Abstract:

A questionnaire was used to explore the prevalence of ideas about global warming in Year 10 (age 15-16 years) school students in Turkey. The frequencies of individual scientific ideas and misconceptions about the causes, consequences and ‘cures’ of global warming were identified. In addition, several general findings emerged from this study. Firstly, many students believed that radioactivity is causally linked to global warming; they believed that radioactive leakage from nuclear power stations exacerbates global warming, and that reducing the global nuclear arsenal could reduce it. Secondly, students appeared to confuse the causes and consequences of global warming with those of ozone layer depletion. For example, global warming was associated by many students with skin cancer, in reality a consequence of ozone layer damage. Furthermore, there seemed to be a general conflation of ideas whereby many pro-environmental actions that are not, in reality, connected with global warming were seen by students as helping to reduce it. More generically, many students accepted the scientific mechanism of global warming while simultaneously believing erroneous explanations. Thus, acceptance of scientific ideas does not lead automatically to elimination of misconceptions about the same issue. On a more practical level, relatively few students realised that saving electricity would contribute to a reduction in global warming. Encouraging students to use electricity economically would be a way of educating them about the importance of pro-environmental actions by individuals and empowering them to undertake some such actions.

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