What Triggers Climate Action: The Impact of a Climate Change Education Program on Students’ Climate Literacy and Their Willingness to Act
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Climate Literacy
1.2. CC Knowledge
1.3. CC Attitudes, Pro-Climatic Behavior, and Knowledge–Action Gap
1.4. Youth’s Climate Knowledge and Attitudes to CC
1.5. Theory and Practice of CCE
2. Methods
2.1. The ’CO2 League’ Program Description
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- Understands the basic principles of anthropogenic CC and the greenhouse effect;
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- Knows the impacts of CC and is able to provide examples of local impacts;
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- Knows the major drivers of anthropogenic CC and is able to provide examples of personal everyday activities which contribute to it;
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- Knows how effective various ways to combat CC are;
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- Understands the principle of carbon footprint;
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- Is aware of urgency of implementing solutions to climate crises;
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- Believes in his or her own ability to participate in combating CC and succeed in it (self-efficacy);
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- Is willing to participate in activities which will most likely help to combat CC (on the personal, community and political level).
- What was the impact of the ‘CO2 League’ program on participants’ climate literacy components (investigated constructs) and also their willingness to engage in climate action?
- Are any of the investigated constructs (system/action/effectiveness knowledge, CC concern, self-efficacy) significantly related to participants’ willingness to act?
- Do other predictors (gender, age, elementary/secondary interface) have a significant relation to participants’ willingness to act?
2.2. Data Collection
- What is global warming/CC? (5 items, system and action knowledge);
- How much will the following activities help us mitigate CC? (10 items, effectiveness knowledge);
- Is CC a serious problem? (8 items, CC concern);
- What do you think about the following statements? (7 items, CC mitigation self-efficacy);
- Are you willing to adopt the following actions to help mitigate CC? (8 items, willingness to act)
2.3. Data Analyses
2.4. Participants
3. Results
3.1. RQ1: The Impact of ‘CO2 League’ Program on Participants’ Climate Literacy Components and Their Willingness to Engage in Climate Action
The main thing is that we learned about how to solve these problems and what they originated from.(Student 2, team F)
Now, for example, we talk about it more at school, we are concerned about it more than ever before.(Student 3, team F)
I think it was great that they had the chance to think for the first time about what carbon footprint is and how they can reduce it, to present it to the whole class. Later the boys told me that they had talked to their parents at home about whether it was necessary to use two cars and other similar things.(Teacher A)
Calculating the carbon footprint was something new for the students and also very surprising.(Teacher D)
After we did the mission with the CO2 calculator, I started to try harder and take public transport and also eat homemade food. We also try not to throw away food at home and not to use disposable plastic packaging.(Student 3, team A)
Our whole family has become more environmentally friendly-for example, we have started eating less meat or driving less.(Student 2, team C)
I try to recycle more waste, or buy second-hand things, or reduce eating beef and eat more chicken meat, for example.(Student 4, team D)
I also really enjoyed presenting some things from ‘CO2 League’ to the others in the class. We tried to tell them what ‘CO2 League’ was about, what was important-a lot of our classmates then told us that they started thinking about it, at least a little bit.(Student 2, team A)
