Abstract:

The public concern on the climate change (CC) and its effects on the future of the planet has increased over the last decades as acknowledged by the widespread media coverage of the issue. Education is basic to promote behavioral attitudes that support the mitigation of CC and the search for new technologies that facilitate the adaptation to it. Besides, the CC issue provides a natural context for teaching sciences and raises pupils’ consciousness about their own responsibility on the health of the planet.

However, for the last 30 years mental models far from scientific explanations and misconceptions of both students and educators have prevented proper transference/learning of new knowledge related to CC. This work consists of the search of such misleading notions in secondary education in the Basque Country.

With such aim, 148 people (96 secondary school students and 54 adults, teachers or future teachers) were asked to explain a graph, draw a picture and fill in an open questionnaire on CC. Their skills to identify greenhouse gases and their origin, to ascertain the consequences of the CC and to picture the greenhouse effect were thus assessed. The survey was performed during the school year 2013-2014 at five educational institutions. The collected answers were classified as correct, enough or wrong.

Additionally, five textbooks were analyzed for conceptual gaps on CC. In those, the mentioning of CC and the explanation about the greenhouse effect, its consequences and mitigation strategies were searched for as well as acknowledgment on whether the ozone layer was related to the greenhouse effect in those books.

Adults correctly responded to 15% of the questions and failed to respond to the 47% of them. Students’ results were worse: they responded correctly to the 6% of the questions posed and failed to respond to the 66% of them.

In relation to textbooks, none of them mentioned CC in spite the fact that in most of them the greenhouse effect was explained. However, both the explanations and the pictures on the issue were considered confusing and might lead to misconceptions. These errors should be fixed so that a proper environmental education that enables the students to face and confront CC is supplied.

Keywords:

Climate Change, mental models, misconceptions, textbooks.