Comments for the Symposium on Climate Change Education: Policies and Implications

Annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching

Charles W. Anderson, Michigan State University

April 9, 2013

Public Trust for Science and Public Decisions about Climate Change 

Kahan on Science Literacy and Climate Change Skepticism

Daniel Kahan, et al: The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nature Climate Change, May 27, 2012•Science comprehension thesis (SCT): Public needs to understand science methods and findings to change perceptions of climate change.•Cultural cognition thesis (CCT): individuals tend to form perceptions of societal risks that cohere with values characteristic of groups with which they identify.

How much risk do you believe climate change poses to human health, safety or prosperity?

How much risk do you believe climate change poses to human health, safety or prosperity?

Six Americas: Questions about Trust in Sources of Knowledge

How much do you trust or distrust the following source of information about global warming? Responses for “scientists”

Question

What’s the role of science education in our national dialogue

about climate change?

Practices of Environmentally Literate Citizens

Discourses: Communities of practice, identities, values, funds of knowledge

Discourses: Communities of practice, identities, values, funds of knowledge

Explaining and Predicting (Accounts)

What is happening in this situation?

What are the likely consequences of different

courses of action?

Explaining and Predicting (Accounts)

What is happening in this situation?

What are the likely consequences of different

courses of action?

Investigating (Inquiry)What is the problem?

Who do I trust? What’s the evidence?

Investigating (Inquiry)What is the problem?

Who do I trust? What’s the evidence?

Deciding

What will I do?

Deciding

What will I do?

Kahan’s Claim

• Kahan: Knowing more about scientific accounts reinforces rather than changes people’s positions on climate change.

• Similar to evolution-creation debate: People who know more facts tend to be more firmly entrenched on one side or the other.

• Is there another side to this story?

Public Debates on Socioscientific Issues

• Irresolvable– Evolution– Abortion

• Largely resolved– Smoking and lung cancer– Automobile safety

• Which way will they go?– Vaccination – Climate change

More Questions

• Why does the cultural cognition thesis seem to explain the continuing irreconcilable differences around evolution and abortion, but not how other differences come to be resolved?

• Which kind of differences are the differences about climate change?

Practices of Environmentally Literate Citizens

Discourses: Communities of practice, identities, values, funds of knowledge

Discourses: Communities of practice, identities, values, funds of knowledge

Explaining and Predicting (Accounts)

What is happening in this situation?

What are the likely consequences of different

courses of action?

Explaining and Predicting (Accounts)

What is happening in this situation?

What are the likely consequences of different

courses of action?

Investigating (Inquiry)What is the problem?

Who do I trust? What’s the evidence?

Investigating (Inquiry)What is the problem?

Who do I trust? What’s the evidence?

Deciding

What will I do?

Deciding

What will I do?

Alternate Approaches to Inquiry Tasks in Clinical Interviews

Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? Chico Marx in Duck Soup. •Scientific inquiry: Believe data to the limits of accuracy and precision. Your own eyes may not be accurate or precise. •Naïve inquiry: Believe your own eyes; data may not add much to the totality of your experience. •School science: If your own eyes see an incorrect result, you did it wrong.

Inquiry and Learning from Experience

• We all learn both from our experiences in the material world and from other people—our cultural heritage (like school science)

• Scientific subcultures (and other subcultures) have their own particular ways of selecting and construing experiences to pay attention to

• Media play a mixed role—disseminating both cultural viewpoints and vicarious experience

• It’s hard for any subculture to keep telling people not to believe their own eyes

Probable Future for Climate Change Skepticism

• Accumulating personal experience• Changing media coverage

– Vicarious experience: Extreme events: Hurricane Sandy, Midwestern drought, record high and low temperatures

– Climate change narratives accompanying extreme events• In the long run the trajectory will be like smoking• “The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs.

In the long run we are all dead.” John Maynard Keynes

• More importantly, we will to a lot of environmental damage while we are waiting for “the long run”

Scientific Inquiry: Managing Uncertainty

The ability to understand, manage, and reduce uncertainty is one

valuable thing that we can give our students through scientific inquiry.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow: The Psychology of False Certainty

Metaphor of our minds working with a dual processing system:•System 1 (thinking fast) instantly and subconsciously fits what we see and know about the world into perceptions and narrative frameworks. •System 2 (thinking slow) allows us with conscious effort to question and modify the perceptions and narratives that System 1 gives to us.

