A new study suggests textbook wording that portrays climate change information as uncertain can influence how middle and high school students feel about the information, even for students who say they already know about climate change and its human causes.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Education Research, has implications for how teachers can prepare students to face misinformation about climate change.

«I thought students’ knowledge or social norms surrounding climate change would buffer them from misinformation,» said study author K.C. Busch, an assistant professor of STEM education at NC State. «But it didn’t matter how much knowledge students had; they did not react to the text differently. That’s problematic. We think that if we could improve students’ knowledge, they can integrate that knowledge in the real world to sniff out misinformation or disinformation that’s being presented to them. That didn’t happen.»

In the study, Busch surveyed 453 students in California about how certain they felt about climate change before and after they read one of two articles about climate change. The articles’ wording suggested either low or high uncertainty about climate change.

Busch took the high uncertainty text directly from an earth science textbook published in 2008 in California. For the other reading, she adapted the textbook language to remove uncertainty. For example, she changed «not all scientists agree about the causes of global warming» to «97% of scientists agree about the causes of global warming.»

«The cleanup of what I’ll call the ‘bad text’ was actually super slight,» Busch said. «It was so slight that I was almost thinking that it wasn’t going to have any effect whatsoever. This study showed strategies that are subtly used to cue the reader did have an effect.»

Although students in both groups began the experiment with similar average certainty about climate change, students’ certainty changed after reading the texts. The survey students took used a four-point scale, with 4 meaning students were «extremely sure» climate change is caused by people, and 1 meaning they were «not at all sure.»

Story Source:
Materials provided by North Carolina State University. Original written by Laura Oleniacz. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.