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Presentation
Addressing the Climate Change Consensus Gap Among Preservice Teachers: A Four-Faceted Approach
AERA (2019)
  • Grinell Smith, San José State University
  • Colette Rabin, San Jose State University
Abstract
In this paper, we report an estimate of the magnitude of the “consensus gap” – the gap between what scientists know about climate change and what the general public thinks they know – about anthropomorphic climate change among K-8 pre-service teachers. We also report qualitative findings about the utility of a four-faceted approach to teaching about climate change designed explicitly to mitigate inductive reasoning errors and to reduce in-group favoritism, attribution bias, inter-group conflict, and confirmation bias. We found that learning about the scientific consensus spurred student exploration about climate change and the careful use of deliberation toward commonly-held positions within a caring learning community rather than the more common ‘debate’ style of discussion fostered deep reflection.
Keywords
  • Environmental Education,
  • Science Education
Publication Date
April 8, 2019
Location
Toronto, Canada
DOI
10.302/1438921
Comments
Paper presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Paper presented as part of the session: Science Teaching and Learning SIG Paper Session: Preservice Teachers

This paper is also available in the AERA Online Paper Repository

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Citation Information
Grinell Smith and Colette Rabin. "Addressing the Climate Change Consensus Gap Among Preservice Teachers: A Four-Faceted Approach" AERA (2019)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/colette_rabin/65/