SGER: Exploratory Study of the Relationship between Students ' Mental Models of Climate Change and Their Environmentally Sustainable Decisions and Behavior

该SGER的目的是制定学生对气候变化概念的衡量标准，并研究环境可持续决策和行为与自然世界的这些概念有关的猜想。 具体而言，该研究问：（1）气候变化的心理模型能否被可靠、有效和有效地测量，以提供一个衡量学生理解气候变化的标准：（2）如果可以，初中、高中和大学生持有什么样的气候变化心理模型？ (3)学生的心理模型与他们的人口统计学特征，报告的行为和政策偏好之间的相关性是什么？该项目是及时的，因为环境问题正在得到媒体的广泛报道和公众的广泛讨论。 提高我们对什么样的教育干预改变学生在气候变化方面的行为的理解具有国家重要性。这项研究将开创一种创新的方法，以建立经验知识库，了解中学生和大学生如何以及为什么围绕气候变化这一关键问题改变他们的行为。

The purpose of this SGER is to develop measures of students' conception of climate change and examine the conjecture that environmentally sustainable decisions and behavior are related to these conceptions of the natural world. Specifically, the study asks: (1) Can mental models of climate change be measured reliably, validly and efficiently to provide a gauge on students' understanding: (2) if so, what mental models of Climate Change do middle, high school and college students hold? (3) What is the correlation between students' mental models and their demographic characteristics, reported behavioral and policy preferences regarding Climate Change?The project is timely because environmental issues are receiving wide media coverage and much public discussion. Improving our understanding of what kinds of education interventions alter students' behaviors around climate change is of national importance. The study would initiate an innovative approach to building the empirical knowledge base about how and why secondary school and college students' alter their behaviors around the critical issue of climate change.