Román is co-author of a 2015 study of California 6th grade science textbooks and how they present global warming.
Studies estimate that only 3 percent of scientists who are experts in climate analysis disagree about the role of humans in the causes of climate change. And the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the evidence of 600 climate researchers in 32 countries reporting changes to Earth’s atmosphere, ice and seas — in 2013 stated “human influence on the climate system is clear.”
Yet only 54 percent of American teens believe climate change is happening, 43 percent don’t believe it’s caused by humans, and 57 percent aren’t concerned about it.
The new study measured how four sixth-grade science textbooks adopted for use in California frame the subject of global warming. Sixth grade is the first time California state standards indicate students will encounter climate change in their formal science curriculum.
“We found that climate change is presented as a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions,” said Román, an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning. “Climate skeptics and climate deniers are given equal time and treated with equal weight as scientists and scientific facts — even though scientists who refute global warming total a miniscule number.”
The findings were reported in October 2015 at the 11th Conference of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA), held in Helsinki, Finland.
By Cassandra Pollock
Texas Tribune
With each issue, Tasbo+Edu brings you an interview with experts on issues related to health care. Here is this week’s subject:
Diego Román is an assistant professor in teaching and learning at Southern Methodist University. He has recently researched how climate change is framed for middle school students in science textbooks.
Tasbo+Edu: Can you briefly explain your research findings?
Dr. Diego Román: The big picture of my research is that I look at the linguistic and social factors that impact language use in the science-education context and language development for English learners who are attending school in the U.S.
I am an applied linguist, and one of my research topics was the framing of climate change in middle school textbooks. In terms of the science textbooks and what we found in that specific study, the ones we investigated don’t reflect the way scientists discuss climate change in reports. While science reports resort to the certainty that climate change is happening, the textbooks that we looked at were very uncertain about defining that issue. We looked into seeing why that would be the case, particularly at how science is seen as very specific, objective and certain, but when we discuss climate change, we use a lot of qualifiers — “would,” “could” and “might.”
We’re arguing that this places the weight on the reader to decipher what that means. “Not all” could mean 90 percent, 55 percent or 10 percent, depending on who you’re talking to. So while textbooks are required to address certain topics — such as climate change — they’re not using specific language to help students and teachers have a better understanding and discussion around the issue.
I also look at how we use language — and I do that by using a framework called systemic functional linguistics. It argues that language is caused by the context of use, so the way we talk about science and the way we frame science topics when discussing them may be different than social studies. To explain a different type of knowledge, we connect ideas differently. For example, we emphasize the idea versus the people in science, but in social studies, we look at the people. To do that, we use language. So I look at how language is used in those purposes to convey knowledge and be effective. I try to understand the perspectives of the authors or the people. That’s a big picture description of my research.
Tasbo+Edu: What are the biggest challenges you see moving forward to try to modify the textbook system?
Román: It seems to be how research can impact, in this case, textbook development, and how to find things that applied linguists are doing when it relates to how language is used and if there’s a way to convey scientific knowledge — from a contextual perspective, but also from a linguistics perspective.
SMU scientists and their research have a global reach that is frequently noted, beyond peer publications and media mentions.
By Margaret Allen
SMU News & Communications
It was a good year for SMU faculty and student research efforts. Here is a small sampling of public and published acknowledgements during 2015:
Hot topic merits open access
Taylor & Francis, publisher of the online journal Environmental Education Research, lifted its subscription-only requirement to meet demand for an article on how climate change is taught to middle-schoolers in California.
Co-author of the research was Diego Román, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.
Román’s research revealed that California textbooks are teaching sixth graders that climate change is a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions, rather than a scientific conclusion based on rigorous scientific evidence.
Research makes the cover of Biochemistry
Drugs important in the battle against cancer were tested in a virtual lab by SMU biology professors to see how they would behave in the human cell.
A computer-generated composite image of the simulation made the Dec. 15 cover of the journal Biochemistry.
