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The purpose of this study was to conceptualize a pedagogical content knowledge framework for informal science educators (ISE-PCK). An initial, hypothetical framework was created grounded in the literature in informal science education (ISE) as analogous to PCK models in formal science education. An exploratory sequential mixed-methods research design was used to revise, refine, and validate the initial framework. Data were collected through interviews and Delphi method surveys with practicing ISE educators and education researchers. The refined and validated ISE-PCK framework comprised five, correlated constituent components: knowledge of ISE goals, knowledge of ISE programs, knowledge of context(s) of audience(s), knowledge of engagement strategies, and knowledge of evaluation. Of these five components, knowledge of engagement strategies was considered the most important and knowledge of evaluation was considered the least important, as ranked by the Delphi study participants. Articulation of a framework for ISE-PCK is useful to professionalize the important work that ISE educators do as well as to provide guidance for professional development programs. This framework for ISE-PCK will serve as a conceptual foundation for future research focusing on informal science educators' knowledge in relation to their performance and their professional growth from novice to expert.

Environmental education research often emphasizes the importance of community context, but conceptualization and measurement of environmental literacy has mostly occurred at the individual level, often focusing on individual behaviors. The environmental problems facing the world today require collective action--communities coming together to address large-scale problems. Accordingly, understanding and encouraging collective action requires a shift in focus from individual to community-level environmental literacy (CLEL). Despite its importance, CLEL has been left largely undefined and unmentioned in environmental education literature. To understand the field's current conceptualizations and measurement strategies around CLEL, the authors held a convening of 24 researchers to discuss the topic. Here, we report the findings of this convening and present a series of tensions that emerged in conceptualizing and measuring CLEL. We see this area of research as rich with opportunity for innovation and offer considerations for researchers engaging in this work.

This study investigated the experiences of rural, underserved middle school students in afterschool clubs. Culturally relevant climate change education strategies were used to enhance students' climate change literacy. We investigated changes in students' climate change literacy, perceptions of strategies used, and what they valued about the clubs by analyzing a pre-post survey (N = 97) and structured written reflections (N = 113). A new integrative framework brought together climate change education design elements to promote culturally relevant programming in an afterschool setting. The effective climate change education strategies and Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT) guided data analyses. Overall, students demonstrated significant growth in climate literacy; beliefs, attitudes, and subjective knowledge did not increase significantly. Students' reflections indicated some climate change strategies resonated more than others. Analyses using EVT found that students' interest/enjoyment and identity were most often described, followed by self-efficacy and expectations for success with club tasks. Implications for practice are shared.

Anthropogenic climate change remains divisive in the United States, where skepticism of the scientific consensus is associated with conservative worldviews, resulting in political polarization. This study considers three hypotheses regarding U.S. polarization over climate change that have emerged from social psychology research and applies them to science education by showing how these hypotheses could relate to adolescents' science learning. We then test each hypothesis within an experimental educational intervention designed to study the influence of worldview, mechanistic knowledge, and quantitative reasoning on students' written arguments about climate change. We used mixed methods to analyze the results of this individually randomized trial with clustering involving 357 participants in grades 9-11 from 5 U.S. sites. Findings show that: (a) exposure to mechanistic knowledge about climate change increased odds of receptivity toward climate change; (b) increasingly conservative worldviews were associated with decreased odds of receptivity; (c) worldview and quantitative reasoning interacted, resulting in an amplified effect of worldview for students with greater quantitative reasoning. Results also suggest that the influence of worldview and mechanistic knowledge on receptivity work independently from one another in our dataset. This study demonstrates the value of teaching mechanistic understandings of climate change, yet also demonstrates the influence of worldview on receptivity to climate change for adolescents, as well as complex interactions between quantitative reasoning (something school science aims to develop) and worldview. It shows that moving the U.S. public toward the scientific consensus is complex and involves confronting ideologically motivated reasoning within science education.

In US school settings and materials, climate change is often framed as an uncertain phenomenon. However, the effect of such denialist representations on youth's perceptions of climate change has not been empirically tested. To address this gap in the literature, this article reports on a survey-based experiment testing two framings of uncertainty about the causes and effects of climate change--one with a high level of uncertainty and one with a low level of uncertainty--on students' knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours related to climate change. The experiment was conducted with 453 middle and high school students. Students who read a text portraying climate change with high uncertainty reported lower levels of certainty about human-caused climate change. To explore how the students engaged cognitive resources when reading the experimental texts, regression analyses were used to test two hypotheses. The Knowledge Thesis predicts that youth will use their prior knowledge to evaluate the text, and the Norms Thesis predicts that youth will use the perceived norms of their social group to evaluate the text. Results suggested that students did not respond to the treatment differentially, given their differing levels of prior knowledge nor social norms accepting of climate change. Implications for practice include the necessity of explicit scaffolds to support deep critical engagement with informational, or dis-informational, text about climate change.

