of her curriculum.
In fact, all the aforementioned incidents of conflict occurred in the past, and
several teachers expressed that negative pressure from parents or administrators has
become even less frequent in recent years. This trend corroborates data from the National
Earth Science Teachers Association survey, which asked teachers how attitudes about
climate change have changed in their school; the authors report that 50% of teachers
indicated an increase in positive attitudes, while 27% indicated no change, and only 12%
indicated an increase in negative attitudes (Johnson & Holzer, 2011). Isaac, the same
teacher who was called into the principal’s office by angry parents more than seven years
ago, matter-of-factly affirmed, “Now, of course, I think it's not an issue for schools to
teach about climate change.”
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Unlike teachers in South Dakota facing a congressional resolution on climate
ambivalence, or the teacher in California whose school district pressured him to teach
climate change in a “balanced way,” teachers in this study reported that, if anything, they
felt supported rather than undermined by their administration. During Isaac’s one
experience of climate-related conflict, the principal supported his decision to teach the
subject, even in the face of an angry parent. Andrea reports, similarly, that if she were to
ever get pushback from parents, she’d feel confident turning to her administration for
support, “Because that’s the principal’s job… administration is the buffer and I don’t
need to take that.”
It seems, then, that teachers in this study have been spared the kind of direct,
negative pressure that would compel them to avoid climate change, teach it in a
superficial fashion, or teach “both sides.” That’s not to say that the ongoing cultural
controversy surrounding climate change doesn’t affect whether and how these teachers
choose to address climate change. Rather, social controversy over climate change has an
indirect impact on teacher practice—an effect that I will further explore in subsequent
chapters.
Thus far, I have described four relatively tangible barriers that would directly
impede climate change education: teachers’ lack of knowledge, resource deficits, school
structure, and direct pressure from administrators or community members. While these
barriers to climate change education are consequential, they don’t fully account for the
problematic trends in practice I identified earlier. Why not? For one, teachers didn’t
experience these direct barriers on a consistent basis; sometimes the problem didn’t even
occur. Secondly, when teachers did experience direct barriers to climate change
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education, they often experienced the same barriers in the context of other subjects, too;
thus, these problems aren’t unique to the subject of climate change. Thirdly, whether the
barrier was unique to teaching climate science or not, teachers were often able to
overcome it; thus, these explanations in and of themselves are insufficient. For these
reasons, we cannot blame the pedagogical challenges of climate change solely on direct
barriers, like faulty knowledge, insufficient resources, or unsupportive administrators. In
the next chapter, I will turn from direct barriers to emotional factors that may indirectly
influence the way teachers address (or fail to address) the subject.
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CHAPTER IV
EMOTIONAL PRESSURES AND CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION
Why would teachers who are both informed and concerned about climate
change—and who are under no direct pressure to teach (or not teach) the subject in any
particular way—continue to report that climate change is difficult to fit in, or that
students have difficulty understanding it? The literature on environmental education and
the sociology of climate change suggest that individuals and communities experience
various emotions related to climate change and that these emotions have a complex effect
on beliefs and actions. While tangible factors, like the availability of resources, may
affect teacher practice in a direct fashion, these more intangible emotional pressures—for
example, teachers’ desire to avoid conflict or manage students’ emotions—affect
teaching in a more indirect fashion.
Here, I will draw on my own research as well as other published studies to
identify some of the significant emotional pressures that teachers experience in the
context of teaching climate change, and illustrate how these pressures may account for
some of the challenges teachers face regarding climate change in the classroom. These
pressures include teachers’ own emotions about climate change; managing students’
emotions; and fear of interpersonal conflict.
Teachers’ Own Emotions
Throughout my interviews, teachers expressed a variety of emotions about
climate change, most of them negative. A minority of teachers explicitly shared feelings
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of fear or sadness, while a majority of teachers referenced feelings of guilt and/or
personal responsibility.
Feelings of Fear or Sadness
Three teachers expressed feelings of anxiety about the effects of climate change.
Olivia, whose husband works in wildfire management, reported, “I'm definitely fearful.
Even because of my personal connection to the wildfire. And the communities that are
impacted… and people being evacuated and homes being burned. I mean, there's
definitely a fear factor.” Gabby expressed her fear about how climate change may impact
food production; “I guess for me,” explained Gabby, “I’m more worried about agriculture
and how agriculture is going to deal with climate change… that's going to be really
hard.” Nicole, too, worried about her family members, who are farmers in the Midwest,
wondering how their lives would be impacted by climate change. In fact, Nicole, more
than any other participant, expressed deep emotion about climate change throughout our
interview. Referring to ocean acidification, she admitted, “it's pretty horrifying what's
going on in the oceans right now. Pretty abysmal... just, very depressing. Very
depressing.” Nicole also reported that talking about climate change with her close friends
and family gets her “all fired up. And we just get so frustrated. And we're like, ‘Are we
the only people that are awake in this world?’ Like, ‘What the hell is going on out
there?!’” Nicole isn’t just concerned about climate change; she finds it “horrifying,”
“depressing,” and incredibly “frustrating.” Though just three teachers explicitly
expressed such feelings of fear or sadness, the intensity of their feelings was significant,
and worthy of note.
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Feelings of Personal Responsibility
More than fear, though, the topic of climate change inspired teachers to express
feelings of personal responsibility, particularly in relation to their own, individual actions.
One question that I asked nearly every interviewee was, “I’m curious, when you’re not
teaching, whether you think much about climate change?” I framed this question broadly,
in order to avoid suggesting whether or not respondents should be thinking about it, or
what sorts of thoughts and feelings they should have. After about five interviews, I
noticed a pattern, which continued throughout my research. More often than not, teachers
would immediately respond to this question, not by describing their political position,
their views on the science, or fears they may have about the consequences of climate
change, but by assessing the personal actions they were or weren’t taking in response to
the problem of climate change.
When I asked Elizabeth if she thought about climate change, she immediately
responded, “Yes, from the standpoint that I drive a little car.” She then went on to
describe how she line-dries her clothes, carpools, and tries to cut back on resource use.
She admitted that, while she also owns a large truck, she needs it to pull her horse
trailer—unlike “the guy down the road who drives this big, three-quarter-ton diesel and
commutes back and forth to work in it.” Here, Elizabeth conveys feelings of pride in
defense of her environmentally friendly behaviors (especially in contrast to her gas-
guzzling neighbor) while at the same time admitting some guilt about her own large
vehicle. For Elizabeth, “thinking about climate change” means thinking about her
personal impact and responsibility.
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When asked whether she thinks about climate change, Olivia responded, “Oh,
often,” and then described a personal sacrifice she had recently made in order to reduce
her carbon footprint; in the last year, she moved away from a town she loved to a new,
less desirable town in order to shorten her commute. At the same time, Olivia also
described feeling bad about other personal impacts, like flying—“which goes against
some things”—and about not riding her bike as often as she used to. “So I try to think
about everything,” she explained. “Sometimes it actually consumes me—it consumes me,
I think.” Olivia’s response suggests there can be some comfort in dwelling on personal
pro-environmental behaviors: At least I’m doing my part! However, thinking about
climate change as a matter of individual responsibility can also be overwhelming, or, in
Olivia’s words, “consuming.” It’s a heavy emotional burden.
Six other teachers, including Dan, Hailey, Kathy, Isaac, Paul, and Gabby
described “thinking about climate change” in ways that affirmed their feelings of
personal accountability. Notably, teachers were equally likely to cite their individual
responsibility for climate change whether they lived and worked in a liberal, university
town or a more conservative, rural community. Though they didn’t use Olivia’s
emotionally charged language, these teachers still conveyed a sense of emotional tension
as they defended their pro-environmental behaviors in one breath, while somewhat
sheepishly admitting their environmental shortcomings in the next breath. Isaac
responded, “I don't obsess on it, for sure… [just] being aware, and within my own life I
do everything that I can think of; but I still drive to [nearest large city] to get my
groceries monthly.” Even Paul, who seemed the least concerned about anthropogenic
climate change, cited his personal pro-environmental behavior, as well as its limitations:
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“It's—you know, I'm not running into [town] every day, driving everywhere. When
possible I cut back. And we live on a farm so we use a lot of our own stuff, we don't go
buy things.” When asked whether she thinks about climate change, Gabby, similarly,
responded with “Um, I try to. [Laughs lightly] I try to be really careful about my energy
usage and that sort of thing, but... [trails off].” Gabby’s self-conscious laughter and
unfinished sentence could signal feelings of ambivalence or discomfort regarding her
personal contribution to climate change.
Again, it’s worth noting that, in all of these cases I simply asked the respondents
whether, outside of the classroom, they thought much about climate change; I never
intentionally prompted them to discuss their personal environmental behaviors. It’s as if,
when teachers heard, “Do you think about climate change?” they automatically
interpreted the question to mean, “Are you thinking about how your personal lifestyle
contributes to climate change?” In this way, participants turned an open-ended question
meant to gauge teachers’ interest in climate change into a test of individual morality and
behavior.
In the context of emotional pressures, this is significant. It’s significant that
teachers frame climate change as an issue of individualized responsibility because, while
this feeling of responsibility may inspire some pro-environmental behavior changes, this
same feeling of responsibility may also inspire uncomfortable emotions like guilt,
ambivalence or hopelessness. These negative emotions may be amplified when one
contemplates, as Olivia does, the enormity of climate change compared to the
insignificance of one’s own personal attempts to reduce carbon emissions. The result can
be emotionally overwhelming.
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Emotions Affect Teaching Practice
How then do negative emotions like fear, guilt, or sadness relate to the
pedagogical trends I described in Chapter II? For example, how might emotions
reinforce—or counteract—teachers’ feelings that climate science is hard to “fit in?”
Environmental educators, psychologists, and sociologists have long maintained that
emotions significantly affect the way that individuals respond to phenomena like climate
change; however, they are not all in agreement about how this effect works.
On one hand, teachers’ own feelings of fear, sadness, or personal responsibility
could positively motivate them to address climate change in the classroom. Indeed, in
much of the literature on environmental education and behavior, there is an implicit (and
sometimes explicit) assumption that emotions can promote pro-environmental attitudes
and behavior. One article from Environment and Behavior, for example (boldly titled
“Environmental education and attitudes - Emotions and beliefs are what is needed”),
claims: “it is what people feel and believe about the environment that determines their
attitudes toward it” (Pooley & O’Connor, 2000, p. 711). Similarly, Kollmuss and
Agyeman (2002) suggest that “an emotional connection seems to be very important in
shaping our beliefs, values, and attitudes towards the environment…” Kollmuss and
Agyeman go on hypothesize “that the stronger a person’s emotional reaction, the more
likely that person will engage in pro-environmental behavior” (p. 245). In the context of
climate education, this argument is significant because it proposes that emotions—even
negative ones—may encourage teachers to engage in pro-environmental behaviors,
including educating their students about this subject. For teachers who feel some guilt or
ambivalence about their own contributions to climate change, educating others may be an
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activity (alongside recycling and carpooling) that helps to satisfy their feelings of
personal responsibility. Feelings of fear or sadness, too, may provide a sense of urgency
or purpose to this task.