Scientific articles about discoveries from the simulation were also published in the peer review journals Biochemistry and in Pharmacology Research & Perspectives.
The researchers tested the drugs by simulating their interaction in a computer-generated model of one of the cell’s key molecular pumps — the protein P-glycoprotein, or P-gp. Outcomes of interest were then tested in the Wise-Vogel wet lab.
The ongoing research is the work of biochemists John Wise, associate professor, and Pia Vogel, professor and director of the SMU Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery in Dedman College. Assisting them were a team of SMU graduate and undergraduate students.
The researchers developed the model to overcome the problem of relying on traditional static images for the structure of P-gp. The simulation makes it possible for researchers to dock nearly any drug in the protein and see how it behaves, then test those of interest in an actual lab.
To date, the researchers have run millions of compounds through the pump and have discovered some that are promising for development into pharmaceutical drugs to battle cancer.
Strong interest in research on sexual victimization
Teen girls were less likely to report being sexually victimized after learning to assertively resist unwanted sexual overtures and after practicing resistance in a realistic virtual environment, according to three professors from the SMU Department of Psychology.
The finding was reported in Behavior Therapy. The article was one of the psychology journal’s most heavily shared and mentioned articles across social media, blogs and news outlets during 2015, the publisher announced.
The study was the work of Dedman College faculty Lorelei Simpson Rowe, associate professor and Psychology Department graduate program co-director; Ernest Jouriles, professor; and Renee McDonald, SMU associate dean for research and academic affairs.
Consumers assume bigger price equals better quality
Even when competing firms can credibly disclose the positive attributes of their products to buyers, they may not do so.
Instead, they find it more lucrative to “signal” quality through the prices they charge, typically working on the assumption that shoppers think a high price indicates high quality. The resulting high prices hurt buyers, and may create a case for mandatory disclosure of quality through public policy.
That was a finding of the research of Dedman College’s Santanu Roy, professor, Department of Economics. Roy’s article about the research was published in February in one of the blue-ribbon journals, and the oldest, in the field, The Economic Journal.
Published by the U.K.’s Royal Economic Society, The Economic Journal is one of the founding journals of modern economics. The journal issued a media briefing about the paper, “Competition, Disclosure and Signaling,” typically reserved for academic papers of broad public interest.
Chemistry research group edits special issue
Chemistry professors Dieter Cremer and Elfi Kraka, who lead SMU’s Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Group, were guest editors of a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Physical Chemistry. The issue published in March.
The Computational and Theoretical research group, called CATCO for short, is a union of computational and theoretical chemistry scientists at SMU. Their focus is research in computational chemistry, educating and training graduate and undergraduate students, disseminating and explaining results of their research to the broader public, and programming computers for the calculation of molecules and molecular aggregates.
The special issue of Physical Chemistry included 40 contributions from participants of a four-day conference in Dallas in March 2014 that was hosted by CATCO. The 25th Austin Symposium drew 108 participants from 22 different countries who, combined, presented eight plenary talks, 60 lectures and about 40 posters.
CATCO presented its research with contributions from Cremer and Kraka, as well as Marek Freindorf, research assistant professor; Wenli Zou, visiting professor; Robert Kalescky, post-doctoral fellow; and graduate students Alan Humason, Thomas Sexton, Dani Setlawan and Vytor Oliveira.
There have been more than 75 graduate students and research associates working in the CATCO group, which originally was formed at the University of Cologne, Germany, before moving to SMU in 2009.
Vertebrate paleontology recognized with proclamation
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings proclaimed Oct. 11-17, 2015 Vertebrate Paleontology week in Dallas on behalf of the Dallas City Council.
The proclamation honored the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which was jointly hosted by SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College and the Perot Museum of Science and Nature. The conference drew to Dallas some 1,200 scientists from around the world.