I liked that I could do something that would affect others, I could inform the whole high school about something important.(Student 2, team E)
I am glad that I persuaded my family to save more at home, for example save electricity or water.(Student 3, team A)
The last mission, when we wrote to the Minister of Environment, I rewrote the email two or three times before I was satisfied, it was definitely interesting.(Student 1, team A)
The meeting with the mayor was very stimulating.(Student 1, team B)
I learned that there are not only solutions for individuals, but that much more can be done at the community level.(Student 2, team D)
Before the program, they didn’t communicate much, so the benefit was the development of communication, they learned to search for data, they found out how newspapers were edited, they walked around, took pictures, they became interested in their surroundings.(Teacher B)
3.2. RQ2: The Relation of the Investigated Constructs to Participants’ Willingness to Act
3.2.1. Correlation Analyses
3.2.2. Structural Model Building
3.3. RQ2: The Relation of Other Predictors (Gender, Age, Elementary/Secondary Interface) to Participants’ Willingness to Act
4. Discussion
4.1. ‘CO2 League’ Strengths
4.2. The Role of CC Knowledge and CC Concern in CCE
4.3. Models of Paths to Pro-Climatic Behavior
4.4. Implications for CCE and Future Studies
4.5. Limitations
5. Conclusions
Supplementary Materials
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
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Mission | Targeted Climate Literacy Component | Activities |
---|---|---|
1 | CC system knowledge, CC concern | watching videos, reading texts, brainstorming activities, depicting CC through mind maps and art-based activities, sharing results with schoolmates (posters, videos, presenting in front of class, website creation) |
2 | CC action and effectiveness knowledge (mitigation), self-efficacy, personal climate action | calculating and discussing personal/school carbon footprint, implementing students’ ideas to decrease their carbon footprint, sharing results with schoolmates (posters, leaflets, presenting in front of class, team website) |
3 | CC action and effectiveness knowledge (adaptation), self-efficacy, community climate action | creating an urban ’feeling map’ of local areas threatened by drought, heat waves and floods, preparing proposals for adaptation measures |
4 | CC self-efficacy, CC hope and empowerment, community climate action | interacting with local and national stakeholders, presenting students’ mitigation and adaptation proposals to municipality officers, writing to relevant government officials, participation |
Survey Dimension | Number of Items | Cronbach’s Alpha |
---|---|---|
System knowledge | 3 | 0.57 |
Action knowledge | 2 | 0.55 |
Effectiveness knowledge | 10 | 0.67 |
Knowledge (aggregate) | 15 | 0.79 |
Concern | 8 | 0.80 |
Self-efficacy | 7 | 0.79 |
Willingness to act | 8 | 0.73 |
Characteristics | Group | N | % |
---|---|---|---|
Gender | girls | 70 | 56.9% |
boys | 53 | 43.1% | |
Age | 12 years | 7 | 5.7% |
13 years | 21 | 17.1% | |
14 years | 26 | 21.1% | |
15 years | 28 | 22.8% | |
16 years | 31 | 25.2% | |
17 years | 10 | 8.1% | |
School type (nth grade) | elementary school (7.) | 26 | 21.1% |
elementary school (8.) | 23 | 18.7% | |
elementary school (9.) | 28 | 22.8% | |
secondary school (1.) | 34 | 27.6% | |
secondary school (2.) | 10 | 8.1% | |
secondary school (3.) | 2 | 1.6% | |
Rural area/Town/City | rural area | 32 | 26% |
town | 51 | 41.5% | |
city | 40 | 32.5% |
Variable | Mpre | SDpre | Mpost | SDpost | t | Cohen’s d |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
System knowledge | 1.16 | 0.63 | 1.48 | 0.65 | −5.31 ** | 0.48 |
Action knowledge | 0.70 | 0.45 | 0.87 | 0.45 | −4.06 ** | 0.37 |