Within this study, participants’ reports occasionally supported this hypothesis,
suggesting that negative emotions may indeed encourage teachers to address climate
change. According to Nicole, “So with [my eighth-graders] I always talk about climate
change—at least once a week. Because it scares the heck out of me” (emphasis mine).
Nicole continued, “And I want them to know what's going on. I want them to know what
contributes to climate change. And I want them to know what they can do to take some
responsibility in it all.” Indeed, Nicole was one teacher who did teach climate change in
her eighth-grade class. Similarly, Megan suggested that her own sadness about climate
change influenced her decision to address climate change with her students, even though
it isn’t a primary topic of focus. She explained, “there's real people losing their homes
and there's real animals being threatened and there's real stories that [students are] just
not hearing because people don't want them to hear it… I just want them to know that
they have a personal responsibility to learn about this stuff.” Both Megan and Nicole
suggest that their decision to teach climate change is influenced, in part, by their own
strong emotions about the subject.
While some environmental educators and researchers point to the way emotions
may positively influence teachers’ treatment of climate change, other scholars suggest the
opposite, noting how emotions, particularly negative ones, may actually discourage
people from facing difficult topics like climate change. In this way, negative emotions
may explain some teachers’ tendency to avoid or minimize the subject, a choice which
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they may justify by claiming that climate change is difficult to “fit in.” A survey-based
study by Lombardi and Sinatra (2013), for example, found that teachers who indicated
greater feelings of anger about climate change were less likely to teach the subject than
those who did not indicate such feelings. The authors also suggest that other emotions
may negatively influence teaching practice. “Hopelessness,” for one, “could also result in
teachers failing to engage because they may have a perceived inadequacy to influence
future outcomes” (p. 184). Again, teachers may avoid the topic, not because they feel no
personal responsibility for climate change, but precisely because they feel an acute sense
of personal responsibility, but lack the means to fix the problem themselves. Individuals
may be inclined to deal with this cognitive dissonance by doing the small good deeds
they can, while avoiding the subject of climate change beyond that.
Sociologist Kari Norgaard’s research on climate change non-participation in
Norway and the US (2011) also suggests that negative emotions like fear, guilt, and
hopelessness motivate individuals to avoid this issue in thought, conversation, and action.
She observed that, even though Norwegians understood and cared about the problem of
climate change (just as teachers in this study do), they rarely talked about it or engaged in
meaningful responses to the problem. In the words of one Norwegian man, avoidance is
one way that people “protect themselves a bit” from negative feelings associated with
climate change (p. 4). Rather than confronting the enormity of the problem—a problem
that individuals may feel powerless to address—people simply avoid thinking and talking
about it.
One teacher explicitly addressed this inverse relationship between concern and
action. Megan, the same teacher who earlier asserted that both she and her students “have
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a personal responsibility to learn about this stuff” also acknowledged the converse—that
the subject of climate change is “uncomfortable. It's hard to think about. It's hard to think
that we're destroying the earth, or whatever. That's a tough topic. We'd rather just not
look at it. It's way easier.”
In the context of science teaching, this perspective would suggest that teachers
may avoid teaching climate change in order to avoid their own feelings of sadness, fear,
or guilt. Instead, teachers may prioritize science topics that don’t inspire these same
negative emotions—topics like dinosaurs, the water cycle, or covalent bonding; teachers
may work harder to “fit in” these emotionally neutral or emotionally upbeat topics.
In summary, while it’s clear that teachers experience negative emotions in
response to the problem of climate change, it’s unclear whether these emotions motivate
teachers to address or avoid the topic in the classroom. That is, it’s uncertain whether
negative emotions contribute to teachers’ belief that climate change is hard to “fit in.”
The effect of emotions on teacher practice is complex, and deserves more direct study;
however, I propose that emotions both positively and negatively influence the inclusion
of climate change in the classroom. Specifically, it could be that teachers’ feelings of fear
and personal accountability motivate them to bring up the subject in class—after all
students, like teachers “have a responsibility to learn about this stuff”—but these same
emotions may discourage teachers from dwelling on the subject too long or too deeply.
This may explain, perhaps, why many teachers report addressing climate change, but
only briefly, or only in the context of other topics.
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Managing Students’ Emotions
Teachers in this study, including Megan, confirmed that climate change “can be
scary to kids. They don't want to hear that kind of stuff.”  Nicole agreed, noting, “oh God,
it's so depressing. They [the students] get so depressed.” Olivia and Kathy recalled
incidents when students reacted emotionally to learning about other environmental
problems as well. One student in Olivia’s class, for example, learned that the subdivision
he lived in was built by razing a former apple orchard. According to Olivia, “He [the
student] actually felt awful, he was like, ‘Oh my God! How do I change that?’” In
Kathy’s case, a student “was just beside himself” over an assembly about waste
reduction; after learning how much waste humans generated, the student felt that the
problem was just too big to solve. Kathy recalled, “He was so upset about it.”
So in addition to experiencing their own emotions, teachers recognize that
students, too, may have feelings of fear, sadness, or guilt in response to difficult
environmental topics, including climate change. A few teachers expressed concern about
making their students feel bad. According to Andrea, “I feel like once people start feeling
guilty, they begin to shut down,” and so teaching about environmental issues like climate
change requires “empowerment without guilt.” At the State Science Teachers
Conference, the moderator of one session on climate change education put it succinctly:
“You have to have a balance between hope and despair.” Several participants echoed this
sentiment.
A surprising number of teachers, however, expressed no regret about causing their
students emotional distress. When asked whether he takes into account students’
emotions when teaching a potentially depressing or guilt-ridden topic like climate
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change, Isaac responded, “I do. But I don’t not teach it because of that.” Similarly, when
I asked Brenda whether she ever worried about making students feel scared or sad when
it comes to environmental problems, Brenda responded, “…in terms of upsetting
them?… I don’t think I’ve ever pulled the punches on that one.” Several other teachers
responded along similar lines:
 “I don't feel bad about making them feel bad…I think they should feel
bad” (Kathy)
 “They need to be scared… Our students are pretty privileged, for the most
part, so scaring them is not a bad thing” (Gabby).
 “I mean, I say on a fairly regular basis to all of my students that we're all
going to kill ourselves. That humans are going to destroy themselves”
(Lauren).
 “They will tell you, I sock it to 'em… why sugar-coat it? … I throw
distressing stuff to them all the time” (Elizabeth).
 “I just show it to them, saying, ‘This is what it is!” (Carly).
Nicole reported taking a similar doomsday approach, explaining that if I were to
interview her students and ask, “Did Mrs. N teach you about climate change?” the
students “would look at you and be like, ‘Yeah.’ Especially my 8th graders. They would
all probably say ‘Yeah, Mrs. N made us feel like the world is going to end every day.’”
But rather than trying to minimize her students’ emotions, Nicole reported, “I actually
take advantage of the feeling. At least they're feeling something, even if it's not
positive…they also really tune in when it's, like, doomsday stuff.”
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These reports suggest that, far from shying away from students’ emotions, these
teachers seem to embrace making their students feel bad about environmental problems,
including climate change. In fact, these teachers strategically manage students’ emotions,
arguing that negative emotions may actually enhance student learning.
Students’ Response to Negative Emotions
Again, how might this emotion-related pressure account for the pedagogical
trends I identified regarding climate change in the classroom? If teachers’ own negative
emotions about climate change don’t prevent them from teaching the subject, it could be
that their willingness to make students feel scared, sad, or guilty is actually
counterproductive; faced with these negative emotions, students may tune out, or worse,
bolster their own doubts and misconceptions about climate change.
Again, Kari Norgaard’s research in Norway and the United States sheds light on
this phenomenon. The way one Norwegian teenager described it, “I think that there are a
lot of people who feel ‘No matter what I do, I can’t do anything about that anyway’” (pg.
82). According to one American student, “solving global warming seems like such a
daunting task, and even I know that it can seem too overwhelming” (pg. 4). Like with the
adults Norgaard surveyed, these students’ bleak emotions were associated with apathy,
rather than conviction and action. Maria Ojala’s research into young peoples’ means
of coping with climate change (2012) makes a similar connection between negative
emotions and disengagement from environmental issues. According to Ojala, “emotion-
focused” coping—whereby distressing information is mitigated through a process of
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denial, rather than action—is associated with both decreased pro-environmental behavior
and decreased life satisfaction (pp. 226-7).
In addition to affecting how students act in response to climate change, emotions
may also impact what students believe about climate science to begin with. One incident
from Lauren’s class is telling. As described in Chapter II, Lauren had instructed her
students to research the possible causes of climate change and then write a paper
explaining “why humans are or not causing climate change.” Lauren recalled that several
students defended the skeptical view that humans aren’t responsible—but these students
“had very, very poor reasons.” These students, it seemed, rejected the theory of
anthropogenic climate change for personal, emotional reasons, not scientific ones.
According to Lauren, the students’ arguments boiled down to, “‘We’re just not doing
anything. It's not my fault.’” Recalled Lauren, “That’s really what it came down to is, I'm
not doing anything. It's not that we aren't doing anything, it's that I.. I am not doing
anything, so [therefore] we are not doing anything.”
Lauren’s students seem to be demonstrating the “emotion-focused” coping
strategies Ojala referred to. For these students, the theory of anthropogenic climate
change came with an implicit accusation of personal responsibility: Humans are guilty of
causing this enormous problem, and you’re guilty too. Because this moral accusation
seemed unbelievable, emotionally untenable or both, students instead gravitated towards
the scientifically inaccurate but emotionally tolerable conclusion that “we” are not to
blame for climate change.
While Lauren’s case is just one out of many, it may serve as a cautionary tale
about the role of emotions—particularly negative emotions like fear or guilt—in climate
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change education. Teachers, in their willingness to “make students feel bad,” may be
overestimating students’ ability to cope with negative emotions. Rather than inspiring
students to pay more attention, to learn more, and to care more, these negative emotions
may actually lead students to shut down, or to defend inaccurate ideas about climate
change. This phenomenon may explain, in part, the resistance of students’ doubts and
misconceptions to instruction.