Making research presentations or presenting research posters were: faculty members Bonnie Jacobs, Louis Jacobs, Michael Polcyn, Neil Tabor and Dale Winkler; adjunct research assistant professor Alisa Winkler; research staff member Kurt Ferguson; post-doctoral researchers T. Scott Myers and Lauren Michael; and graduate students Matthew Clemens, John Graf, Gary Johnson and Kate Andrzejewski.
The host committee co-chairs were Anthony Fiorillo, adjunct research professor; and Louis Jacobs, professor. Committee members included Polcyn; Christopher Strganac, graduate student; Diana Vineyard, research associate; and research professor Dale Winkler.
KERA radio reporter Kat Chow filed a report from the conference, explaining to listeners the science of vertebrate paleontology, which exposes the past, present and future of life on earth by studying fossils of animals that had backbones.
SMU earthquake scientists rock scientific journal
Modelled pressure changes caused by injection and production. (Nature Communications/SMU)
Findings by the SMU earthquake team reverberated across the nation with publication of their scientific article in the prestigious British interdisciplinary journal Nature, ranked as one of the world’s most cited scientific journals.
The article reported that the SMU-led seismology team found that high volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of unusually frequent earthquakes occurring in the Dallas-Fort Worth area near the small community of Azle.
The research was the work of Dedman College faculty Matthew Hornbach, associate professor of geophysics; Heather DeShon, associate professor of geophysics; Brian Stump, SMU Albritton Chair in Earth Sciences; Chris Hayward, research staff and director geophysics research program; and Beatrice Magnani, associate professor of geophysics.
The article, “Causal factors for seismicity near Azle, Texas,” published online in late April. Already the article has been downloaded nearly 6,000 times, and heavily shared on both social and conventional media. The article has achieved a ranking of 270, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 144,972 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and 98th percentile of 626 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.
“It has a very high impact factor for an article of its age,” said Robert Gregory, professor and chair, SMU Earth Sciences Department.
The scientific article also was entered into the record for public hearings both at the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas House Subcommittee on Seismic Activity.
Researchers settle long-debated heritage question of “The Ancient One”
The skull of Kennewick Man and a sculpted bust by StudioEIS based on forensic facial reconstruction by sculptor Amanda Danning. (Credit: Brittany Tatchell)
The research of Dedman College anthropologist and Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory David Meltzer played a role in settling the long-debated and highly controversial heritage of “Kennewick Man.”
Also known as “The Ancient One,” the 8,400-year-old male skeleton discovered in Washington state has been the subject of debate for nearly two decades. Argument over his ancestry has gained him notoriety in high-profile newspaper and magazine articles, as well as making him the subject of intense scholarly study.
Officially the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996 and radiocarbon dated to 8500 years ago.
Because of his cranial shape and size he was declared not Native American but instead ‘Caucasoid,’ implying a very different population had once been in the Americas, one that was unrelated to contemporary Native Americans.
But Native Americans long have claimed Kennewick Man as theirs and had asked for repatriation of his remains for burial according to their customs.
Meltzer, collaborating with his geneticist colleague Eske Willerslev and his team at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, in June reported the results of their analysis of the DNA of Kennewick in the prestigious British journal Nature in the scientific paper “The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man.”
The results were announced at a news conference, settling the question based on first-ever DNA evidence: Kennewick Man is Native American.
The announcement garnered national and international media attention, and propelled a new push to return the skeleton to a coalition of Columbia Basin tribes. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the Bring the Ancient One Home Act of 2015 and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has offered state assistance for returning the remains to Native Tribes.
Science named the Kennewick work one of its nine runners-up in the highly esteemed magazine’s annual “Breakthrough of the Year” competition.
The research article has been viewed more than 60,000 times. It has achieved a ranking of 665, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 169,466 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and in the 94th percentile of 958 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.
In “Kennewick Man: coming to closure,” an article in the December issue of Antiquity, a journal of Cambridge University Press, Meltzer noted that the DNA merely confirmed what the tribes had known all along: “We are him, he is us,” said one tribal spokesman. Meltzer concludes: “We presented the DNA evidence. The tribal members gave it meaning.”
