Title
Conceptions of Atmospheric Carbon Budgets: Undergraduate Students' Perceptions of Mass Balance
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2014
Journal or Book Title
Journal of Geoscience Education
Volume
62
Issue
3
First Page
460
Last Page
468
DOI
10.5408/13-052.1
Abstract
With recent U.S. government efforts to develop policy procedures for addressing climate change, public understanding of basic aspects of climate change is imperative in order for people to understand such policy. However, widespread misconceptions of basic atmospheric principles exist among the public. In this study, we document levels of misunderstanding that undergraduate students at a large U.S. research institution have with respect to atmospheric carbon budgets and factors that may account for variability in their understanding. Students enrolled in an introductory geology course (n = 947) completed a survey on atmospheric carbon budgets in two sequential semesters. Results indicated that most students did not have a basic understanding of mass-balance problems and that their misunderstanding varied according to gender and their interest in science but not according to factors, such as students' opinions of the seriousness of climate change. Students also tended to exhibit poor graphical interpretation skills when examining mass-balance graphs.
Rights
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Copyright Owner
National Association of Geoscience Teachers
Copyright Date
2014
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Reichert, Collin Peter; Cervato, Cinzia; Larsen, Michael; and Niederhauser, Dale, "Conceptions of Atmospheric Carbon Budgets: Undergraduate Students' Perceptions of Mass Balance" (2014). Geological and Atmospheric Sciences Publications. 7.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/ge_at_pubs/7
Included in
Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, Science and Mathematics Education Commons
Comments
This article is from Journal of Geoscience Education 62 (2014): 460, doi:10.5408/13-052.1. Posted with permission.