Effectiv. Knowledge | 6.54 | 1.14 | 6.98 | 0.128 | −3.64 ** | 0.33 |
Knowledge (aggregate) | 8.40 | 1.28 | 9.32 | 2.01 | −5.43 ** | 0.49 |
Concern | 4.00 | 0.63 | 4.13 | 0.63 | −2.84 * | 0.26 |
Self-efficacy | 3.48 | 0.70 | 3.61 | 0.74 | −2.38 * | 0.22 |
Willingness to act | 3.69 | 0.74 | 3.78 | 0.67 | −2.05 * | 0.19 |
Age | System Knowledge | Action Knowledge | Effectiveness Knowledge | Knowledge (Aggregate) | Concern | Self-Efficacy | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Age | |||||||
System knowledge | 0.12 | ||||||
Action knowledge | 0.14 | 0.63 ** | |||||
Effectiveness knowledge | 0.09 | 0.47 ** | 0.52 ** | ||||
Knowledge (aggregate) | 0.13 | 0.77 ** | 0.76 ** | 0.91 ** | |||
Concern | −0.07 | 0.24 ** | 0.36 ** | 0.38 ** | 0.40 ** | ||
Self-efficacy | −0.02 | 0.25 ** | 0.27 ** | 0.15 | 0.24 ** | 0.63 ** | |
Willingness to act | −0.06 | 0.14 | 0.26 ** | 0.18 * | 0.22 * | 0.66 ** | 0.61 ** |
Variables | Mgirl | SDgirl | Mboy | SDboy | t | Cohen’s d |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
System knowledge PRE | 1.08 | 0.63 | 1.26 | 0.61 | −1.59 | 0.289 |
System knowledge POST | 1.48 | 0.65 | 1.48 | 0.67 | −0.05 | 0.010 |
Action knowledge PRE | 0.67 | 0.44 | 0.76 | 0.46 | −1.11 | 0.202 |
Action knowledge POST | 0.90 | 0.48 | 0.82 | 0.40 | 1.04 | 0.190 |
Effectiveness knowledge PRE | 6.40 | 1.16 | 6.72 | 1.09 | −1.58 | 0.287 |
Effectiveness knowledge POST | 7.00 | 1.18 | 6.94 | 1.41 | 0.242 | 0.044 |
Knowledge (aggregate) PRE | 8.14 | 1.89 | 8.73 | 1.73 | −1.796 | 0.327 |
Knowledge (aggregate) POST | 9.38 | 1.94 | 9.25 | 2.10 | 0.37 | 0.067 |
Concern PRE | 4.11 | 0.54 | 3.86 | 0.70 | 2.28 * | 0.415 |
Concern POST | 4.27 | 0.50 | 3.95 | 0.74 | 2.67 * | 0.512 |
Self-efficacy PRE | 3.58 | 0.69 | 3.35 | 0.69 | 1.83 | 0.334 |
Self-efficacy POST | 3.71 | 0.72 | 3.48 | 0.75 | 1.70 | 0.310 |
Willingness to act PRE | 3.94 | 0.62 | 3.37 | 0.76 | 4.55 ** | 0.829 |
Willingness to act POST | 3.98 | 0.63 | 3.51 | 0.63 | 4.05 ** | 0.737 |
Variables | MES | SDES | MSS | SDSS | t | Cohen’s d |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
System knowledge PRE | 1.04 | 0.57 | 1.34 | 0.67 | −2.65 * | −0.495 |
System knowledge POST | 1.47 | 0.68 | 1.50 | 0.62 | −0.216 | −0.040 |
Action knowledge PRE | 0.66 | 0.45 | 0.78 | 0.44 | −1.525 | −0.284 |
Action knowledge POST | 0.87 | 0.43 | 0.87 | 0.47 | −0.001 | 0.000 |
Effectiveness knowledge PRE | 6.42 | 1.15 | 6.73 | 1.11 | −1.492 | −0.278 |
Effectiveness knowledge POST | 6.91 | 1.15 | 7.08 | 1.48 | −0.708 | −0.132 |
Knowledge (aggregate) PRE | 8.12 | 1.83 | 8.86 | 1.78 | −2.208 * | −0.411 |
Knowledge (aggregate) POST | 9.25 | 1.93 | 9.45 | 2.15 | −0.522 | −0.097 |
Concern PRE | 3.97 | 0.54 | 4.06 | 0.75 | −0.824 | −0.154 |
Concern POST | 4.18 | 0.50 | 4.05 | 0.81 | 0.917 | 0.191 |
Self-efficacy PRE | 3.52 | 0.69 | 3.42 | 0.72 | 0.729 | 0.136 |
Self-efficacy POST | 3.68 | 0.71 | 3.49 | 0.77 | 1.378 | 0.25 |
Willingness to act PRE | 3.75 | 0.70 | 3.60 | 0.79 | 1.141 | 0.213 |
Willingness to act POST | 3.82 | 0.65 | 3.71 | 0.70 | 0.913 | 0.170 |
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Kolenatý, M.; Kroufek, R.; Činčera, J. What Triggers Climate Action: The Impact of a Climate Change Education Program on Students’ Climate Literacy and Their Willingness to Act. Sustainability 2022, 14, 10365. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141610365
Kolenatý M, Kroufek R, Činčera J. What Triggers Climate Action: The Impact of a Climate Change Education Program on Students’ Climate Literacy and Their Willingness to Act. Sustainability. 2022; 14(16):10365. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141610365
Chicago/Turabian StyleKolenatý, Miloslav, Roman Kroufek, and Jan Činčera. 2022. "What Triggers Climate Action: The Impact of a Climate Change Education Program on Students’ Climate Literacy and Their Willingness to Act" Sustainability 14, no. 16: 10365. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141610365