Prehistoric vacuum cleaner captures singular award
Paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)
Science writer Laura Geggel with Live Science named a new species of extinct marine mammal identified by two SMU paleontologists among “The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015.”
The new species, dubbed a prehistoric hoover by London’s Daily Mail online news site, was identified by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist and SMU adjunct research professor Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.
Jacobs and Fiorillo co-authored a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.
Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Their strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.
As noted by the CERN Courier — the news magazine of the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, which hosts the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest science experiment — more than 250 scientists from 30 countries presented more than 200 talks on a multitude of subjects relevant to experimental and theoretical research. SMU physicists presented at the conference.
The SMU organizing committee was led by Fred Olness, professor and chair of the SMU Department of Physics in Dedman College, who also gave opening and closing remarks at the conference. The committee consisted of other SMU faculty, including Jodi Cooley, associate professor; Simon Dalley, senior lecturer; Robert Kehoe, professor; Pavel Nadolsky, associate professor, who also presented progress on experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; Randy Scalise, senior lecturer; and Stephen Sekula, associate professor.
Sekula also organized a series of short talks for the public about physics and the big questions that face us as we try to understand our universe.
Books voice doubt over whether climate change is real and suggest global warming could be beneficial, researchers say in analysis of four science texts
Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, Calif., covered new research co-authored by SMU teaching expert Diego Román.
The new study measured how four sixth-grade science textbooks adopted for use in California frame the subject of global warming. Sixth grade is the first time California state standards indicate students will encounter climate change in their formal science curriculum.
Co-author on the article is K.C. Busch, a Ph.D. candidate in science education in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.
Studies estimate that only 3 percent of scientists who are experts in climate analysis disagree about the role of humans in the causes of climate change. And the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the evidence of 600 climate researchers in 32 countries reporting changes to Earth’s atmosphere, ice and seas — in 2013 stated “human influence on the climate system is clear.”
Yet only 54 percent of American teens believe climate change is happening, 43 percent don’t believe it’s caused by humans, and 57 percent aren’t concerned about it.
“We found that climate change is presented as a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions,” said Román, an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the SMU Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development. “Climate skeptics and climate deniers are given equal time and treated with equal weight as scientists and scientific facts — even though scientists who refute global warming total a miniscule number.”
The findings were reported in October 2015 at the 11th Conference of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA), held in Helsinki, Finland.
By Amy Quinton
Capital Public Radio
Sixth-grade is usually the first time California students are formally taught about climate change as part of their science curriculum. A recent study shows some textbooks present the subject as a debate stemming from opinions rather than science.
Stanford and Southern Methodist University researchers analyzed the language in four sixth grade science textbooks from major publishers. All were published in 2008 and adopted for use in California.
The authors found that the books contain language that frames climate change as possibly happening and that humans may or may not be causing it. Fewer than three percent of scientists refute climate change. But when attributing information to scientists, the textbooks used verbs like “believe”, “think”, or “propose.” Rarely were scientists said to be drawing conclusions from evidence or data.
“What’s happening is that if you just leave it as the general ‘some scientists agree’ teachers will have to interpret what does the ‘some’ mean, it could be 60 percent, 40 percent, so it’s up to the teacher, it’s up to the student to interpret that,” says Diego Román, with Southern Methodist University and co-author of the study.
The authors say the textbooks discussed the impact of climate change in hypothetical terms. Some suggested that global warming could be beneficial. Some states have begun adopting new national standards for science education, but the textbooks in the study are still in use.
The study was published in the journal Environmental Education Research.
Stanford research shows that some California science textbooks by major publishers portray climate change as a debate over different opinions rather than as scientific fact.
Stanford University issued a press release about new research co-authored by SMU teaching expert Diego Román.
The new study measured how four sixth-grade science textbooks adopted for use in California frame the subject of global warming. Sixth grade is the first time California state standards indicate students will encounter climate change in their formal science curriculum.
Co-author on the article is K.C. Busch, a Ph.D. candidate in science education in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.
