Students' personal epistemological beliefs and climate change solutions

• This quantitative study explores changes in relations between students’ epistemological be-liefs regarding certainty of knowledge and global warming scepticism. It also explores whether different dimensions of knowledge certainty predict students’ understandings of large-scale solutions to climate change as in education/information, market prices or tax and legislation. The study is longitudinal and a paper and pen questionnaire was distributed to business and economics students at two occasions. The first year’s measurement included 212 participants, aged 17 years. Measurement was repeated a year later when students were in their final year of education. Factor analysis and linear regression analyses were used to generate underlying dimensions of beliefs and to predict relations between epistemological beliefs and conceptions of solutions to climate change. Changes are analysed through paired sample t-test. Results show, firstly, that almost all students acknowledged climate change and the study found no significant change over time at group level. Furthermore, preliminary results generated a three-factor solution regarding epistemological beliefs of knowledge certainty; science has clear-cut answers, science can be revised, and science is universal truth. Two solutions to climate change were significantly predicted by an absolute belief ‘science has clear-cut answers’: at first measurement is was education/information and at the second time, it was market prices. The epistemological dimension of ‘science can be revised’ predicted a belief that taxes are efficient solutions.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

students

knowledge stability

climate change

pedagogik med inriktning mot utbildningsvetenskap

Educational Science

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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