Shifting from climate change denial to acceptance: a mixed-method, semester long case study in an undergraduate first-year experience course

Abstract

Climate change denial is often treated as a binary opinion. However, an individual can express acceptance of climate change, while still denying other aspects of the field such as its causation by humans, impacts, or our ability to mitigate these impacts. Here, we conduct a semester long survey and discourse analysis of a class of first-year undergraduates as they complete a course on climate change to assess changes in their attitudes on climate denial verse acceptance across these more specific factors. Our results suggest that acceptance of the scientific facts about climate change is higher than acceptance of its impacts and solutions. However, acceptance that personal and societal changes can mitigate climate change increased throughout the term. These results can help create course curriculum with more effectively targeted content to assist in shifting perspectives on climate change in young undergraduates.

Keywords:

• Cognitive dissonance
• active learning
• discourse analysis
• survey
• learning models

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Correction

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the members of the Edgewood College IRB for their quick responses and helpful comments on study methodology as well as Dr. Rachael Lancor for leading the professional development workshop that inspired this study. Special thanks to the participants of this study for their gracious contributions.

Disclosure statement

The authors of this paper have no financial or personal conflict of interest. All data collected in this study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Edgewood College project 1746955-1.

Data availability

Scores from individual surveys are available in the supplementary materials associated with this paper along with survey questions used. Individual survey responses may be provided upon request to the corresponding author.

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2024.2325196)