Abstract
Do graduate students believe they are being well equipped to understand the implications of climate change as part of their research and professional careers? With climate change impacting our ecosystems, infrastructure, and societies, do we see higher-education institutions preparing future generations to lead us through these challenges? Previous studies have captured individuals’ knowledge of the climate system ranging from the K-12 level to adulthood, but very few studies have investigated the perception of climate education held by graduate students. We focused our efforts on three unique research questions: (i) what is the level of climate education that graduate students believe they are receiving, (ii) what is their view on the importance of climate education, and (iii) to what level do they perceive they are incorporating the impacts of a changing climate in their research? We developed and distributed a nationwide survey (495 respondents) to graduate students to capture their perception of the level of climate education being offered and the importance of climate education. We show that graduate students in the agricultural, atmospheric, biological, computer, engineering, environmental, geographic, geologic, health, and social sciences indicate that climate education is very important and find that there are a number of climate courses offered at institutions nationwide; however, most students do not feel they are receiving a large breadth or depth of climate education.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Baede APM, Ahlonsou E, Ding Y, Schimel DS (2001) The climate system: an overview. In: Climate change 2001: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Cambridge University Press, p 87–98
Beck A, Sinatra GM, Lombardi D (2013) Leveraging higher-education instructors in the climate literacy effort: factors related to university faculty’s propensity to teach climate change. Int J Clim Chang: Impacts Responses 4:1–17
Bohr J (2014) Public views on the dangers and importance of climate change: predicting climate change beliefs in the United States through income moderated by party identification. Clim Chang 126:217–227
Cordero EC, Todd AM, Abellera D (2008) Climate change education and the ecological footprint. BAMS :865–872
Feldman L, Nisbet MC, Leiserowitz A, Maibach E (2010) The climate change generation? Survey analysis of the perceptions and beliefs of young Americans. Joint Report of American University’s School of Communication, The Yale Project on Climate Change, and George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication
Filho WL (2010) Climate change at universities: results of a world survey. In: Universities and climate change. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, pp 1–19
Harker-Schuch I, Bugge-Henriksen C (2013) Opinions and knowledge about climate change science in high school students. AMBIO 42:755–766
Hoffman M, Barstow D (2007) Revolutionizing Earth System science education for the 21st Century: report and recommendations from a 50-state analysis of Earth Science education standards. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Howe PD, Mildenberger M, Marlon JR, Leiserowitz A (2015) Geographic variation in opinions on climate change at state and local scales in the USA. Nat Clim Chang 5:596–603
Huxster JK, Uribe-Zarain X, Kempton W (2015) Undergraduate understanding of climate change: the influences of college major and environmental group membership on survey knowledge scores. J Environ Educ 46:149–165
IPCC (2014) Climate change 2014: synthesis report. Contribution of working groups I, II, and III to the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva, Switzerland
Kellstedt PM, Zahran S, Vedlitz A (2008) Personal efficacy, the information environment, and attitudes toward global warming and climate change in the United States. Risk Anal 28:113–126
Lee TM, Markowitz EM, Howe PD, Ko C, Leiserowitz AA (2015) Predictors of public climate change awareness and risk perception around the world. Nat Clim Chang 5:1014–1020
Likert R (1932) A technique for the measurement of attitudes. Arch Psychol 22:5–55
Lohr VI (2014) Climate change literacy in postsecondary horticultural education in the United States. HortTechnology 24:132–137
Lorenzoni I, Pidgeon NF (2006) Public views on climate change: European and USA perspectives. Clim Chang 77:73–95
Lutz W, Muttarak R, Striessnig E (2014) Universal education is key to enhanced climate adaptation. Science 346:1061–1062
McCright AM, O’Shea BW, Sweeder RD, Urquhart GR, Zeleke A (2013) Promoting interdisciplinarity through climate change education. Nat Clim Chang :1–4
Nam Y, Ito E (2011) A climate change course for undergraduate students. J Geosci Educ 59:229–241
National Research Council (NRC) (2013) Next generation science standards. (online access: http://www.nextgenscience.org/)
Özdem Y, Dal B, Öztürk N, Sönmez D, Alper U (2014) What is that thing called climate change? An investigation into the understanding of climate change by seventh-grade students. Int Res Geograph Environ Educ 23:294–313
Plutzer E, McCaffrey M, Hannah AL, Rosenau J, Berbeco M, Reid AH (2016) Climate confusion among US teachers. Science 351:664–665
Rajeev Gowda MV, Fox JC, Magelky RD (1997) Students’ understanding of climate change: insights for scientists and educators. BAMS 78:2232–2240
Shepardson DP, Niyogi D, Choi S, Charusombat U (2009) Seventh grade students’ conceptions of global warming and climate change. Environ Educ Res 15:549–570
Shepardson DP, Niyogi D, Choi S, Charusombat U (2011) Students’ conceptions about the greenhouse effect, global warming, and climate change. Clim Chang 104:481–507
Shepardson DP, Niyogi D, Roychoudhury A, Hirsch A (2012) Conceptualizing climate change in the context of a climate system: implications for climate and environmental education. Environ Educ Res 18:323–352
Shi J, Visschers VHM, Siegrist M, Arvai J (2016) Knowledge as a driver of public perceptions about climate change reassessed. Nat Clim Chang 6:759–762
U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) (2009) Climate literacy: the essential principles of climate science. (online access: http://www.globalchange.gov//browse/educators)
Wachholz S, Artz N, Chene D (2014) Warming to the idea: university students’ knowledge and attitudes about climate change. IJSHE 15:128–141
Weber EU, Stern PC (2011) Public understanding of climate change in the United States. Am Psychol 66:315–328
Acknowledgements
This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. OIA-1301789. The authors wish to thank R. Miller, L. Guertault, L. Elmore, C. Kuster, and A. Fox for their comments on the manuscript and J. Quiah for assistance with gathering the course catalogs for each institution. The authors would also like to extend their gratitude to the reviewers of this manuscript who provided excellent feedback to enhance this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kuster, E.L., Fox, G.A. Current state of climate education in natural and social sciences in the USA. Climatic Change 141, 613–626 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-1918-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-1918-z