Students’ evaluations about climate change

ABSTRACT

Scientists regularly evaluate alternative explanations of phenomena and solutions to problems. Students should similarly engage in critical evaluation when learning about scientific and engineering topics. However, students do not often demonstrate sophisticated evaluation skills in the classroom. The purpose of the present study was to investigate middle school students’ evaluations when confronted with alternative explanations of the complex and controversial topic of climate change. Through a qualitative analysis, we determined that students demonstrated four distinct categories of evaluation when writing about the connections between evidence and alternative explanations of climate change: (a) erroneous evaluation, (b) descriptive evaluation, (c) relational evaluation, and (d) critical evaluation. These categories represent different types of evaluation quality. A quantitative analysis revealed that types of evaluation, along with plausibility perceptions about the alternative explanations, were significant predictors of postinstructional knowledge about scientific principles underlying the climate change phenomenon. Specifically, more robust evaluations and greater plausibility toward the scientifically accepted model of human-induced climate change predicted greater knowledge. These findings demonstrate that instruction promoting critical evaluation and plausibility appraisal may promote greater understanding of socio-scientific topics and increased use of scientific thinking when considering alternative explanations, as is called for by recent science education reform efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical evaluation
• plausibility reappraisal
• knowledge construction

Acknowledgments

Part of this analysis emerged from the first author’s doctoral dissertation while at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, with special thanks to the dissertation committee members, Dr Gale M. Sinatra, University of Southern California, and Dr E. Michael Nussbaum, Dr Gregory Schraw and Dr Matthew Lachniet, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We would also like to thank Dr. Janelle M. Bailey, Temple University, for her help in scoring students' explanations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Doug Lombardi is an Assistant Professor of Science Education in Temple University's College of Education. Dr. Lombardi earned his PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA, a MS in Education from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA, a MS in Environmental Engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. He is a licensed physical science, physics, and mathematics teacher, with a variety of classroom, professional development, and education and public outreach experience. His research is on the role of reasoning in conceptual change, epistemic cognition, and science learning.

Carol B. Brandt is an Associate Professor of Science Education and earned her PhD in Educational Thought and Sociocultural Studies from the University of New Mexico. She also holds a MS in Botany from Colorado State University and BA in Anthropology from Northwestern University. She completed a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at the Center for Informal Learning and Schools at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research explores the anthropological and sociocultural dimensions of learning about science and the environment beyond the classroom and the ways that language structures participation as youth and adults move between home, community, and school. Her ethnographic research examines the ways in which participants construct knowledge about the environment through citizen science projects and after school engineering programs.

Elliot S. Bickel is an undergraduate student at Temple University and is currently studying Mathematics with Teaching through Temple’s TUteach program. Elliot plans to graduate with a BS in Mathematics, as well as secondary teaching certification for mathematics and physics, in 2017. Elliot works as an undergraduate research assistant on a project funded by the National Science Foundation. He specifically analyzes students’ explanations of Earth science topics.

Colin Burg earned his BS in Middle Grades Education from Temple University.

Notes

1. The mode and structure of the model-evidence link (MEL) diagram was originally developed by a team of researchers at Rutgers University under the NSF-supported Promoting Reasoning and Conceptual Change in Science project for use in middle school life science classrooms (Chinn & Buckland, 2012). Lombardi et al. (2013) developed the climate change MEL used in the present study.

Additional information

Funding

Part of the analysis was also was supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) [grant number DRL-1316057.]. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the NSF's views.