Fearing or Avoiding Interpersonal Conflict
Just as teachers and students experience emotions in response to the phenomenon
of climate change itself, so too do they experience pressures in relation to the social
controversy surrounding climate change. The desire to avoid conflict may indirectly
pressure teachers to avoid teaching about climate change, teach it in a superficial fashion,
or teach “both sides.” In addition, teachers’ efforts to avoid conflict may indirectly
contribute to students’ misconceptions and doubts about climate science.
Earlier, I reported that teachers rarely experienced conflict over the subject of
climate change and that when they did face pushback, it was brief and mild. With the
possible exception of Carly (the teacher who was placed on drop-in observation), no
teacher was forced by colleagues, parents, or administrators to adopt or abandon any
particular teaching practices. Does this fact indicate, however, that social controversy has
no effect on the way teachers and students engage with climate change? In short: no.
Teachers in this study fully recognize that climate change remains socially contentious
and as such, they try to avoid conflict with parents, students, and colleagues whenever
possible. Indeed, I would argue that part of the reason teachers don’t report experiencing
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major battles with parents, principals, or school boards is because they are adept at
preventing conflict before it occurs. Teachers’ strategies for avoiding conflict, in turn,
may contribute to the notion that climate change is hard to “fit in.” Conflict-avoidance
may also explain, in part, why teachers admit evidence from “both sides” and why
students, in turn, continue to harbor doubts and misconceptions. In this way, social
controversy serves as an indirect, rather than direct, barrier to climate education.
Existing literature supports the notion that teachers worry about interpersonal
conflict over climate change, and that they significantly or subtly adjust their teaching
practices so as to avoid this conflict. A 2011 survey by the National Science Teachers
Association reported that teachers “noted the political polarization of climate change
education and the effect on their teaching.” For example, one middle school teacher from
Wisconsin wrote, “I’m concerned that parents will challenge the material that is included
in my curriculum. I focus on having students examine data and draw their own
conclusions.” This seemingly small adjustment—focusing on the data and letting students
make their own conclusions—may prevent conflict with parents, but may also have
consequences for what students ultimately come to understand about climate change.
Wise’s 2010 study asked teachers, “Do you use any specific strategies when
teaching about global warming, due to the fact that it is publicly controversial?” Among
earth science teachers who taught formal lessons on climate change, many of them
reported that they: emphasize the nature of science aspect of the topic (87%),
acknowledge and/or allow discussion of ideas expressed by global warming skeptics
(76%), offer to talk with students outside of class (24%), and/or send a letter home to
parents (14%).
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A 2004 study by Griffith and Brem examined how teachers coped with another
socially controversial science topic: evolution. In this context, too, the authors found that
fear of conflict may discourage teachers from addressing the contentious topic and/or
cause them to modify their teaching practices. The authors describe how one teacher, in
particular adjusted her teaching in this context:
[She] acknowledged that when she teaches evolution, her teaching style
changes. She begins other units with open discussion and encourages
students to find personal relevance, but when she teaches evolution, she
‘sneaks it in.’ She tolerates no discussion, the format of the class becomes
lecture only, and she does not even use words such as ‘‘evolution’’ until
they are well into the unit in hopes that this will reduce the number of
opportunities students have to disrupt the class or to tell their parents that
they are studying evolution in school.
As I will illustrate, teachers in this study adopted some of these same conflict-mitigating
tactics when teaching about climate change.
Pedagogical Strategies for Avoiding Controversy
Some teachers avoided conflict by avoiding the topic altogether. Interestingly, the
two teachers who seemed most concerned about inciting controversy over climate change
were also the youngest participants in this study. Andrea and Hailey, both first-year
teachers, declined to teach climate change at all, in part because of their worries about
disputes with parents, students or both. It should be noted that neither teacher had ever
personally experienced conflict over teaching climate change; however, the perceived
risk of conflict was enough to steer them away from the topic. Explained Andrea, “I feel
like as a new teacher in a new community I wasn’t really sure, and I heard horror stories
about mentioning [climate change] and, you know, calls from parents.” While Andrea
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worried about clashes with parents, Hailey worried about her students. When I asked
Hailey if she ever mentioned climate change in class, she explained:
I didn't this year, and for multiple reasons. Partially because I think it—we
have a population of students that are, some of them are quite
conservative… and I had a group of kids that I was having a hard time
managing well at the beginning of the year and that was not something
that I felt comfortable tackling.
Hailey feared that, by introducing a potentially controversial issue like climate change,
she would lose control of her already unruly and politically conservative students.
Paul, the one teacher who wasn’t sure whether climate change was natural or
human-caused, reported that one of the reasons he limited his instruction on climate
change was to avoid conflict with a coworker who was even more skeptical than him.
According to Paul, this fellow teacher “basically said it was just part of the earth's
natural, geologic processes,” and didn’t give any credit to the theory of human-caused
warming. Paul confronted the other teacher, and “we agreed to disagree and agreed to not
really go into depth on it because we're very different… and we didn't want to be arguing
in front of the students.” Paul, Hailey, and Andrea all suggest that fear of conflict—rather
than the actual experience of it—may explain why teachers avoid or minimize the subject
and insist that it’s hard to “fit in.”
Other teachers avoided conflict by exercising special cautions when dealing with
climate change. According to Megan, “it’s all about the relationship that we have with the
kids and the parents and whether they trust you or not.” She added, “I just think
sometimes you have to be careful with how you choose your words…” In other words,
because she has a trusting relationship with students and their families, and because she
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exercises caution when teaching sensitive topics, Megan can avoid inciting controversy
over climate change.
One way teachers exercise caution is by focusing on data and evidence. After
noting that climate change is “definitely controversial in our community,” Carly
explained:
And how I sort of approach it with the kids is—you know, some of them
were arguing with me, or they wanted to argue with me, even though I
wasn’t presenting an argument—I approached it looking at properties of
elements and compounds, and what is the property of CO2; and then
looking at the change in CO2 levels, and that there must be some
correlation.
By making the lesson very data-driven, Carly avoids turning it into “an argument,” and
thereby minimizes the potential for conflict and controversy. Hailey, too, indicates that if
she were to teach climate change in the future, the way she would “frame it is looking at
historical data, evaluating—like, look at the model for how the climate is changing… I
like that perspective on it, because there's so much, there is so much controversy around
it that it makes it very factual, and it makes it very matter-of-fact…” It should be noted
that focusing on the data isn’t a bad pedagogical practice, especially in the science
classroom. However it is a tendency that, according to teachers’ own reports, is motivated
by a desire to diffuse conflict.
One teacher I spoke with at the Oregon Science Teachers’ Conference works in a
particularly conservative town in southern Oregon and she, like Andrea and Hailey, had
thus far avoided the topic of climate change altogether, saying that bringing up the
subject would be “like standing in front of a room and saying, ‘Here, throw arrows at
me!’” She further explained that she hopes to teach climate change in the future, but that
she, like Megan, would mitigate conflict by being careful with her words and focusing on
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the scientific evidence. She would refrain from actually using the phrase “climate
change” until her students have engaged with the data. Then afterwards when, in her
words, students “understand it,” she would reveal that they’ve been learning about
climate change all along.
Another way to avoid controversy is by sending home a note to parents; both Dan
and Kathy employed this tactic before showing the film An Inconvenient Truth.
According to Dan, “out of 100 kids, there's usually maybe two or three parents that say,
‘No way, I don't want my kid to watch that’…It's never been really confrontational. It's
always been pretty cordial, and they state their opinion and I state mine, and it's just,
‘Yeah, you have a right to that,’ and that's fine.” He allowed those two or three students
to skip the film. Kathy, who also sent home a note about An Inconvenient Truth, likewise
allowed several students to be excused from the activity. When I asked her why she took
this precaution, Kathy explained, “I think it was something that we talked to the principal
about… it's kind of like evolution I suppose, in some respects… I don't know why global
warming was such a big deal, though! Because, I guess, maybe it was the way he [Al
Gore] was pushing it, sort of. I don't know?” It should be noted that Kathy hasn’t shown
the film in several years (in part due to switching from 6th to 8th grade), and she asserts
that if she were to show it today, she probably wouldn’t bother to get parental permission.
Still, for both Kathy and Dan, the mere potential for conflict affected their treatment of
climate change, at least in the past. After all, neither teacher sent letters home to parents
before showing films about other topics, like plate tectonics or the salmon cycle.
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Conflict-Avoidance in the Face of Climate Skepticism
Teachers also minimized conflict in the way they reacted to climate skepticism in
the classroom. Another question I asked nearly every teacher was how they responded to
students who expressed inaccurate ideas about climate change. Teachers consistently
reported that, rather than directly telling the student, “You’re wrong,” they would subtly
correct the misconception while simultaneously validating the student’s perspective in a
way that mitigated potential controversy. As Hailey explained, the delicate approach she
takes in correcting students around “sensitive” issues differs from the more direct
approach she applies in other contexts:
In the context of things that aren't sensitive, if it's something that’s a very
easy fix, I tell them that directly. I would say, ‘Oh I think you have that—
what you're saying is not quite correct. What's actually the correct idea or
answer would be this.’… And for something that's more sensitive… I
would say, ‘Well, what do you guys think?’ Discussion first before I give
them what I think or what scientists believe is true” (Hailey).
Though Andrea never discussed climate change specifically in her classroom, she
explained that if she were to teach the subject, she would [“do what I always do”] take
the same approach she takes with other sensitive topics; if a student presented a skeptical
view, “I wouldn’t push it at all. But I would just [say], you know, ‘Your opinions matter,
and they’re valid, but I don’t see any science backing that up.’” Andrea gently identifies a
misconception (“I don’t see any science backing that up”) while being careful not to
discredit the student’s way of thinking (“Your opinions matter, and they’re valid.”)
Dan, similarly, doesn’t “push it.” He explained, “kids will come back and be like,
‘My parents said that this—that you're feeding us a bunch of crap,’ basically. And you
know, we just kind of go through, ‘Hey there's scientific evidence, and then there's your
personal beliefs, and I'm not gonna—I'm just giving you the information and you have to
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decide as an individual what is right.” Even though Andrea and Dan agree with the
scientific consensus about climate change (and have also affirmed the importance of
getting students to understand science and care about environmental issues), both refrain
from explicitly correcting students who hold contrarian views. One reason for this, I
would argue, is that both teachers are reluctant to create conflict with the student or the
student’s parents—particularly if they feel that confronting the student is unlikely to
change his views anyway.