This article reports an investigation of a professional development program to enhance elementary teachers' ability to engage their students in argument from evidence in science. Using a quasi-experimental approach, three versions were compared: Version A--a 1-week summer institute with a 2-week summer practicum experience and 8 follow-up days (four per year), Version B without the practicum experience, and Version C--a revision of Version A in Year 3. All teachers were videoed twice each year, and the videos were rated using an instrument to measure the quality of discourse. All versions led to a significant improvement in teachers' facilitation of classroom discourse. Neither the practicum nor the revised program had an additional effect. Implications for the field are discussed.

When people are exposed to information that leads them to overestimate the actual amount of genetic difference between racial groups, it can augment their racial biases. However, there is apparently no research that explores if the reverse is possible. Does teaching adolescents scientifically accurate information about genetic variation within and between US census races reduce their racial biases? We randomized 8th and 9th grade students (n = 166) into separate classrooms to learn for an entire week either about the topics of (a) human genetic variation or (b) climate variation. In a cross-over randomized trial with clustering, we demonstrate that when students learn about genetic variation within and between racial groups it significantly changes their perceptions of human genetic variation, thereby causing a significant decrease in their scores on instruments assessing cognitive forms of prejudice. We then replicate these findings in two computer-based randomized controlled trials, one with adults (n = 176) and another with biology students (n = 721, 9th-12th graders). These results indicate that teaching about human variation in the domain of genetics has potentially powerful effects on social cognition during adolescence. In turn, we argue that learning about the social and quantitative complexities of human genetic variation research could prepare students to become informed participants in a society where human genetics is invoked as a rationale in sociopolitical debates.

AbstractClimate change education (CCE) plays a critical role in climate empowerment and addressing the challenge of climate change. We present results from the first social network analysis of CCE in the U.S. We surveyed CCE professionals through an established CCE network and wide dissemination from CCE professionals about their interactions with others across 5 dimensions: (1) climate and energy education; (2) climate action, climate empowerment, or community engagement; (3) workforce development in the climate and energy field; (4) diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism; and (5) climate or energy policy. The resulting network analysis shows some cohesiveness, especially for the first two dimensions; however, network cohesiveness could be improved. The findings also show the keystone organizations and brokers across the CCE field. This study provides a foundation for developing targeted strategies to strengthen CCE for improving coordinated and collaborative climate action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The predominant conceptualization of scientific literacy occurs on the micro scale of an individual person. However, scientific literacy can also be exhibited at the meso scale by groups of people in communities of place, practice, or interest. What comprises this community level scientific literacy (CSL) is both understudied and undertheorized. In this paper, we utilized a systematic literature review to describe how CSL is characterized in the extant literature and a Delphi survey of experts to elicit more current thought. Guided by cultural‐historical activity theory, inductive and deductive analyses produced seven elements of CSL and their constituent characteristics: (1) resources, (2) attributes of those resources, (3) actors, (4) interactions between actors, (5) contexts, (6) topics, and (7) purposes. The typology created through this process is meant to be generative, serving as a starting point for continuing refinement within science education and other fields related to science learning and knowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractAs environmental challenges increase in scope and scale, new conceptualizations for environmental literacy are needed. Specifically, notions of environmental literacy must move from those at the individual level to those at the group, or community, level. However, the concept of community level environmental literacy is underdeveloped. In this paper, we present the results of a Delphi method survey of experts, gathered to both conceptualize community level environmental literacy as well as address considerations for its measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this commentary, we reflect on the articles in this special collection from our lens as scholars who have chosen to conduct research with a focus on climate change education. We start with statements of positionality, as certainly our own experiences and philosophical stances shape our work and reflections included here. Afterwards, we present a typology of climate change education research, utilizing a framework developed from research paradigms with an emphasis on epistemology and methodology. Lastly, we make recommendations for future research efforts based on suggestions within the research articles in the collection as well as from the typology presented.

