STUDENTS’ DEPTH OF UNDERSTANDING OF CLIMATE CHANGE CONTENT AND ACTION POTENTIAL IN TWO FLAGSTAFF, ARIZONA MIDDLE SCHOOLS

Data explicitly supports that Earth is facing a climate crisis, yet Arizona Science Standards severely underrepresent and suppress climate change’s causes, severity, and solutions. These vague standards leave interpretation open to individual districts, schools, and teachers. This mixed methods case study identifies students’ depth of understanding of climate change causes, severity, and solutions, and how the learning experiences support students in overcoming innate psychological barriers to solve future climate crises.

Data was collected in five sixth-grade classrooms representing five different specialized programs in two Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD) middle schools. School #1 contains an Advanced STEM program and Honors program. School #2 contains a Specialized Honors program, Place-Based program, and General Science program. Student surveys, semi-structured teacher interviews, curriculum comparison, and focused observations were quantified through iterative thematic coding analysis and scoring of programs using the Analytical Hierarchy Process.

The results of the study showed that students in the Advanced STEM program and Honors program from school #1 had a deeper understanding of climate change causes, severity, and solutions than the programs in school #2. The Specialized Honors program in school #2 had an average depth of understanding, yet showed the most concern and overcame more psychological barriers than any other program. The highest scoring programs overall were those that included open discussion of opinions on climate change, indicating a positive correlation between students’ concern about climate change and their depth of understanding. In short, students understood more about climate change when they felt an emotional connection to the topic.

Moving forward, educators at the school, district, and state levels should develop curricula that take into account this emotional connection to help students understand complex concepts like climate change and better prepare them for the world they will inherit.