Several other teachers reported using the same basic tactic in response to skeptical
perspectives on climate change: 1) suggest that the student’s perspective was
scientifically inaccurate, 2) validate the student’s right to hold such views. In this way,
teachers avoid conflict, both with students and with parents, who may be responsible for
the student’s perspective in the first place.
 “Yeah, I mean, I make sure that they know I value their opinion, but that
opinions change, and I might give them an example of what I used to think
and that, that's why we learn and why we get an education… and so [I
say], ‘You're entitled to your opinion, but make sure that you're open to
new things’” (Megan).
 “Always coming back to ‘I'm not asking you to change your values
system’ and honoring where [students] are coming from” (Olivia).
 “And I'm like, ‘Well, if that's how your parents feel, that's how you feel;
you are entitled to your own opinions. But please don't sway those others
that I'm trying to inform.’ That's sort of how I've handled it” (Elizabeth).
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In addition to forestalling conflict between herself and her students, Elizabeth
attempts to discourage student-to-student conflict as well. She described how, when
discussing topics like climate change, students will “get into heated debates, and I'm like
‘Woah woah woah, woah, woah!’” Elizabeth explained that in these moments, she steps
in to say, “Well now, both of you are entitled, like, don't get pissed at each other. You're
both entitled to your own opinions. Here's the information.’” Again, rather than taking
sides or allowing the debate to continue—either of which could aggravate the conflict—
Elizabeth quickly puts out the fire by validating both students’ perspectives and then
presenting herself as a neutral source of data: “Here’s the information.”
It may seem inconsistent that teachers are reluctant to challenge students’ beliefs,
when they are so willing to make students feel bad in other ways. Nicole, for example,
has no fear about making students feel “like the world is going to end” or that they should
“take some responsibility in it all;” but at the same time, she feels she must “tread very
lightly on opinions in my classroom.” This paradox likely has to do with teachers’ beliefs
about the way students respond to negative emotions, versus the way students respond to
having their opinions questioned. The former, as teachers explain, gets students’ attention
and keeps them engaged. The latter, where students perceive an attack to their beliefs or
values, is more likely to produce conflict; this is particularly true when students’ ideas
about climate change are being reinforced at home. It seems that teachers are comfortable
causing students to experience inner, emotional conflict, but wish to avoid instigating
outward conflict, whether between student and teacher, between student and student, or
between teacher and parent. And, given how adept teachers are at avoiding this kind of
conflict, it’s almost no wonder that instances of outright controversy are rare.
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To summarize this section, teachers work hard to avoid conflict over the subject
of climate change; however, the strategies they use to mitigate controversy have
consequences, and may in fact reinforce some of the major challenges teachers have with
climate education. In terms of making climate change “fit,” teachers’ desire to avoid
conflict may justify (consciously or unconsciously) their decision to prioritize other
topics over climate change. For first-time teachers, like Hailey and Andrea, this fear of
conflict may be particularly pronounced, leading them to avoid the subject altogether.
What’s more, in their attempts to avoid conflict, teachers may intentionally or
unintentionally reinforce the notion that climate change has “two sides.” If a student
presents an inaccurate view related to a non-controversial topic, like the periodic table,
the teacher is likely to correct the student directly, whereas when a student presents an
inaccurate view related to climate change, the teacher is likely to correct the student
indirectly (if at all), while simultaneously validating the student’s beliefs and values. In
this way, teachers may be unintentionally giving students the impression that
scientifically inaccurate ideas (i.e. the idea that climate change is a hoax) do, in fact, have
some scientific validity—or, at least, that they can coexist with a correct understanding of
the science. In this way, social controversy may also help explain the second and third
trends related to climate change in the classroom: By refusing to engage in conflict in
order to rebut students’ skeptical views, teachers may be reinforcing the “both sides”
narrative and allowing students’ doubts and misconceptions to persist despite instruction.
In this chapter I have outlined three significant emotional pressures teachers may
face when considering whether and how to teach climate change. Each of these
pressures—feeling negative emotions, managing students’ emotions, and avoiding
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conflict—may play a role in explaining why teachers consistently experience trouble with
the subject of climate change. Of course, these pressures are not separate from the direct
barriers I outlined in the previous chapter, but rather intertwined with them. Similarly,
these pressures are intertwined with a third set of factors I will address in the next
chapter: cultural narratives of science teaching.
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CHAPTER V
THE CULTURE OF SCIENCE TEACHING: PEDAGOGICAL BELIEFS AND
BEST PRACTICES
In Chapter III I described direct pressures that could affect teachers’ treatment of
climate change in the classroom. In Chapter IV, I moved from the structural to the
psychological, addressing how, in addition to the direct limitations of outdated textbooks
and restrictive school schedules, teachers and students face emotional pressures that may
pose challenges to climate change instruction. In this chapter, I go one step further,
moving from the realm of emotions, where the focus is on the individual and her
immediate community, to the realm of culture, where the focus is on broader patterns of
belief and behavior that characterize and bind a particular community. Here, I will
address how the culture of science teaching—a culture shared by formal and informal
science educators, along with educational policymakers and researchers—informs how
members think about science, about their students, and about pedagogy. These culturally
held beliefs, in turn, inform certain best practices in science teaching.
I will address two best practices in particular: first, the practice of “hands-on,”
“student-centered” pedagogy and, second, the practice of scientific inquiry-based
pedagogy. As I will show, these best practices, while productive for teaching many
scientific concepts, may not easily translate to the subject of climate change. For
example, teachers may struggle to make climate change “hands-on,” and therefore
prioritize topics like stream ecology or etymology, which better lend themselves to this
pedagogical best practice. Similarly, the pedagogical norm of scientific inquiry may
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justify, for some teachers, the practice of presenting “both sides” and letting students
come to their own conclusions. As I will argue, teachers needn’t abandon these culturally
approved practices in order to teach climate change in a comprehensive and scientifically
accurate way. Rather, teachers may need to think creatively in order to adapt these
practices to the unique pedagogical challenges of climate science. Additional training or
resources may aid in this process.
Hands-on, Student-centered Pedagogy
According to Megan, the key to good science teaching is simple: “Give them
evidence and good hands-on activities and make it about them.” The kind of teaching
Megan described, what I’m calling “hands-on,” “student-centered” pedagogy, differs
from what Dan calls “stand-and-deliver” kinds of teaching. Within this paradigm,
students should learn content not by reading a textbook or listening to a lecture, but by
engaging in hands-on activities—building, testing, and manipulating things with their
own hands and observing things with their own eyes. What’s more, students need to be
able to connect this hands-on learning to their own lives; in Lauren’s words, it needs to
be “relevant.”
In this section, I will first identify why teachers prefer this pedagogical approach,
then illustrate the ways they apply it to various topics. Finally, I will explain how the
pedagogical norm of “hands-on,” “student-centered” teaching might impact teachers’
treatment of climate change.
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Middle Schoolers Are Concrete-Thinkers and Self-Servers
Across the board, teachers asserted that middle school students are concrete, not
abstract learners; as such, they learn best through first-hand, hands-on experiences.
According to Paul, some students can “sit and get,” but the majority of middle school
students “are more like, ‘…if I can actually do something, I’m going to be a lot better at
it.’” For this reason, Paul prioritizes activities that get students learning through direct
observation and experience; “it's all hands-on, getting kids to discover relationships.”
Megan agreed that while high schoolers, and perhaps advanced eighth-graders, can
engage in more conceptual learning, “sixth and seventh graders aren’t quite ready to do
that yet. [Laughing] They're ready for the hands-on stuff!” Similarly, Dan, who described
his students as “concrete learners,” explained that “the best way” for them to learn “is just
hands-on in the field.”
In addition to being concrete thinkers in need of hands-on learning, middle school
students are, according to teachers’ reports, quite self-centered. One seventh- and eighth-
grade teacher at the State Science Teachers Conference explained that it’s difficult to get
her students to understand world-wide issues like climate change because “their world is
very tiny.” According to Lauren, students of this age “can't think outside of themselves.”
In describing middle school students this way, teachers were more matter-of-fact than
disparaging. Explained Kathy, in “middle school it's all about them. [Laughing]. You
know. They can't see the big picture quite yet.” Similarly, Megan asserted, “Kids are self-
centered. I mean, we all were at that age.” Olivia was a little softer in her assessment of
her students, but conveyed the same message: “I think sometimes they're—I wouldn't say
self-centered, but they don't have that global view.”
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Teachers emphasized local, and student-relevant topics as a way of helping self-
oriented adolescents engage with scientific content. At another conference session I
attended, an educator from a local extension agency led a workshop on teaching
renewable energy through engineering. Like other participants in this study, this educator
affirmed that “Reading out of a textbook or doing a worksheet or taking a test—that’s not
how kids learn… it has to be experiential.” She added, “We also know that if it’s relevant
to their lives, they’re more likely to really draw that in… [so] we make it as place-based
as possible.” For example, rather than asking students a question about renewable energy
in general, the teacher should ask, “Where does Oregon get most of its energy?” Megan
expressed this same idea, affirming, “You have to be able to make it about them, or else
there's really no point for them to learn it.”
When it comes to teaching environmental issues, in particular, teachers
emphasized the importance of making learning local to make it relevant, and thus
engaging for students. I asked Faith, “Do you feel like it’s easier—or maybe even more
important—to teach global issues or local issues?” Faith replied, “Absolutely local. These
are middle school kids; they know and care about what’s in their backyards.” Explained
Dan:
I try to do a lot of the local work, just because that's what gets kids really
engaged. So at the middle school level… if I can engage them and get
them interested, that kind of sets the stage for thinking more globally and
being introduced to more complicated problems as they go through high
school.
Utilizing Hands-on, Student-centered Pedagogy
Teachers’ repeated assertion that “Learning should be hands-on and student-
centered” is an affirmation of best practices in science teaching. Thus, when I asked
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teachers to describe their “best” lessons, the activities they were most proud of, or the
areas of science where they “felt supported,” they often described teaching in accordance
with this pedagogical norm. That is, teachers described lessons and activities that were
hands-on, tangible, and locally relevant. All the teachers I interviewed affirmed their
preference for teaching in this manner; so, rather than addressing all fifteen teachers, I
will describe two activities that exemplify this “best practice” of teaching in a hands-on,
student-centered way.