This study focuses on the diversity, equity, access, and inclusion (DEAI) practices of informal science institutions (ISI) that are part of a statewide grants program. Data were collected to understand how ISIs interpret and implement DEAI in thought and action in their efforts to create more welcoming spaces for members of communities that are often underrepresented or marginalized in informal learning spaces. Modeled after the Cultural Competence Learning Institute's (CCLI) Framework, survey data were collected to understand DEAI practices being used to create welcoming environments. Interview data were collected 2 years later to understand how ISIs collaborate with others to center communities in their work. Results indicated that while DEAI was considered a high priority, strategies were limited. A positive relationship was found between the number of strategies used and perceived success. ISIs' stories of collaboration focused most often on transactional relationships with organizational partners. Those working with communities directly collaborated in needs‐based or reciprocal ways. Results are interpreted in relation to the CCLI Framework's potential to provide benchmarks for both individual institutions and groups like our statewide grants program to use as comparison points for their own DEAI practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the results of a research-practice partnership that included a U.S. university research team and a state-funded grants program that supports informal science education. The goal of the 2-year partnership was to develop an empirically-tested model for collaboration and capacity-building (CCB) in support of collective evaluation. The model was implemented with 23 informal science education (ISE) organizations across one U.S. state. A comparison of pre and post-surveys indicate that the goals of the CCB model were attained. Participants reported an (1) increased perception of a common agenda, (2) increased capacity for conducting evaluation, and (3) increased peer-peer engagement. Participants also highlighted ongoing barriers to collective evaluation and suggested specific supports to overcome these barriers. This collaborative capacity-building model, although tested with ISE providers, is generalizable to other collective evaluation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental education often advocates for individual pro-environmental behavior—which, while beneficial to a degree, fails to match the large scale of today's capitalism-fueled socio-ecological challenges. Rather, collective action holds promise as a means for the large-scale changes required in the Capitalocene. These actions can take the shape of encouraging group uptake of behaviors (collective non-activist behaviors) or through fostering system change (collective activist behaviors). This study works to understand how well the environmental literacy framework combined with the theory of planned behavior predicts collective environmental behaviors, using North Carolina high school students as a study population. We find that, while these models effectively predict student engagement in individual environmental behaviors (adjusted R2 = 0.39), they are less accurate at predicting engagement in collective non-activist behaviors (adjusted R2 = 0.17) and collective activist behaviors (adjusted R2 = 0.10). Thus, more research and theory-building are needed to understand what drives collective behavior among youth and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not only will young adults bear the brunt of the effects of climate change, but they are also the ones who will be required to take action-to mitigate and to adapt. Framing, as both a theory and an analytic method, has been used to understand how language in the media can affect the audience's concern and intention to act. The theory and the analytic methods of framing were adapted and applied to answer the research question: How do teachers frame climate change in the classroom? Twenty-five lessons from seven teachers were analyzed using semiotic discourse analysis methods. Teachers' frames overlapped to form two distinct discourses: a Science Discourse and a Social Discourse. The dominant Science Discourse can be summarized as follows: "Climate change is a current scientific problem that will have profound global effects on the Earth's physical systems." The Social Discourse, used much less often, can be summarized as follows: "Climate change is a future social issue because it will have negative impacts on people at the local level." While it is not surprising that the Science Discourse was heard most often in these science classrooms, framing research suggests it is problematic. The research literature on framing indicates that the frames found in the Science Discourse--global scale, scientific statistics and facts, and impact on the Earth's systems--are not likely to inspire action. In contrast, the frames found within the Social Discourse--local scale, impact on humans, and connections to social, economic, and political processes--are more likely to inspire action. The implications for the classroom are discussed.

Middle school students are learning about climate change in large part through textbooks used in their classes. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how the language employed in these materials frames this topic. To this end, we used systemic functional analysis to study the language of the chapters related to climate change in four sixth grade science textbooks adopted in the state of California. The linguistic variables investigated were: types of nominal groups; processes; circumstances; and the modality system. Our findings showed that these textbooks framed climate change as uncertain in the scientific community--both about whether it is occurring as well as about its human-causation. The implications for science education are discussed in relation to how the current political and public discourses of climate change, rather than the scientific discourse, is influencing how textbooks discuss this topic.

Teaching about climate science presents some unique challenges. Unlike many other science topics, mitigation and adaptation to climate change will require students to take action. This article outlines five major challenges to communicating about climate change in the classroom, drawing on research in environmental psychology: scepticism, complexity, uncertainty, scale and emotion. Strategies for effective communication, drawn from research, are also presented.

Youth can impact environmental attitudes and behaviors among adults. Indeed, research on intergenerational learning has demonstrated the influence of young people on adults in their lives for myriad environmental topics. Intergenerational learning (IGL) refers to the bidirectional transfer of knowledge, attitudes, or behaviors from children to their parents or other adults and vice versa. We suggest an educational framework wherein K-12 marine debris education designed to maximize IGL may be a strategy to accelerate interdisciplinary, community-level solutions to marine debris. Although technical strategies continue to be developed to address the marine debris crisis, even the most strictly technical of these benefit from social support. Here, we present 10 Best Practices grounded in educational, IGL, and youth civic engagement literature to promote marine debris solutions. We describe how integrating IGL and civic engagement into K-12-based marine debris curricula may start a virtuous circle benefiting teachers, students, families, communities, and the ocean., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)