SURPRISING PRELIMINARY RESULTS ON INFORMAL EDUCATION ABOUT THE CLIMATE CRISIS

Climate change is one of the few modern-day crises that affect everyone worldwide. Solving the climate crisis requires individual effort and informed decision making from everyone. A large contributor to inaction in solving the climate crisis is the lack of information for the general public. However, our main cause for concern is the lack of education on climate change for K-12 students. Our research is focused on the effectiveness of informal education in teaching children about climate change. Data for this study was collected during our annual Science Day event March 7th, 2020 at California State University, Stanislaus in Turlock, California. During Science Day, all the Science Departments open their labs to the public. Families with young children often frequent this event. Our lab focused on educating the public about the climate crisis. Our room was designed with information about sea-level rise, pollution, renewable forms of energy, and sustainability. We geared these activities towards children. Data was collected through voluntary entrance and exit surveys. Questions included simple demographics, level of understanding about the climate crisis, and general feelings towards science. Out of 182 participants, 87 surveys were completed meaning only 47% of participants responded. More than half of our participants were 19 or younger. Initially, 93 % of the participants stated that they felt positively about science. This number increased to 96.5 % after their walk through the lab. On average, the entrance questions revealed that over a quarter of the participants felt that they did not know much about the climate crisis. The exit survey showed that after going through the lab, more participants felt more informed about the climate crisis. Through observations of the participants during their walk through, we observed that most children were already informed about the climate crisis, but their parents were less so. We conclude that for K-12 children, informal education about the climate crisis (like during Science Day) is an important educational supplement to what they learn in school. However, we were surprised to learn that the adults in our survey appeared to have been exposed less to this topic during their education.