Developing the Acceptance of Climate Change Scale for Undergraduate Students

该项目旨在通过为教育工作者提供一项新的调查来揭示本科生对气候变化的接受程度，从而服务于国家利益。许多美国人，特别是本科生，承认全球气候变化正在发生；然而，目前文献中还没有明确的气候变化接受度定义。因此，这个参与的学生学习：1级项目旨在解决学生接受气候变化的哪些方面，以及哪些方面可能被当前的调查所掩盖的问题。科学领域(如生物、化学、地球科学)的气候变化教育可以确定学生常见的替代概念，帮助学生将气候变化与他们的日常生活联系起来，并培养气候素养和知识。对其他社会科学问题(如进化论教育)的研究证据表明，理解和接受以不可预测的方式联系在一起。虽然目前存在衡量气候变化接受度的量表，但该项目旨在开发一种新的调查(即气候变化接受量表(ACC))，以捕捉其复杂性，这是专门为理科本科生设计的。现有尺度的狭窄可能导致在捕捉气候变化接受的许多方面的不准确，并可能随后导致不可靠的数据，这可能会误导指令。该项目将产生一项新的调查，考察理科本科生对气候变化的接受程度，目的是提高本科生气候变化教育的有效性。这项新调查的更广泛的意义和重要性在于，它将带来关于在本科科学课程中包括哪些气候变化主题以解决接受问题的建议，它将代表一项新的调查，科学教育研究人员可以利用它来促进新的工作，询问学生对气候变化的接受程度。总体而言，这项新调查的发展将支持NSF的使命，即准备好让一群了解STEM的公众准备好支持科学进步并从科学进步中受益，并开发可在科学领域使用的共享指标。该项目的中心目标是开发一项新的调查，即气候变化接受度(ACC)。为了实现这一目标，该项目有三个子目标：(1)确定本科生对气候变化的接受程度；(2)遵循既定做法，制定气候变化接受量表(ACC)；(3)验证和试点ACC，并通过定量研究使用ACC来衡量理科本科生对气候变化的接受程度。该项目的范围包括美国境内的本科生(生物、化学和地球科学)群体。制定行政协调会的第一步将是确定和汇编接受或拒绝气候变化的定义。第二，第一步产生的知识将为行政协调会的发展提供信息。在对ACC进行初步实地测试后，ACC将在美国多所高等教育机构的生物、化学和地球科学学科的理科课程中对学生进行管理，以增加该工具的普适性，并量化学生对气候变化的接受程度和与接受程度相关的因素。ACC的五个阶段的发展过程将遵循公认的教育和心理测试标准，包括项目创建、专家审查、大声思考面试、项目修改和重测。此外，新调查的心理测量学分析将依赖于这些标准来测试ACC的效度(例如，内容、内部、并行和收敛效度)和可靠性(例如，工具的内部可靠性，在全国范围内的重复测试)。NSF IUSE：EDU计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过参与的学生学习路径，该计划支持有前景的实践和工具的创建、探索和实施。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national interest by providing educators with a new survey to uncover the many aspects of climate change acceptance in undergraduate science students. Many Americans, and specifically undergraduate students, accept that global climate change is occurring; however, no clear definitions of climate change acceptance currently exist in the literature. Therefore, this Engaged Student Learning: Level 1 project intends to address the question of what aspects of climate change students are accepting and which aspects may be obscured by current surveys. Climate change education in science fields (e.g., biology, chemistry, geosciences) can identify common student alternative conceptions, help students link climate change to their everyday lives, and foster climate literacy and knowledge. Evidence from research on other socioscientific issues (i.e., evolution education) suggests that understanding and acceptance are tied together in unpredictable ways. Although current scales exist to measure climate change acceptance, this project aims to develop a new survey (i.e. Acceptance of Climate Change Scale (ACC)) to capture its complexity that is specifically designed for undergraduate science students. The narrowness of existing scales likely leads to inaccuracy in capturing the many aspects of climate change acceptance and may subsequently lead to unreliable data which may misinform instruction. This project will produce a novel survey that examines aspects of undergraduate science students' acceptance of climate change with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of climate change education for undergraduate science students. The broader significance and importance of this new survey is that it will lead to recommendations about which climate change topics to include in undergraduate science curricula to address acceptance, and it will represent a new survey that can be used by science education researchers to facilitate new work asking questions about students’ climate change acceptance. Overall, development of this new survey will support NSF’s mission of preparing a STEM-literate public that is ready to support and benefit from the advancement of science and develop shared metrics for use across science fields.The central goal of this project is to develop a new survey, the Acceptance of Climate Change Scale (ACC). To meet this goal, the project has three subgoals: (1) Define acceptance of climate change for undergraduate science populations; (2) Follow established practices to develop the Acceptance of Climate Change Scale (ACC); (3) Validate and pilot the ACC and use the ACC to measure science undergraduate students' acceptance of climate change through a quantitative study. The scope of the project includes undergraduate science student (biology, chemistry, and geoscience) populations within the US. The first steps in developing the ACC will be to identify and compile definitions of acceptance or rejection of climate change. Second, knowledge generated from the first steps will inform the development of the ACC. After initial field testing of the ACC, the ACC will be administered to students in science courses across the disciplines of biology, chemistry, and geosciences at a wide range of higher education institutions across the US to increase the generalizability of the tool and to quantify students’ acceptance of climate change and factors that relate to this acceptance. The five-stage development process of the ACC will follow accepted standards for educational and psychological testing, including item creation, expert review, think-aloud interviews, item revision, and retesting. Further, psychometric analysis of the new survey will rely on these standards for testing the validity (e.g., content, internal, concurrent, and convergent validity) and reliability (e.g., internal reliability of instrument, replication of testing nationally) of the ACC. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.