Climate Change Literacy Research Articles

Climate Change Literacy among Postgraduate Students of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

The primary objective of environmental education is believed to be developing environmental literacy. The environmentally literate person is described as a person who possesses the values, attitudes and skills that enable knowledge to be converted into action. This study was aimed at assessing the level of climate change literacy among graduate students in four programmes at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. To this end, a questionnaire was developed and administered to a total of 91 students. An attempt was made to include all the major conceptual and geographical aspects of climate change literacy. Results indicate that the students who participated in the study demonstrated a ‘just above average’ performance on the whole, but clearly poor performance in some of the key areas related to the science behind climate change, past trends in rainfall and temperature and the impact of climate change on Africa. It is particularly worrisome that many of the students had inadequate or no information about the projected or actual impacts of climate change on poor countries, including those in Africa. Students’ awareness about some of the key measures proposed at the global level is also inadequate. It is therefore strongly recommended that follow-up studies be conducted to see the effects of such factors on programme syllabi, teaching approaches used, key sources of information, etc., and on students’ climate change literacy.

Climate Change Education and the Ecological Footprint

Abstract Global warming has become one of the most important scientific, political, and social issues of our era. In designing an effective mitigation strategy, it is clear that public education must play an important role. This study looks at various components of climate change literacy within a cohort of university students and investigates the impact of action-oriented learning on student understanding. Results from questionnaires given to primarily nonscience students enrolled in weather and climate courses are used to examine student knowledge of climate change. In agreement with prior research, this study finds that signif icant student misconceptions exist regarding the causes of global warming and the relationship between global warming and ozone depletion. Most students seem to connect global warming only with visible pollution, such as exhaust from either a car or factory, while discounting more indirect emissions such as from electricity use and through product or food consumption. The authors...