The role of cognitive, behavioral and personal variables of pre-service teachers’ plausibility perceptions about global climate change

ABSTRACT

Background: Global Climate Change is a threat to the planet Earth and all living beings on it. Therefore, it is important to develop policies and take actions against climate change. One way to do this is to educate citizens about climate change which requires having informed teachers.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the role of cognitive, behavioral and personal variables on pre-service teachers’ plausibility perceptions of global climate change.

Sample: A sample of 199 senior pre-service teachers at a public university in Turkey participated in this study.

Design and Methods: Survey research design was conducted to answer the research question of the study. Five instruments were used to test the research question, which were Plausibility Perceptions Measure, Understanding of Global Climate Change Instrument, Degree of Willingness to Act Scale, Need for Cognition and Need for Closure Scale. The data included similarities, differences, and variances of the responses. Descriptive and prediction analyses were conducted to answer the research question.

Results: The findings revealed that participants generally demonstrated high levels of plausibility and understanding of climate change. The results also showed that understanding, the degree of willingness to act and need for closure were predictors of pre-service teachers’ plausibility perceptions of climate change. In particular, understanding had the largest contribution in explaining the variance in plausibility perceptions of the participants.

Conclusions: The findings of the present study provide insights for teacher education programs on climate change education. For instance, while improving pre-service teachers’ plausibility perceptions of climate change, teacher education programs need to consider cognitive, behavioral and personal variables.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• conceptual change
• plausibility
• teacher education

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr Emine Erktin (Bogazici University) for her help with the study design and methodology, and Dr Doug Lombardi (Temple University) for his support and feedback on this study. We also would like to thank Dr Zahid Kisa (Florida State University) for advising us about data analysis as well as the students who participated in the study and shared their thoughts with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.