In Brenda’s class, students begin the year by studying a local creek, thanks to a
grant from the local water utility funding watershed education. Explained Brenda, “I
teach water quality issues in the classroom, and then water quality testing. And then we
go out to the creek,” where students get their hands wet assessing pH, nitrates, macro-
invertebrates, and water temperature. As Brenda explained, “I truly believe kids need old-
fashioned experiences, [such as] measuring temperature.” By letting students learn in a
first-hand, hands-on way, Brenda ensures that even the most concrete learners are
engaged. What’s more, by focusing on the “city water cycle and the effects of riparian
management—or what happens in our local creeks,” Brenda caters to her students’ “tiny
worlds” and makes learning relevant to them. “It’s a lot of fun,” Brenda affirmed, “you
know, the kids really get into it.” In fact, watershed science was a popular topic among
teachers I interviewed; Dan, Paul, Isaac, Faith, Lauren, and Kathy all reported using a
local creek or river as a venue for teaching students scientific content in a hands-on,
locally relevant way.
Another popular topic among teachers was tsunamis. Two teachers, Olivia and
Hailey, reported taking advantage of a tsunami science program sponsored by a local
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university. Recalled Hailey, “So they sent us kits of balsa wood and tape and ping pong
balls, and the students built structures on these little boards. And then we took them to
[the university] and they latch them in and then crash different size waves over them.”
Students had the hands-on experience of building structures and then got to personally
observe the effects of a tsunami on coastal buildings. “And it was great,” said Hailey.
“They were really engaged.” Olivia, whose students participated in the same program,
noted that students could connect this scientific learning to their real lives, asking, “If it's
not relevant, why do we care about building these structures? Well, it's the reality of one
happening on the Oregon coast.”
Teachers Struggle to Make Climate Change Hands-on and Student-centered
As science topics, watersheds and tsunamis are, in many ways, comparable to
climate change. All three issues are scientifically complex; all three are interdisciplinary
(incorporating concepts from physics, earth science, biology, and other disciplines); and,
all three issues are consequential for human society. Tsunamis, like climate change, are
also somewhat frightening. It’s interesting, then, that teachers count watershed science
and tsunamis—and not climate change—among their favorite topics. I argue that one
reason teachers prefer (and therefore “fit in”) lessons about tsunamis and watersheds is
because these topics more easily accommodate the cultural prescription to make learning
“hands-on” and “student-centered.” Climate change on the other hand is, according to
teachers’ reports, difficult to teach in a way that is both tangible and seemingly relevant
to students.
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Participating teachers acknowledged that, compared to other topics, climate
science is particularly “conceptual” and “intangible,” a fact they find pedagogically
challenging. Said Dan, “It's very abstract and so, at the middle school level, it can
certainly be introduced, but it's not really until high school that they can really get their
heads around it a little better.” In Oregon, where, as Gabby notes, “we’re in sort of a
temperate zone,” climate change is particularly “hard to see,” and therefore difficult for
self-centered, concrete learners to understand or appreciate. Elizabeth agreed that
“climate change is really hard, because they can't go practice it or see it… how do you do
a lab on something that's taken hundreds of years?… There's nothing tangible. You can't
look at it under a microscope.” Elizabeth reports that, as a result, “I struggle in that unit
finding activities for them, other than just reading and movies.”
Several other teachers confirmed that, for them, making climate change hands-on
and relevant for students is difficult. Faith reported that when it comes to “teaching
climate change, there are zero, like zero hands-on activities.” Even evolution—another
socially controversial and conceptually difficult topic—is more amenable to hands-on,
student-centered teaching than climate change. According to Megan:
Evolution for me, teaching that concept is easy because, just, telling kids
that everything changes and there's constant change in the world—and
look, we can see it, it’s right here! We can even measure it in our own
classroom. Let’s get some fruit flies or whatever and play with them, you
know?... But then, when you try to reach to something like climate
change, it makes it a lot harder. [Students] can’t see that immediate
impact. They can’t see like right now, why it would be important to know
about—does that make sense?
Teachers’ inability to find good “activities” related to climate change is not a
structural deficit, per se; rather it has to do with how climate change, as a global,
intangible phenomenon, doesn’t easily accommodate the culturally accepted best practice
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of teaching tangible, observable, and locally relevant content. Lauren alluded to this fact,
explaining, “Because it's not like you can go outside and be like, ‘Look! It's warm today,
therefore, climate change.’ Which is too bad.” In fact, as several teachers noted, an
experiential approach to learning about climate would actually confuse students, since
day-to-day weather phenomena aren’t actually evidence of climate change. In other
words, you can teach students about water quality by having them measure stream
temperature, but you can’t teach climate change by having them measure local air
temperature.
Teachers’ beliefs about middle school students and the best way to teach them
may explain, in part, why so many teachers lead extended, comprehensive units on
watersheds, but address climate change only briefly. In an effort to satisfy the cultural
prescription to make learning hands-on and student-centered, teachers may naturally
prioritize certain topics—like watersheds, tsunamis, or even evolution—that more easily
lend themselves to this kind of instruction. Therefore, it’s not just that climate change
doesn’t “fit” in a crammed curriculum or a busy school day; it’s that climate change
doesn’t “fit” into culturally approved best practices in science teaching. In order to teach
climate change, then, teachers must either abandon the cultural norm of hands-on,
student-centered instruction (which could have consequences both for student learning
and for the teacher’s own sense of cultural identity), or find a creative way to make
climate change work within the norm.
It should be noted that a few teachers did come up with creative ways to make
climate change hands-on and relevant; these were also some of the teachers who seemed
most confident about teaching the subject. For example, the activity that Olivia developed
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as part of the teacher professional development program in climate change had students
learn about climate change by manipulating satellite imagery. Olivia acknowledges that
climate change is “hard to see. [But] that’s why we start really small.” Students start by
looking at their hometown—in fact, many began by immediately finding their own
houses—and then zooming out to the United States. Finally, they “went up to the Bering
Glacier and talked about glacial movement and things like that.” So slowly, according to
Olivia, they “broaden their scope of understanding.”
Isaac has been a long-time advocate of field-based learning; over the years, his
students have planted trees, examined macro-invertebrates, monitored fish weirs, and
collected marine debris. Recently, however, he’s begun to brainstorm ways this
experiential learning approach could be applied to climate science. Isaac explained that
he’s “going to learn about a way of monitoring wetlands for climate change.” He also
described talking with other teachers about “trying to monitor acidification with oyster
shells and freshwater mussels.” While Isaac hasn’t implemented these activities yet, they
represent potential solutions to the conundrum of making climate change “fit” within the
model of hands-on, student-centered pedagogy.
Scientific Inquiry-based Pedagogy
By engaging students in hands-on learning, teachers hope to give students
opportunities to do what scientists do—i.e. manipulate, measure, and observe the
physical world. In this section, I describe a second best practice of science teaching:
inquiry-based pedagogy. This pedagogical approach involves helping students think the
way scientists think. Inquiry-based pedagogy recognizes that scientists have a certain way
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of forming knowledge about the world, distinct from belief or superstition and that
students, in turn, should practice this same epistemological process. Often this means
letting individual learners come to their own conclusions, rather than feeding them
scientific conclusions via textbooks, movies, or other non-interactive means.
Teachers consistently celebrated inquiry-based pedagogy as a best practice in
science teaching. However, as I will show, applying this teaching method to climate
change sometimes proved problematic.
Teachers’ Beliefs about the Nature of Science
At the heart of science is inquiry. The National Science Education Standards (a
guide to science education that preceded and influenced the NGSS) define scientific
inquiry in the following way:
Scientific inquiry refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the
natural world and propose explanations based on the evidence derived
from their work… Inquiry is a multifaceted activity that involves making
observations; posing questions; examining books and other sources of
information to see what is already known; planning investigations;
reviewing what is already known in light of experimental evidence; using
tools to gather, analyze, and interpret data; proposing answers,
explanations, and predictions; and communicating the results” (National
Research Council, 1996, p. 23).
I observed that middle school science teachers spend a surprising amount of time
thinking and talking about the nature of science. My research participants frequently
referred back to this idea of “inquiry” when describing and justifying their own views on
science and science teaching.
At the State Science Teachers Conference, I attended a session devoted to
discussing the nature of science. At this session, participants were instructed to break into
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small groups and discuss the difference between four different ways of knowing: math,
art, religion, and science. For each of these pursuits, participants were asked to consider,
“What’s the goal?” and “What counts as evidence?” These participants (who taught a
variety of science subjects, in a variety of grades and contexts—not just middle school)
agreed that it’s important to distinguish science from other epistemologies. One teacher
described science as “inquiry with a logical mindset.” Another added that the goal of
science is “to understand phenomena using direct observation as evidence.” Participants
were also strict about what counted as “evidence” in the context of scientific inquiry,
using adjectives like objective, empirical, testable, observable, reproducible, and
quantifiable. In this way, science as a source of knowledge differed from art and religion,
where one could admit evidence based on “revelation,” “tradition,” “ritual,” and
anecdotal experience.
In this workshop, participants were specifically asked to describe the nature of
science and contrast it with other ways of knowing. Notably, in my interviews, I found
that teachers continued to make this epistemological distinction, even when they were not
explicitly prompted to do so. They, too, seemed concerned about defining the parameters
of scientific inquiry. For example, Hailey explained that when teaching touchy subjects,
like age of the earth, she tells students, “This is information that scientists have; they
have evidence to support this information. It is a theory, which in science means that it is
proven to be true. And I'm not trying to change your belief system, but this is science….”
Here Hailey describes the basic process of scientific inquiry, by which scientists use
evidence to construct time-tested theories about how the world works; she also contrasts
this process with other epistemologies, like “your belief system.”
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In addition to distinguishing for themselves between “real science” and non-
scientific ways of knowing, teachers take responsibility for helping their students make
this same distinction. Brenda actually teaches a whole unit she calls “Science vs.
Superstition.” In this unit, she assigns a historical novel about the development of modern
medicine in Colonial America. In the novel, a young protagonist loses his family to
tuberculosis, then apprentices with a progressive physician who teaches him to shed his
superstitious notions about disease and death, including “the belief is that someone who
died… comes back to life to haunt the living.” As Brenda explains it:
The doctor wants him to believe that there’s a scientific way of doing
things, and you have to have proof. And without that proof, you can’t
make that next—so anyways, it’s a great book to kind of teach the
scientific process, and the whole idea of where science came from, how it
evolved to where it is today… kind of the idea of where we are—where
we are based on a set of rules that we follow and prove or disprove.
For Brenda, it’s important that students learn not only scientific content, but
scientific process as well; they should understand that there’s a “scientific way of doing
things,” and that “proof” and “rules” govern this inquiry process.
