| Name: | Description: | Size: | Format: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 289.16 KB | Adobe PDF |
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
This study aimed to verify the knowledge of 149 Pre-Service teachers (91 from a Portuguese institution and 58 from a Spanish one) about global warming, a subject that is approached in their courses and that they will have to teach in the future, since it is part of the Primary school curricula in both countries. For this purpose, a questionnaire was administered at the beginning of the present school year, after the approach of the subject in the last school year in a curricular unit dealing with environmental issues, present in the study plans of both courses. The questionnaire included several open questions related to the causes and the consequences of global warming. Due to space limitations, only the results of the following three questions are presented in this paper: 1) How does the use of fossil fuel contribute to global warming?; 2) How does the emission of CFCs and other equivalent gases contribute to global warming?; 3) How does deforestation contribute to global warming? The answers were classified based on their correction, from a defined standard response. The Spanish students performed a little better than the Portuguese ones in the first two questions and the reverse occurred with the third question. However, globally, less than 40% of the students were able to answer questions 1 and 3 correctly, and less of 10% question 2. Several misconceptions were revealed by the students, who confused global warming with the ozone layer depletion or revealed wrong ideas about the photosynthetic process, just to mention two of the most frequent mistakes. The results suggest that some improvements in dealing with global warming in teacher training courses are necessary, through the design of activities that include, for instance, the deconstruction of some of the ideas expressed by the students in the present and other similar studies.
Description
Keywords
Pré-service teachers Global warming Misconceptions
Citation
Almeida, A., García Fernández,B. (2017) Students’ Ideas About Global Warming: A Comparative Study Between Portuguese and Spanish Pre-service Teachers In ESERA 2017 Conference. Research, Practice and Collaboration in Science Education, Dublin. pp. 196-203