Search

The southeastern United States (SEUS) faces numerous potential impacts from a changing climate; however, the population has been characterized with a predominance of naysayers and few climate policies have been implemented by state governments in the region. As such, public education is an important avenue for achieving a climate literate citizenry in the region. Yet little is known about the needs of and influences on this community. We developed the Climate Stewardship Survey (CSS) to assess grades 6-20 educators' knowledge and perceptions of climate change in the SEUS (South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, and Arkansas). The population sampled was an informed volunteer sample of convenience. Our findings demonstrated little misinformation among this informed group was evident and strong knowledge and perceptions of the issue were prevalent. However, some uncertainties about the impacts and causes of climate change persisted. Also, in regard to political orientation, Democratic Party and Republican Party educators had statistically significant (p < 0.05) differences in their knowledge and perceptions, and this difference was even stronger once Protestants were subdivided by political preferences. These differences indicate that the issue is polarized in the SEUS among educators and that the coupling of political and religious orientation can strongly influence this group's climate change knowledge and perceptions. As such, this population in the SEUS may be potentially more susceptible than others to cultural cognition influences, especially since relatively few SEUS state education standards address geoscience or climate change content, particularly at levels beyond middle school, with fewer than half of the states surveyed participating in the Next Generation Science Standards development process. Although this sample was limited in its distribution among states and respondent ethnicity, the findings presented are informative about potential SEUS educators' perceptions and knowledge about climate change. As such, our findings can be used to help inform future trainers in regard to what content areas might be the principal professional development opportunities and provide future researchers potential avenues for further investigation.

Climate change education in the southeastern United States can be challenging. Due to economic factors, as well as the conservative political and faith perspectives typical of the region, high proportions (40%) of the population are not engaged, not convinced, or doubt Earth's climate is changing or that climate change has anthropogenic causes. Finding ways to bring such people into the climate change conversation is a crucial first step. This paper describes a public dialogue approach that brings together scientists with heterogeneous groups of faith, leisure/outdoor, educator, and agriculture communities to promote perspective sharing in an open and safe environment. It also describes the research we conducted on participants' experiences. Participants' postdialogue responses showed that they rated their learning about policies that might address climate change more strongly than their learning about climate science or the impacts of climate change. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of postdialogue evaluations found that three factors explained 63% of the variability in the data and represented substantively distinct components of participants' experiences: (1) feeling respected, (2) learning about climate science and policy content, and (3) learning about faith-based and other new and different perspectives about the issue. Qualitative findings supported quantitative results, suggesting that respondents felt comfortable speaking freely about their views on climate change, politics, and religion and that they valued engaging with diverse groups to have an open discussion about climate change. The dialogue approach has potential to depolarize climate change discourse through relationship building so that diverse communities can engage in productive and civil conversations expressing multiple perspectives.

This study characterizes the impact of an inquiry-based learning (IBL) module versus a traditionally structured laboratory exercise. Laboratory sections were randomized into experimental and control groups. The experimental group was taught using IBL pedagogical techniques and included manipulation of large-scale data-sets, use of multiple representations and a physical model and exposure to ill-constrained problems common to the Texas Gulf Coast. The control groups were taught using traditional laboratory activities. The groups were not significantly different prior to exposure. Pre/post-expressed conceptual models and final written reports indicate that the experimental group had greater increases in their conceptual model development of sand-sediment transport. (Contains 7 figures and 8 tables.)