Utilizing Scientific Inquiry-based Pedagogy
If inquiry is the process by which scientists use objective evidence to form
conclusions about how the world works, then inquiry-based pedagogy means teaching in
a way that allows students to practice this same epistemological process. Though there is
some debate in the science education literature about what, exactly, constitutes inquiry-
based pedagogy (see, for example Wilson, et al, 2009), there is a general agreement that,
in this style of learning, students discover knowledge via their own critical thinking,
rather than having knowledge delivered to them through didactic instruction (NSTA,
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2004). In other words, rather than simply receiving a scientific fact, like “force equals
mass times acceleration,” students should learn this truth by thinking like scientists; they
might experiment with toy cars or hammers or wrecking balls, for example, and conclude
that a more massive object indeed exerts more force than a less massive object. While
some guidance from the teacher is necessary, ideally students would do most of this
intellectual legwork on their own, with the teacher acting in a facilitative, rather than
didactic, role.
It should be noted that inquiry-based pedagogy and hands-on pedagogy are not
mutually exclusive; in fact, they often go together. At the “Teaching Renewable Energy”
session I attended at the State Science Teachers Conference, the same educator who
emphasized that learning should be “hands-on” and “relevant” also emphasized, “We
don’t give away the answers; we facilitate students’ thinking.” Through this approach,
teachers should convey to students, “You’re a scientist!” Similarly, the teachers I
interviewed consistently reported that, in their classrooms, they tried to get students to
engage in this kind of process-oriented, inquiry-based learning. The following examples
demonstrate how two different teachers employed this pedagogical strategy. According to
Paul:
Each of the last two years I've had kids doing original research in the
classroom. We were looking at rain gardens and stormwater filtration two
years ago. Those kids built rain gardens and did research on it. For
example, one group asked, “Do they work? Or do they not?” And so they
used aquarium gravel… they ran stormwater through it, and did [the
water] change? Then they did one with dirt—did it change? Then they
wrote these actual research papers on it and there were a ton of other
things they had to learn.
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Rather than simply telling students, “Stormwater filtration systems use gravel to
clean the water,” Paul set up the lesson so that students would come to this conclusion on
their own, by observing and analyzing evidence. As Paul explains, “instead of just saying
‘here's how it is,’ we're trying to walk them through how we figured that out.”
Nicole, similarly, describes her insect unit, in which students use scientific inquiry
to understand how habitat diversity affects species diversity:
I basically try to get them to develop their own investigation on studying
bugs using the schoolyard as a research plot… And so, we form the
question, and we come up with a hypothesis and basically the project is,
we take different colored bowls of water and place them in different areas
of this courtyard—this controlled, courtyard environment. And every day
at the same time we collect the insects, we remove the traps, we bring
them inside, we have a dichotomous key and we key them out, then we
record the data... And we go through the whole scientific inquiry
process… And then after we've collected the data, we graph it. And we
conclude and figure out which bugs prefer which colors. And then, how
can we modify our schoolyard to increase [insect] biodiversity.
Again, Nicole could have simply explained to her students that different kinds of
insects prefer different colored plants, and that diversifying their schoolyard vegetation
could, in turn, increase insect biodiversity. However, Nicole, like many of the teachers I
interviewed, strongly believes that students learn better when they are able to come to
this conclusion on their own.
It’s worth noting that in all these cases, teachers continue to apply principles of
hands-on, locally-relevant learning alongside inquiry-based pedagogy. Indeed, these two
pedagogical strategies often go together.
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Inquiry-based Pedagogy in Education Literature
Based on teachers’ descriptions of using inquiry-based teaching, I can see why
teachers prefer this pedagogical approach to a more didactic one; it’s fun, it’s engaging,
and, when done well, it can get students to learn content in a meaningful and memorable
way. My research participants aren’t alone in preferring this teaching strategy; indeed,
their stated preferences are reflective of a larger trend in the culture of science teaching in
the US.
Inquiry-based education is frequently advocated in state standards and science
education literature alike. The Next Generation Science Standards, in particular,
emphasize that, in addition to understanding scientific content, students should be
proficient in “Asking questions,” “Analyzing and interpreting data,” and “Engaging in
argument from evidence” (Appendix F). Indeed, the NGSS standard relating to climate
change stresses scientific process as much as content knowledge. According to this
standard, students shouldn’t simply know certain facts about the atmosphere; they should
be able to “Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in
global temperatures over the past century” (MS-ESS3-5, emphasis mine). Again, students
are challenged to use scientific inquiry as a way of learning for themselves what other
scientists—through that same process of inquiry—have already learned.
Inquiry-based education has been a topic of interest in the science education
literature for over a decade. Several studies have confirmed that inquiry-based teaching
methods can result in greater and more persistent knowledge gain in students (for
example, Wilson et al, 2009; Hmelo-Silver et al, 2007). At the same time, other studies
have suggested that inquiry-based teaching can be confusing and frustrating for students,
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especially if the teacher provides too little guidance (Kirshner et al, 2006). In the context
of climate change, this debate is significant because it remains unclear whether inquiry-
based learning could help students overcome persistent gaps and misconceptions in their
knowledge of climate change, or whether inquiry-based learning might actually reinforce
those gaps and misconceptions. To my knowledge, no studies have tested the link
between inquiry-based instruction and student knowledge of climate change specifically.
Teaching Both Sides to Promote Inquiry
My own research supports the idea that, while inquiry-based teaching could
theoretically lead students to better appreciate the scientific basis for anthropogenic
climate change, an inquiry-based approach can also be problematic in the context of
climate change.
For one, an inquiry-based approach may encourage teachers to present “both
sides” of climate change. Just as teachers have a hard time making climate change
“hands-on,” and “relevant,” so too, they may struggle to teach climate change in a way
lets students practice scientific inquiry. While students can perform actual experiments to
understand insect biodiversity in the schoolyard, the scale and complexity of climate
science mean that students can’t easily replicate the kinds of research that real-life
climate scientists do. Teachers may respond to this hurdle by creating an artificial
experiment: looking at evidence from “both sides.” By putting climate science “on trial”
(as Paul, Lauren, and Olivia do), teachers are engaging students in a kind of inquiry-
based exercise in which students start with a question (Is climate change caused by
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humans, or not?), analyze evidence from “both sides,” and ultimately use this evidence to
develop “scientific” conclusions.
An article in Science Education described a study in which researchers actually
encouraged teachers to take this “both sides” approach to climate change, as a way of
helping students practice scientific inquiry (Pimentel and McNeill, 2013). Participating
teachers were first coached in “dialogic instruction,” an inquiry-based technique that
emphasizes student-led discussion as a route to knowledge gain. Then, teachers showed
students “two video clips depicting different perspectives” on climate change. Following
that, the teacher would ask students to use evidence from the video to write an argument
about whether climate change was occurring, then facilitate a student-led discussion on
the subject. According to the principles of dialogic instruction, the teachers were trained
to merely facilitate conversation—to prompt students to use evidence and to think
critically—but to refrain from asserting the “correct” view regarding climate change.
The fact that this article was published in the oft-cited academic journal, Science
Education, suggests to me that the trend I saw in my interviews—where teachers address
“both sides” of climate change—is not anomalous, but consistent with a larger trend in
the culture of science teaching, where the teacher’s primary responsibility is to encourage
inquiry-based thinking, rather than asserting conclusions.
In this trend lies a seeming contradiction: If teachers favor the kind of evidence-
based thinking characteristic of science inquiry, and if most scientists agree that climate
change is real and caused by humans (a fact that all but one teacher affirmed), why would
teachers even entertain arguments from the “other side?” One possible reason is the way
that skeptical arguments are framed. Because arguments from the “other side” are so
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frequently couched in the language of science, based on scientific evidence (however
misconstrued), and presented as products of scientific inquiry (Greenpeace, 2013;
Oreskes and Conway, 2010), they may be admissible to the science classroom. A more
compelling reason, however, is that by presenting “both sides,” teachers feel they are
giving students the opportunity to engage in scientific inquiry, an activity that will
ultimately lead students to the correct conclusion (i.e. the understanding that human
activities are causing climate change). What’s more, teachers argue that this inquiry-
based approach is more powerful than simply asserting the scientific explanation for
climate change and saying, This is how it is, kids.
The way Faith explained it, “Because they're little kids, a lot of them hold on to
the attitude that their parents have. That's why a lot of them say, ‘I don't believe in global
warming, I don't believe in evolution.’” In these cases, rather than asserting the “correct”
view, Faith encourages her students to consider the evidence on both sides and make up
their own minds. Addressing a hypothetical middle schooler, Faith explained:
You're twelve! You haven't had enough exposure to the world to really
make that decision or not. You're just parroting back what someone else
told you! And you know, if I teach you these things are real and they exist,
and you should worry about them, you're just parroting back what I told
you, you know. And there's no point in that either; that's just as evil. You
gotta learn how to be able to look at data sets and make up your own
mind.
Faith makes a compelling argument that if students can “make up their own
minds,” their conclusions are going to be more meaningful than those “parroted” back
from a teacher, parent, or other third-party source of information.
If this inquiry-based approach reliably led students to the “right” answer
concerning climate change, I would have little to criticize. However, as I have illustrated
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and will further explain, students don’t always arrive at the “right” answer. Students’
doubts and misconceptions often persist, and for many possible reasons. Perhaps the
student didn’t receive enough training in evidentiary thinking, or didn’t receive enough
evidence to make a sound conclusion. Or, perhaps the student successfully arrived at a
scientifically valid conclusion, but then couldn’t reconcile that information with his
emotional or religious assumptions. Either way, when students assert inaccurate
conclusions, a teacher who is committed to inquiry-based pedagogy may feel conflicted.
Should she continue to encourage inquiry-based thinking at the expense of correct
knowledge? Or should she emphasize correct knowledge at the expense of her students’
intellectual autonomy?
Doubts and Misconceptions Persist with Inquiry-based Model
Even when students are coached in inquiry-based skills like identifying relevant
evidence and assessing its validity, they may still arrive at the “wrong” conclusion; for
example, they may insist, as Lauren’s student did, that when it comes to climate change:
“We are not the problem.” Why the disconnect? Obviously, students could form
inaccurate conclusions about any subject. However, at least two factors heighten the risk
that students would misinterpret evidence about climate change, in particular. First, the
scientific evidence for climate change is vast. Students can’t weigh it all at once. As a
result, there’s no way for seventh-graders to analyze all this evidence and independently
conclude that climate change is happening and caused by humans. (Indeed, individual
scientists can’t even weigh all this evidence at once; the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change was created specifically to address this fact). Secondly, the sorts of
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factors that would compete with objective, scientific evidence—i.e. beliefs, emotions,
and media messages—are amplified in the context of climate change. While students are
unlikely to experience emotional resistance to the scientific evidence for Newton’s Laws,
students are likely to experience emotional resistance to the scientific evidence that
human activities are causing Earth’s climate to change. For this reason, students’ process
of objective, scientific inquiry may be derailed, causing them to arrive at conclusions that
differ from the scientific consensus. This fact may explain, in part, why students’ doubts
and misconceptions about climate change persist, even when teachers do their best to
show students evidence and encourage students to critically assess that evidence.
