CLIMATE CHANGE COMMUNICATION: BARRIERS AND KNOWING WHAT PEOPLE KNOW (Invited Presentation)

Climate change literacy is an issue of pressing importance to the education, communication, and policy communities. Scholars from across natural and social sciences have investigated barriers to learning and assessed climate literacy in populations ranging from young children to the adult public. The extensive literature offers a unique opportunity to evaluate best practices in communication and evaluation that can be used across communities. A cross-disciplinary synthesis of barriers to learning suggests that populations are faced with cognitive, affective, communication, and policy obstacles that inhibit climate literacy. Deeper analysis of the literature on alternative conceptions indicates that a wide range of non-scientific ideas exist, and that these are generally not mitigated by the curriculum being implemented in pre-college and college instruction, nor is the general public gaining a deeper understanding of climate change despite significant effort at communication. While many high quality climate change curricula have been developed, we suggest that these need to be coupled with high quality assessment instruments that will provide real-time feedback on the efficacy of materials. We will present examples of high quality assessment questions based on the research literature that have been used in several climate literacy projects as well as student data illustrating educational impact.