LEARNING FROM EVIDENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: CONNECTING MACROSCOPIC-SCALE AND LARGE-SCALE INQUIRY PRACTICES

Learning from scientific evidence is an important practice for environmental literacy. Next Generation Science Standards identifies three key practices: interpreting and analyzing data, engaging in arguments from evidence, and constructing explanations. These practices may hold challenges for students in the context of global climate change, a complex scientific topic and socio-environmental issue that occurs at a larger spatial scale. We describe student proficiency in these practices in the context of global climate change.

We collected interview data from 30 middle and high school students eliciting students’ evaluation of the quality of an argument from evidence about the 2012 drought in the Great Plains and the Dust Bowl, interpretation of highly variable data of number of days of lake ice, explanation about changing global temperature based on Arctic sea ice data, and explanation about how data collected at Mauna Loa relates to global carbon dioxide concentrations.

We found that students have difficulty with pattern-finding, for example, conflating patterns (up-down-up-down) with trends in the context of melting lake ice data. Students often confuse extent or severity of effect with the idea of overall directionality of a change in evaluating arguments from evidence. Students have difficulty understanding the Keeling Curve in terms of how measurements in Hawaii could be generalizable to other locations on the globe. Additionally, students have difficulty understanding how different mechanisms account for (a) the overall rise in carbon dioxide concentrations over 50 years due to combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation, and (b) and the annual changes in carbon dioxide due to changes in the amount of photosynthesis in the Northern hemisphere.

Our goal as educators is to prepare students to respond to new data on how Earth systems are changing and engage in an evidence-based deliberative process about this issue including what actions to take, individually and collectively, to mitigate and adapt to changes. Findings from this study represent an advance in understanding how students learn from evidence in the context of global climate change and will help us refine teaching tools about this issue.