Teachers Are Reluctant to Correct Students’ Doubts and Misconceptions
Because inquiry-based pedagogy is the cultural norm for teachers, when students
do arrive at the wrong conclusions (or when doubts or misconceptions persist), teachers
were sometimes unsure of how to correct those conclusions.
In Chapter IV, I explained that teachers are reluctant to categorically dismiss
students’ skeptical claims about climate change, in part due to fear of conflict. I would
add that another reason teachers refrain from correcting students is because they are
firmly attached to the belief that “good” science teachers don’t just give students the
answers; they let students formulate answers on their own. What’s more, consistent with
their view of the nature of science, teachers are committed to segregating objective,
scientific evidence from other sources of knowledge. Thus, teachers find themselves in a
particularly awkward position when, despite their efforts to promote evidence-based
thinking, students continue to present views based on religious belief, politics, or
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personal values. In these cases, the teacher, due to the cultural norms of her own
discipline, is reluctant to say, “You are wrong.” Instead, she will often say something
like, “Well, that view is unscientific, but since it’s your belief, you can believe whatever
you want.” Time and time again, teachers used this refrain, or some variation of it, when
describing how they responded to scientifically inaccurate claims in the classroom. Here
are just four examples:
 “Hey there's scientific evidence, and then there's your personal beliefs…
I'm just giving you the information and you have to decide as an
individual what, you know, is right” (Dan).
 “This is the evidence; what your personal beliefs are is your choice. But
this is the evidence that shows this is what’s happening. Whether you
choose to believe it or not is your [choice]” (Elizabeth).
 “That's where you just look at them clear in the eye and say, you know, ‘I
don't need you to believe in it, I need you to understand it’” (Faith).
 “I would just [say], ‘Your opinions matter, and they’re valid, but I don’t
see any science backing that up. Find your own articles with more science
to back it up’” (Andrea).
In all of these passages, the respondent makes a clear distinction between
scientific inquiry and belief (or other non-scientific forms knowing, including opinion,
religion, etc.). Meanwhile, the teacher carefully validates the student’s epistemological
process, even as she makes it clear what does and does not count as science. Rather than
telling the student “you are wrong,” the teacher effectively tells the student, “your belief,
while valid, is not supported by scientific evidence.’” And, consistent with the norms of
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inquiry-based pedagogy, the teacher doesn’t simply tell the student what the “right,”
answer is, but refers the student back to the scientific process: have an open mind; do
research; find evidence. Then come back to me. Ideally, through this iterative process, the
student would eventually come to the correct conclusion. But, since the process is
student-directed, the student’s misconception may also persist. And, since the teacher’s
role is not to arbitrate facts, but rather to facilitate a certain thinking process, the student’s
contra-factual conception receives no direct challenge.
Successfully Adapting Inquiry-Based Pedagogy to Climate Change
Just as there are ways to adapt hands-on, student-centered pedagogy to climate
change, so too, there are ways of applying inquiry-based pedagogy to climate change so
as to avoid the pitfalls described above.
For example, teachers might relax the prescription to “let students decide for
themselves” in cases, like climate change, where the evidence is vast and socially
contested. As Gabby noted, when it comes to climate change, “the students just get kind
of confused. Because they've heard both sides, and they don't really know what to
believe.” Even though her students are confused, Gabby, like other teachers I
interviewed, worried about how to address that confusion without veering into
didacticism. “They [the students] usually believe whatever I say,” she explained; “It's
almost too much power sometimes…” I would argue, however, that climate change is
one subject where teachers like Gabby might embrace that power, using their authority to
assert scientifically valid conclusions, rather than always encouraging students to decide
for themselves. After all, students often look to their teachers for confirmation of facts
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and theories. Said Nicole, “You know, they want to know the truth. They want to
know—they hear that there's this controversy that global warming isn't happening. And
they want to know, from me, is this true?”
One way that teachers might teach climate change without compromising the
tenants of inquiry-based pedagogy, is to shift students’ attention from non-questions like,
“Is human-caused climate change even occurring?” to questions that are actually
debatable, like, “How will sea level rise affect the Oregon coast?” or “What are the pros
and cons of various renewable energy sources?” Here, students can still practice inquiry-
based skills like finding evidence, assessing evidence, forming conclusions, and
defending those conclusions. Plus, with many of these questions, students’ opinions,
emotions, and values would be welcome additions to the conversation, rather than a
distraction. Some teachers are already applying this approach in certain ways; for
example, Brenda reported teaching a lesson on forms of transportation that challenged
students to weigh various pieces of evidence about cars, buses, and bikes, in order to
determine which mode contributed the least to climate change. Circling back to the issue
of pedagogical resources, this is one area where additional curricula or training may be
useful.
In summary, in this chapter I’ve characterized teachers’ beliefs and practices
regarding the “best way” to teach science; I’ve also argued that these beliefs and practices
are not enacted in isolation, but are part of a larger culture of science teaching. Within
this culture of science teaching, certain pedagogical strategies, including hands-on,
student-centered, and inquiry-based learning are normalized and prioritized, sometimes to
the detriment of climate change education. Does this mean that teachers should abandon
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hands-on, student-centered, and inquiry-based approaches when teaching about climate
change? By no means! However, teachers might need to think outside of the box, perhaps
modifying these approaches, in order to successfully apply them to the subject of climate
change.
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CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
In this thesis, I have examined various pressures that directly and indirectly affect
teacher practice in the context of climate change. While it was encouraging to see that
most (14 out of 15) teachers accepted the scientific consensus about climate change, felt
concern about it (15 out of 15), and were taking steps to address this issue with their
students (13 out of 15), it was also significant to recognize that problematic trends persist.
Specifically, the teachers I worked with tend to minimize the topic, suggesting that it
doesn’t “fit;” they teach in a way that explicitly or implicitly acknowledges “both sides;”
and, they observe that students maintain doubts and misconceptions even after
instruction.
Unlike other studies, which explain these problematic trends by identifying
specific pedagogical challenges, like an absence of resources or the presence of political
controversy, I have taken a more broad approach, in order to understand how direct
barriers are compounded at both the personal and communal level, through emotions and
cultural norms. Structural, emotional, and cultural factors, then, are interwoven; together,
they shape the practice of climate change in the classroom.
I return, then, to the question that began this thesis: “What should students know
about climate change?” The Next Generation Science Standards assert that, at a
minimum, students should understand “the factors that have caused the rise in global
temperatures over the past century,” including “the major role that human activities play”
(MS-ESS3-5). Environmental educators would cite the normative goals of climate
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education as well; according to the Oregon Environmental Literacy Plan, in addition to
understanding the science students should demonstrate the skill and the willingness to
“work individually and collectively toward resolution of environmental concerns and to
participate thoughtfully and effectively in  decision-making” (p. 23). These are lofty
goals indeed, and won’t be accomplished overnight. At the same time it’s clear, at least
from the teachers I spoke with, that significant challenges remain, frustrating teachers’
ability to work towards these goals. In other words, there is room for improvement.
What Now? Strategies for Empowering Teachers of Climate Change
In this thesis, I have identified various and complex problems related to climate
change in the classroom. What now should be done about these problems? How can
advocates of climate education—be they formal or informal educators, policymakers,
academic researchers, or community organizers—help teachers engage in this critical
task of communicating climate change?
I am not a middle school teacher myself, nor am I a trained expert in science
pedagogy. My goal, in writing this thesis, is not to prescribe solutions per se, but to
describe the situation at broader level than is usually done in the academic literature on
climate change education. That said, I will offer some ideas, based on lessons learned
from this study, about how climate education advocates might go about addressing the
challenges of climate pedagogy at different levels.
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Overcoming Direct Barriers
When it comes to direct barriers, proponents of climate education should avoid
accusing teachers of scientific illiteracy (as so many academic articles do), and instead
affirm the knowledge that teachers do have, help them gain access to resources that
already exist, and solicit their input in developing new resources, as necessary. While
attending the State Science Teachers Conference, I observed three different sessions
focused on climate change pedagogy. Two of these sessions failed, in my mind, to
validate teachers’ existing knowledge and provide them with resources, while one, as I
will illustrate, better accomplished this task.
In the first session, “Climate Change: Facing the Challenge,” a representative
from a nationwide climate advocacy organization delivered a PowerPoint presentation,
Al Gore-style, that covered the basics of climate science, including the causes, the
effects, and the steps individuals and communities can take to mitigate the problem. The
presenter, “Mark,” was a volunteer educator for this particular climate advocacy
organization, and had delivered this same presentation to students throughout
northwestern Oregon, at no charge to participating schools. A few teachers asked Mark if,
rather than having him visit their classrooms, he would be willing to share his
PowerPoint, so that they, the teachers, might use it themselves. Mark was apologetic, but
firm, explaining that his organization forbid him from distributing resources for others to
use; if teachers wanted the information, they would have to schedule a visit from a
designated presenter, like himself. In this way, rather than affirming teachers’ knowledge
and competence as climate educators, and empowering them to continue this work on
their own, Mark suggested that the task of climate education is better left to “experts.”
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A second session, “Teacher Professional Development in Climate Science”
described a training program that teachers could enroll in outside of school to learn more
about climate change. This program was administered by a local university and would
satisfy ongoing education credits that public school teachers are required to meet. Just a
few participants attended the session: five other teachers and myself. The leader of this
session, too, who I’ll call Ron, perpetuated the assumption that teachers are ignorant of
climate science. As he described each of the units in the teacher development program,
Ron constantly talked down to the educators in the room. “You know what CO2 parts per
million is?” he asked us at one point. Collectively, we nodded and affirmed our
familiarity with the concept. Instead of acknowledging our response, however, Ron
brushed us off, saying, “I think I might tell you anyway;” he then proceeded to explain a
concept we had all just indicated that we understood. Not surprisingly, the few teachers in
attendance began to check out; I looked over and saw one teacher doodling in her
conference program and another catching up on grading.