Studies estimate that only 3 percent of scientists who are experts in climate analysis disagree about the role of humans in the causes of climate change. And the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the evidence of 600 climate researchers in 32 countries reporting changes to Earth’s atmosphere, ice and seas — in 2013 stated “human influence on the climate system is clear.”
Yet only 54 percent of American teens believe climate change is happening, 43 percent don’t believe it’s caused by humans, and 57 percent aren’t concerned about it.
“We found that climate change is presented as a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions,” said Román, an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the SMU Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development. “Climate skeptics and climate deniers are given equal time and treated with equal weight as scientists and scientific facts — even though scientists who refute global warming total a miniscule number.”
The findings were reported in October 2015 at the 11th Conference of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA), held in Helsinki, Finland.
By Clifton B. Parker
Stanford University
Major California science textbooks may be misrepresenting the science behind climate change as much weaker than it actually is, new Stanford research shows.
In doing so, the textbooks more closely reflect the public debate about climate change rather than the scientific reality, according to the paper, which was published in the Environmental Education Research journal.
“We found that through language choices, the text portrayed climate change as uncertain along several lines, such as whether climate change was happening, whether humans were causing it and what the effects will be,” said K.C. Busch, a doctoral candidate in science education at Stanford Graduate School of Education.
Busch is co-author of the article with Diego Román, assistant professor of education at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Classroom influence
Middle school students learn about climate change in large part through textbooks used in their classes, Busch and Román wrote. And what they learn during those formative years does matter, they wrote, noting a recent poll found that only 54 percent of American teens believe that climate change is actually happening, and 43 percent do not believe that it is caused by humans.
“What might be the sources of this erroneous belief among American youth? Some answers may be found in the students’ classrooms,” they wrote.
Their study measured how four sixth-grade science textbooks commonly used in California, which were published nearly 10 years ago, present the subject of climate change. The works studied were Focus on Earth Science (Prentice Hall, 2008), Focus on Earth Science (Glencoe-McGraw-Hill, 2007), Focus on Earth Science (CPO Science, 2007) and Earth Science (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 2007).
Under California state standards, sixth grade is the first time that students learn about climate change in their formal science curriculum, the researchers said.
‘Uncertain’ climate change In their research, Busch and Román analyzed each textbook’s section about climate change, comprising 279 clauses that contained 2,770 words. They found that the message communicated in the textbooks was that climate change might be happening and that humankind may or may not be causing it. Those works were unclear about the need for a human response and action against the threat of climate change, Busch and Román said.
Books voice doubt over whether climate change is real and suggest global warming could be beneficial, researchers say in analysis of four science texts
The Guardian has covered the research of SMU teaching expert Diego Román co-author of a new study on California 6th grade science textbooks and how they frame the subject of climate change.
Studies estimate that only 3 percent of scientists who are experts in climate analysis disagree about the role of humans in the causes of climate change. And the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the evidence of 600 climate researchers in 32 countries reporting changes to Earth’s atmosphere, ice and seas — in 2013 stated “human influence on the climate system is clear.”
Yet only 54 percent of American teens believe climate change is happening, 43 percent don’t believe it’s caused by humans, and 57 percent aren’t concerned about it.
The new study measured how four sixth-grade science textbooks adopted for use in California frame the subject of global warming. Sixth grade is the first time California state standards indicate students will encounter climate change in their formal science curriculum.
“We found that climate change is presented as a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions,” said Román, an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the SMU Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development. “Climate skeptics and climate deniers are given equal time and treated with equal weight as scientists and scientific facts — even though scientists who refute global warming total a miniscule number.”
Co-author on the article is K.C. Busch, a Ph.D. candidate in science education in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.
The findings were reported in October 2015 at the 11th Conference of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA), held in Helsinki, Finland.
By Oliver Milman
The Guardian
Textbooks in California public schools are misleading students on climate change, with material that expresses doubt over whether it is real and promotes the view that increasing temperatures may be beneficial, according to a Stanford University study.
