What are students' mental representations of climate change and the greenhouse effect?

Abstract

This paper investigates the students’ mental representations of climate change and the greenhouse effect. Ninety-nine secondary education students (Grades 7, 9 and 11) in Spain, participated in this study. Data was obtained by means of an open-ended questionnaire which focused on the mechanisms, causes and actions that could slow down climate change. The students’ conceptions and mental models were identified by means of an inductive and iterative analysis of their explanations. With regards to the participants’ conceptions, the results have shown that students tend to mention generic actions to mitigate climate change, such as not polluting. With regards to the participants’ mental models, the results indicate that when students have limited previous knowledge of climate change, they are able to easily reconstruct their models by assimilating new information into existing knowledge structures. However, the evolution of extremely coherent and functional models is difficult to achieve. As educational implications, we propose creating classroom situations that will allow students to make their mental representations explicit, giving them an opportunity to compare their validity through discussion