In-Service Teachers' Attitudes, Knowledge and Classroom Teaching of Global Climate Change.

Abstract

This study explores in-service teachers' attitudes and knowledge about a pressing environmental issue, global climate change (GCC), and how these may relate to their classroom teaching.In this work, nineteen teachers from Native American communities attended a professional development workshop that focused on enhancing their scientifi c understanding and classroom teaching of GCC.Teachers' responses to surveys and interviews revealed that the majority of them considered GCC as mainly human-induced and shared similar concerns about potential consequences of GCC, but their specifi c ecological beliefs varied to different degrees.Throughout the workshop, teachers became more aware of the urgency of GCC and the importance of incorporating climate issues into their science teaching.However, teachers' attitudes and beliefs about GCC were not strong indicators of their level of knowledge, as misconceptions were sometimes found among teachers who were very concerned about climate issues.This work opens up further discussions on the relationship between individuals' attitudes and knowledge about environmental issues.More importantly, it provides important implications for future professional development programs on climate change education and proposes effective tools to evaluate teachers' perspectives about GCC. Attitudes and Beliefs about GCCThe term attitude is often used interchangeably with belief (e.g., Oliver & Koballa, 1992;Lumpe, Haney, & Czerniak, 2000), but there is a distinction between these two constructs.Beliefs are propositions individuals hold to be true: they can be non-evidential and based on personal judgment and evaluation (Koballa & Crawley, 1985;Pajares, 1992).In contrast, attitudes are an individual's general feelings about certain things or situations.Bord, O'Connor, and Fisher (2000) defi ned attitude as a set of beliefs "connected with pursuing a given line of behavior and the relative rewards and costs connected with those outcomes" (p.207).Indeed, connections among beliefs can lead to the generation of certain attitudes, which may ultimately infl uence or determine behavior (Ajzen, 1985;Pajares, 1992).Attitudes and beliefs are both critical for understanding people's perspectives

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