An analysis of four key science texts given to sixth-grade students in California showed that the books “framed climate change as uncertain in the scientific community – both about whether it is occurring as well as about its human-causation”.
Researchers studied 2,770 words used in the books, which are given to students as their first introduction to climate science, and found that the widely accepted opinion that the climate is changing and that humans are the main cause wasn’t represented in the books.
Whereas California science textbooks on other subjects list facts, the books focused on climate change use conditional words like “could”, “might” or “may” throughout. Three of the textbooks are called Focus on Earth Science, published separately by Prentice Hall, Glencoe-McGraw-Hill and CPO Science. The fourth is called Earth Science, published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
The Prentice Hall book, first published in 2008, states: “Not all scientists agree about the causes of global warming. Some scientists think that the 0.7C degree rise in global temperatures over the past 120 years may be due in part to natural variations in climate.”
The same book stresses that climate change “could have some positive effects”.
“Farmers in some areas that are now cool could plant two crops a year instead of one,” it reads. “Places that are too cold for farming today could become farmland. However, many effects of global warming are likely to be less positive.”
Meanwhile, Earth Science has a passage that reads: “Until recently, climatic changes were connected only to natural causes. However, studies indicate that human activities may have an influence on climate change.”
The Stanford University study concludes that the language used in the textbooks is likely to promote doubt over the science of climate change and dampen any sense of urgency in dealing with the issue.
Textbooks from different major publishers give climate deniers equal weight as vast majority of climate scientists who cite scientific evidence of human-caused global warming
A new study measured how four sixth-grade science textbooks adopted for use in California frame the subject of global warming. (Diego Román, SMU)
If American teens are unsure about climate change or its cause, some school textbooks aren’t helping, says teaching expert Diego Román, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, co-author of a new study on the subject.
Studies estimate that only 3 percent of scientists who are experts in climate analysis disagree about the causes of climate change. But the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the evidence of 600 climate researchers in 32 countries reporting changes to Earth’s atmosphere, ice and seas — in 2013 stated “human influence on the climate system is clear.”
Yet only 54 percent of American teens believe climate change is happening, 43 percent don’t believe it’s caused by humans, and 57 percent aren’t concerned about it.
The new study measured how four sixth-grade science textbooks adopted for use in California frame the subject of global warming. Sixth grade is the first time California state standards indicate students will encounter climate change in their formal science curriculum.
The researchers examined different textbooks, each published in either 2007 or 2008 by a different major publisher. They found and analyzed 279 clauses containing 2,770 words discussing climate change.
“We found that climate change is presented as a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions,” said Román, an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the SMU Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development. “Climate skeptics and climate deniers are given equal time and treated with equal weight as scientists and scientific facts — even though scientists who refute global warming total a miniscule number.”
The message communicated in the four textbooks was that climate change is possibly happening, that humans may or may not be causing it, and its unclear if we need to take immediate mitigating action, the researchers found.
That representation matches the public discourse around global warming, in which previous studies have shown that media characterize climate change as unsettled science with high levels of scientific uncertainty. The researchers said only 33 percent of the U.S. public believes climate change is a serious threat.
The textbooks misrepresented, however, actual scientific discourse, which asserts climate change is an environmental problem bearing immense risk, where the human impact is clear, and where immediate action is warranted, the authors said.
“The primary purpose of science education is to represent the science accurately, but this analysis of textbooks shows this not to be the case for climate science,” they said.
Co-author on the article is K.C. Busch, a Ph.D. candidate in science education in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.
The findings were reported in October 2015 at the 11th Conference of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA), held in Helsinki, Finland.
New national standards align with scientific discourse
An extensive body of prior research has revealed students have many misconceptions about climate change, confusing it, for example, with causing acid rain and ozone depletion, as well as linking it to skin cancer, the authors note.
Now there’s an opportunity to ensure textbooks aren’t part of the problem, by altering misleading language, Román said.
