Nigerian teachers' self‐reported climate science literacy and expressed training needs on climate change concepts: Prospects of job‐embedded situative professional development

Abstract

AbstractThe assessment of Nigerian teachers' climate science literacy and training needs on climate change concepts (i.e., causes, impacts, and solutions) are absent. This study relates teachers' climate science literacy and their expressed training needs in other climate change concepts and places teachers in groups. Following a descriptive survey design, 410 teachers were randomly sampled from 8338 public secondary school teachers in Enugu State, southeastern Nigeria. A researcher‐developed instrument passing validity and reliability tests was used for this study. We implemented frequencies, mean, t test, ANOVA, k‐means cluster analyses, and Pearson's correlation for the analyses of collected data and tested all hypotheses at a p < 0.05 level of significance. Teachers reported low to moderate climate science literacy and expressed high training needs on climate change concepts. Lower climate science literacy was related to higher expressed training needs. Four groups of teachers ensued from our cluster analyses. Sadly, teachers who possess little or less climate science literacy and expressed less or no training needs in climate change causes, impacts, and solutions constitute over half of the respondents of this study (53.90%). These are mostly science teachers. This situation, if unreversed, may lead to the transfer of misconceptions and inaccurate information on climate change to students. Our findings support the prospects of school−university partnerships, coaching, mentoring, study groups, and co‐teaching for job‐embedded situative approaches to teachers' professional development (PD) to replace an endless wait for inadequate and irregular training opportunities from the government. Questions about the climate science literacy of teacher educators also arise.