The third session, “Collaborative Conversations about Teaching Climate
Change,” was the least structured, but also the most meaningful from my perspective as a
participant. While this session, too, had a moderator, it was primarily participant-led. In
small groups, teachers posed problems that they had experienced regarding climate
change in the classroom, and other teachers responded, acknowledging when they had
experienced this same problem and offering possible solutions from their own
experience. For example, when one teacher expressed frustration with the challenge of
making climate change hands-on—“I’m always thinking about, what can I have them
do?”—several other teachers suggested activities they had used: a solar oven competition,
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measuring carbon sequestration in trees, and testing air temperature inside and outside a
greenhouse. Teachers also referred their peers to the specific books and curricular
manuals where they had found these activities. One middle school science teacher
described how he overcame two problems: the problem of disciplinary boundaries and
the problem of not enough time, by collaborating with the language arts and social
studies teachers at his school, assigning students an interdisciplinary climate change
project that spanned three class periods. Because this conference session lasted only an
hour, the amount of information and support that teachers were able to get was limited;
however, it suggested to me that teachers, when given the opportunity to share their
expertise with each other, may actually have the resources they need to overcome some
of the persistent challenges in climate change education. Again, additional training and
resources may aid teachers, but these supports have be tailored to the actual needs and
wants of teachers.
Dealing with Emotional Pressures
As I have argued, it’s not enough to simply ensure that teachers have the
knowledge and resources necessary to teach climate science; emotional factors also
impact how educators address this socially controversial issue. For example, teachers’
consistent preoccupation with their own carbon footprints, including what they should or
shouldn’t be doing to combat climate change in their personal lives, may inspire feelings
of guilt or overwhelmedness—feelings that are likely to frustrate, rather than facilitate
their own engagement with climate change (not to mention their ability to engage
students).
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Completing this research cemented my own conviction that empowering people,
including teachers, to meaningfully deal with climate change requires a cultural shift
away from narratives of personal responsibility—i.e., “climate change is a problem of
individual environmental sins, to be mitigated by individual behavioral changes”—and
towards narratives that highlight structural problems and collective responsibility. In his
seminal essay, “Individualization : Plant a Tree , Buy a Bike , Save the World?” Michael
Maniates describes these two narratives and their consequences:
[Working within the first narrative], environmental groups will work hard
to “educate” the citizenry about the need to buy green and consume less
and, by accident or design, the pronounced asymmetry of responsibility
for and power over environmental problems will remain obscure… The
other road, a rocky one, winds towards a future where environmentally
concerned citizens come to understand, by virtue of spirited debate and
animated conversation, the “consumption problem.” They would see that
their individual consumption choices are environmentally important, but
that their control over these choices is constrained, shaped, and framed by
institutions and political forces that can be remade only through collective
citizen action, as opposed to individual consumer behavior.
One teacher I interviewed, Carly, is already trying to get her students to think
about the difference between individualized and collective responses to environmental
problems. For example, she described a simulation activity where students calculated the
carbon emissions of different fictional families, compared those emissions to levels
required by international treaties, and then discussed how to get high-emitters to comply
with emissions reductions. According to Carly:
…each person got a card about a family, that’s who they were. And they
calculated their carbon emissions. And some of them didn’t meet the
treaty and some of them did. And so it split them in half. And I said,
“Okay, to those of you who met [the treaty], these people didn’t meet.
What do you think about that? Do you think a law should be [created]—or
do you think we should use public policy…? And you over here who
didn’t meet [the treaty], how are you going to justify you not meeting?”
And looking at what the personal choice and public policies are.
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Thinking about climate change as a structural problem with structural solutions
may free both teachers and students from the emotional burden that often accompanies
the subject of climate change. Of course, thinking about climate change in this way also
politicizes it; the solutions are no longer individual choices, like riding a bike, but social
and economic changes, like putting a price on carbon. If some teachers fear that they will
face conflict when discussing climate change from the perspective of scientific evidence
and individual responsibility, then discussing the socio-political implications of climate
change may be even more intimidating. For this reason, advocates of climate education
should market, as much as possible, stories of teachers successfully navigating these
issues without suffering significant interpersonal conflict. For teachers like Andrea, who
have never personally experienced controversy, but who avoid climate change because
they have “heard horror stories,” hearing “success stories” may be particularly
empowering.
Working within the Culture of Science Teaching
In the previous chapter, I described how culturally held beliefs about students,
about science, and about pedagogy, inform the way that teachers teach. These best
practices, while effective for certain subjects, can be problematic when applied to the
subject of climate change, if not done carefully. Fortunately, however, teachers needn’t
reinvent science pedagogy to accommodate climate change education; they may simply
need to think creatively, and adapt their practices where necessary.
Earlier, I described a few approaches teachers are already taking to make climate
change “hands-on,” “student-centered,” and “inquiry-based”—including Isaac’s proposed
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project in wetland monitoring and Olivia’s current lesson in analyzing satellite imagery.
It’s worth noting that Olivia’s own confidence as a climate change educator was
enhanced by a teacher professional development program she participated in over the
summer. This program was sponsored by a local university and employed a “teacher-
researcher partnership” model. Along with a handful of other secondary science teachers,
Olivia spent three weeks partnering with and learning from scientists whose work directly
related to climate change in Oregon. Olivia worked closely with one researcher, who
studied satellite data to assess landscape change associated with climate change. Olivia
and another teacher collaborated with this researcher to develop the curriculum she would
later use in her classroom. As part of this lesson, students manipulated satellite imagery
(satisfying their need for hands-on learning), collected evidence that helped them answer
questions about landscape change (satisfying their need for inquiry-based thinking), and
focused on their hometown and the surrounding area (satisfying their need for relevant,
student-centered learning). Olivia described how this teacher professional development
experience, and the curriculum she was able to create and implement through it, changed
the way she thought about both climate change education and science education in
general:
I think it was interesting, because I know it wasn't just designed by me, it
was a team of teachers, and the scientists kind of overlooking to make sure
that everything was accurate… And knowing that the time it would have
taken me to come up with something like that wouldn't have been
possible. But working over the summer… and having science and also
having support systems [i.e. from the other teachers in the program], like,
“Hey, I just tried to do this; have you guys tried to teach this yet in your
class? Did it work? I didn't have tracing paper, I had to use a string.” Or
you know, whatever the case may be, you're able to make adjustments and
let each other know… So it really was a collaborative effort. So thinking
about impactfulness, if we could do that more often, I think that would
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have a lot more leverage, kind of a pedagogical shift that needs to take
place in science.
Olivia suggests, as I have done earlier, that teachers are fully capable of teaching
climate change in a scientifically accurate and engaging way, and that the key may be a
balance of support from outside organizations—particularly when that support empowers,
rather than patronizes teachers—combined with support from other, fellow teachers. In
this way, educators may find both the means and the motivation needed to teach this
challenging, but critical subject.
Many Thanks
Thanks to the many educators, both formal and informal, with whom I’ve had the
pleasure of working alongside throughout the years. You have inspired me to think more
critically about science, about the environment, and about education.
Thanks to Dr. Kari Norgaard, for advising me in this project and inspiring my
interest in climate change communication with her book Living in Denial. Thanks, too, to
Dr. Kathryn Lynch for further advice and inspiration on the subject of environmental
education.
I especially want to thank all the teachers who participated in this study; I
couldn’t have done it without them. Because this is an academic work, it’s hard to talk
about individual people, their speech, and their actions without adopting a critical tone.
However, this scholarly tone should not be confused with personal reproach. Indeed, I
was consistently impressed by the teachers I had the honor of interviewing. I marveled at
their creativity, their compassion, and above all, their passion for science teaching. I hope
119
that if these teachers were to read this thesis, my words—both the critical and
congratulatory ones—would resonate with them.
120
APPENDIX
INTERVIEW SCHEDULE
1. Background for project
2. Tell me a little bit about your experience teaching – how and when you got into
teaching, what grades or subjects you’ve taught, and what grades/subjects you’re
teaching now.
3. Overview of your year – what units do you teach?
4. What do you think are the most important ES topics for middle school science?
a. Are all of those topics that you cover?
b. How do you teach Topic A? (What tools, activities, etc. do you use?)
c. How do you teach Topic B?
5. One environmental science topic that I’m particularly interested in for this project is
CC—I’m curious whether and how teachers incorporate CC into their classroom
teaching, especially because the NGSS include this topic a little more explicitly than
the past OR state standards did. So if it’s okay with you I’d like to spend some time
discussing that subject specifically. Is CC a topic that you cover in your classroom?
If yes
a. Can you walk me through your CC unit or lesson? Starting from the
beginning, what are the main points you cover and activities you do?
b. So, ideally, if your students paid attention and learned what you hoped
they would learn from this unit/lesson, what would they ultimately
understand about CC?
c. When teaching CC, do you find that you’re more authoritative, like “this is
the way it is” or more open-ended, like “here’s some information about
CC, you make up your own minds.”
i. Is that the same way you would teach for other subjects—like, the
water cycle or volcanoes—or do you take a more
authoritative/open-ended approach when teaching CC?
d. Has anyone in your school or community tried to encourage or discourage
you to teach CC?
121
e. Do you ever have students present an idea that’s more in line w/ climate
skepticism than climate science? How do you respond?
If no
a. I understand. Maybe you could describe for me how you decide what
topics to teach, and why CC wasn’t one of those topics.
b. Has anyone in your school or community tried to encourage or discourage
you to teach CC?
c. What, ideally, should MS students understand about CC?
6. [Understanding that CC isn’t a major topic] can you think of a time when CC or GW
came up in class, maybe indirectly or in a discussion, or whatever?
7. Compared to other ES topics like watersheds or biodiversity, what—if anything—is
different about teaching CC?
8. Thinking about yourself, not as a teacher, but just as a person--In general, do you think
about CC?
a. Do you share those thoughts w/ your students?
9. When you’re talking about environmental topics w/ your students (CC or other) do you
find you “stick to the science” or incorporate social issues, too?
a. Getting into solutions or responses – Do you ever worry about that being
too political?
b. How (if at all) do you keep it from being political?
c. Do you tend to talk more about personal responses to enviro issues (like
things that they can do individually like recycling, biking) or more large-
scale social responses?
10. [Most teachers want to get students excited] Do you ever worry about making
students feel scared or discouraged when talking about env issues, especially
environmental problems?
11. Can you think of a time teaching an ES topic when you felt supported and confident?
a. What made you feel confident and/or supported?
12. Can you think of a time teaching an ES topic when you felt unsupported and/or
unconfident?
122
a. What made you feel unconfident and/or unsupported?
13. Anything else I should ask you about?
14. Any questions for me?
15. Are there any other teachers you know that you’d recommend I contact?
123
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