States have begun adopting new national standards for science education as a result of recommendations by the U.S. Next Generation Science Standards. Those standards were developed in part by the National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and align more accurately with the scientific discourse.
“As the Next Generation Science Standards become adopted and implemented, publishers are writing new textbooks that include climate change,” the authors said. “This reworking of science textbooks provides a rare opportunity to reflect on how we can create texts that enhance science teaching and learning.” The standards were completed in April 2013.
Specifically, the textbook researchers recommend against stripping out uncertainty, since even well proven theories carry the possibility of a better theory that contradicts one or more postulates of the theory.
Instead they recommend clarifying what exactly is unknown and why.
They also recommend the inclusion of humans as agents and as the cause of climate change. That fact is scientifically supported and not controversial among scientists who study climate from a broad range of disciplines, including geology, geophysics, geography, paleoclimatology, glaciology, hydrology, ecology, evolutionary biology, environmental studies and oceanography.
Textbook language doesn’t reflect science of climate change
To study the textbooks, the researchers applied text analysis to conduct an exhaustive examination of the choices and frequency of language, including the level of uncertainty as well as the agents involved.
The textbooks did promote uncertainty when addressing the causes of climate change by using verbs such as could, may or might. And some passages created the view that global warming could even be beneficial. One textbook wrote:
“Global warming could have some positive effects. Farmers in some areas that are now cool could plant two crops a year instead of one. Places that are too cold for farming today could become farmland. However, many effects of global warming are likely to be less positive. Higher temperatures would cause water to evaporate from exposed soil, such as plowed farmland. Dry soil blows away easily. Thus, some fertile fields might become ‘dust bowls.’”
The texts emphasized abstractions, such as deforestation or the burning of wood, without referencing humans.
When attributing information to scientists, the textbooks used verbs such as believe, think or propose, but rarely were scientists said to be drawing conclusions from evidence or data. There was one occurrence when the noun evidence was used, the authors said, and then it was to suggest the notion that climate change is not new:
“Scientists have found evidence of many major ice ages throughout Earth’s geologic history.”
Less frequently used were verbs that describe scientific practices — such as “find,” “determine,” “measure,” “obtain.” The most frequently used word when scientists were present in the sentence was “think,” which introduces the idea that it was decided rather than observed or found as the result of scientific observation and research, Román said.
Language matters, particularly in California, Texas, New York
The findings suggest that textbooks should be more specific about the facts, should cite sources, and should accurately reflect the methods by which scientists reached their conclusions.
“The work of scientists should be represented accurately rather than saying that scientists think or believe, as if it’s a matter of opinion,” Román said.
As a social scientist who studies linguistics and the impact of words, Román said language matters, particularly in the textbooks in the nation’s three most populated states, California, Texas and New York, which set standards for the rest of the country.
“These textbooks discuss the impact of climate change on the Earth in hypothetical terms, in complete contradiction to scientific research findings,” he said.
The researchers note that while it’s accurate that agreement isn’t unanimous, only about 3 percent of climate scientists disagree about the causes of climate change. “Yet textbooks characterize that with the description ‘some scientists,’ so students can assume its 50-50, which is very different from saying ‘97 percent of scientists,’” he said.
Does the language reflect a compromise by publishers as they walk a fine line?
“It appears textbook publishers include discussion of climate change to appease one segment of their market — but then to appease another segment they suggest doubt, which doesn’t reflect the scientific reality,” he said.
Textbooks lack specific language to guide student action
Textbook language should reflect the language used in scientific reports, be explicit about the sources of information and should clarify human cause, with specific actions students can take to produce change, the authors recommend.
Yet none of the textbooks explicitly called students to act to mitigate climate change, the authors note.
Generic information, such as “take care of the environment” or “stop burning coal and wood,” lack specific solutions for action.
“Students think, ‘that’s not me — that’s the people in the Amazon who are burning forests,’” Román said. “Textbooks must draw the connection between specifics, such as turning off lights or driving less, to relate solutions to students and their lives.” — Margaret Allen