Advantages of System 1

• Enables quick, decisive action based on incomplete data

• Enables us to persist when the odds are against us

Problems with System 1

• Sometimes wrong• Is just as certain

when we are wrong as when we are right

Characteristics of System 1

1. WYSIATI: What You See Is All There Is

2. Substituting an easier question

3. Source amnesia.

4. Confirmation bias

5. Stories, not statistics

6. False certainty

System 1 Produces Unknown Unknowns

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on February 12, 2002

System 2 Reduces Unknown Unknowns

• System 1 always processes first, producing perceptions and stories that are sometimes wrong but always subjectively certain

• System 2 sometimes adds doubts and reconsider

• Note temporal order: Certainty precedes doubt

Scientific Inquiry: Giving System 2 a Full Voice

Scientific inquiry is a collective process that puts System 2 in charge•Assume all knowledge claims are initially uncertain•Study and quantify uncertainty (error bars, inferential statistics)•Communicate about uncertainty (e.g., by how sources are cited)•Follow strategies to reduce uncertainty

• Giving authority to arguments from evidence rather than individual people

• Commitment to rigor in research methods• Collective validation through consensus of scientific

communities (peer review)• Identifying sources for knowledge claims

Policy Implications

• School science and cultural cognition have some important similarities: Both privilege trusted authority (but different trusted authorities) over personal experience OR scientific data

• This puts school science in a weak position to argue for belief that climate change is occurring: “My authority is better than your authority.”

• Learning about scientific inquiry can help IF it helps students become aware of “unknown unknowns” and strategies for identifying and reducing uncertainty.

Coming back to Accounts….

Discourses: Communities of practice, identities, values, funds of knowledge

Discourses: Communities of practice, identities, values, funds of knowledge

Explaining and Predicting (Accounts)

What is happening in this situation?

What are the likely consequences of different

courses of action?

Explaining and Predicting (Accounts)

What is happening in this situation?

What are the likely consequences of different

courses of action?

Investigating (Inquiry)What is the problem?

Who do I trust? What’s the evidence?

Investigating (Inquiry)What is the problem?

Who do I trust? What’s the evidence?

Deciding

What will I do?

Deciding

What will I do?

America’s Climate Choices: Need for Action

Climate change is occurring, is very likely caused by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems. Each additional ton of greenhouse gases emitted commits us to further change and greater risks. In the judgment of the Committee on America’s Climate Choices, the environmental, economic, and humanitarian risks of climate change indicate a pressing need for substantial action to limit the magnitude of climate change and to prepare to adapt to its impacts. (p.1)

Iterative Risk Management as a Framework

… a valuable framework for making decisions about America’s Climate Choices is iterative risk management. This refers to an ongoing process of identifying risks and response options, advancing a portfolio of actions that emphasize risk reduction and are robust across a range of possible futures, and revising America's Climate Choices responses over time to take advantage of new knowledge. (p.1)

Essential Elements of an Effective National Response

• Enacting policies and programs that reduce risk by limiting the causes of climate change and reducing vulnerability to its impacts;

• Investing in research and development efforts that increase knowledge and improve the number and effectiveness of response options available;

• Developing institutions and processes that ensure pertinent information is collected and that link scientific and technical analysis with public deliberation and decision making;

• Periodically evaluating how response efforts are progressing and updating response goals and strategies in light of new information and understanding. (p.1)

Education Challenges from America’s Climate Choices

• Preparing leaders, scientists, and workers with the expertise to plan and enact strategies for mitigation and adaptation within a framework of iterative risk management

• Preparing all citizens to understand the risks of both action and inaction and to engage in effective deliberation about America’s climate choices

Conclusions

• We need scientific inquiry as a tool kit for managing uncertainty

• We need scientific accounts to help us project the future and enact iterative risk management.

• We need science education to help our citizens master these tools.