Download PPT - Environmental Literacy

Public Trust for Science and Public Decisions
about Climate Change
Comments for the Symposium on Climate Change
Education: Policies and Implications
Annual meeting of the National Association for Research in
Science Teaching
Charles W. Anderson, Michigan State University
April 9, 2013
Kahan on Science Literacy and
Climate Change Skepticism
Daniel Kahan, et al: The polarizing impact of science
literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change
risks. Nature Climate Change, May 27, 2012
• Science comprehension thesis (SCT): Public
needs to understand science methods and
findings to change perceptions of climate change.
• Cultural cognition thesis (CCT): individuals tend to
form perceptions of societal risks that cohere with
values characteristic of groups with which they
identify.
How much risk do you believe climate change
poses to human health, safety or prosperity?
How much risk do you believe climate change
poses to human health, safety or prosperity?
Six Americas: Questions about
Trust in Sources of Knowledge
How much do you trust or distrust the
following source of information about global
warming? Responses for “scientists”
Question
What’s the role of science
education in our national dialogue
about climate change?
Practices of Environmentally Literate
Citizens
Discourses: Communities of practice, identities, values, funds of
knowledge
Explaining and Predicting
(Accounts)
What is happening in this
situation?
What are the likely
consequences of different
courses of action?
Investigating (Inquiry)
What is the problem?
Who do I trust?
What’s the evidence?
Deciding
What will I do?
Kahan’s Claim
• Kahan: Knowing more about scientific
accounts reinforces rather than changes
people’s positions on climate change.
• Similar to evolution-creation debate:
People who know more facts tend to be
more firmly entrenched on one side or the
other.
• Is there another side to this story?
Public Debates on
Socioscientific Issues
• Irresolvable
– Evolution
– Abortion
• Largely resolved
– Smoking and lung cancer
– Automobile safety
• Which way will they go?
– Vaccination
– Climate change
More Questions
• Why does the cultural cognition thesis
seem to explain the continuing
irreconcilable differences around evolution
and abortion, but not how other
differences come to be resolved?
• Which kind of differences are the
differences about climate change?
Practices of Environmentally Literate
Citizens
Discourses: Communities of practice, identities, values, funds of
knowledge
Explaining and Predicting
(Accounts)
What is happening in this
situation?
What are the likely
consequences of different
courses of action?
Investigating (Inquiry)
What is the problem?
Who do I trust?
What’s the evidence?
Deciding
What will I do?
Alternate Approaches to Inquiry
Tasks in Clinical Interviews
Who are you going to believe, me or your own
eyes? Chico Marx in Duck Soup.
•Scientific inquiry: Believe data to the limits of
accuracy and precision. Your own eyes may
not be accurate or precise.
•Naïve inquiry: Believe your own eyes; data
may not add much to the totality of your
experience.
•School science: If your own eyes see an
incorrect result, you did it wrong.
Inquiry and Learning from
Experience
• We all learn both from our experiences in the
material world and from other people—our
cultural heritage (like school science)
• Scientific subcultures (and other subcultures)
have their own particular ways of selecting
and construing experiences to pay attention
to
• Media play a mixed role—disseminating both
cultural viewpoints and vicarious experience
• It’s hard for any subculture to keep telling
people not to believe their own eyes
Probable Future for Climate
Change Skepticism
• Accumulating personal experience
• Changing media coverage
– Vicarious experience: Extreme events: Hurricane Sandy,
Midwestern drought, record high and low temperatures
– Climate change narratives accompanying extreme events
• In the long run the trajectory will be like smoking
• “The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs.
In the long run we are all dead.” John Maynard
Keynes
• More importantly, we will to a lot of environmental
damage while we are waiting for “the long run”
Scientific Inquiry: Managing
Uncertainty
The ability to understand, manage,
and reduce uncertainty is one
valuable thing that we can give our
students through scientific inquiry.
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and
Slow: The Psychology of False Certainty
Metaphor of our minds working with a dual
processing system:
• System 1 (thinking fast) instantly and
subconsciously fits what we see and know
about the world into perceptions and
narrative frameworks.
• System 2 (thinking slow) allows us with
conscious effort to question and modify the
perceptions and narratives that System 1
gives to us.
Advantages of System 1
• Enables quick,
decisive action based
on incomplete data
• Enables us to persist
when the odds are
against us
Problems with System 1
• Sometimes wrong
• Is just as certain
when we are wrong
as when we are right
Characteristics of System 1
1. WYSIATI: What You See Is All There Is
2. Substituting an easier question
3. Source amnesia.
4. Confirmation bias
5. Stories, not statistics
6. False certainty
System 1 Produces Unknown
Unknowns
"Reports that say that something hasn't
happened are always interesting to me,
because as we know, there are known
knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns;
that is to say we know there are some things
we do not know. But there are also unknown
unknowns -- the ones we don't know we
don't know." Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld on February 12, 2002
System 2 Reduces Unknown
Unknowns
• System 1 always processes first,
producing perceptions and stories that are
sometimes wrong but always subjectively
certain
• System 2 sometimes adds doubts and
reconsider
• Note temporal order: Certainty precedes
doubt
Scientific Inquiry: Giving System 2
a Full Voice
Scientific inquiry is a collective process that puts
System 2 in charge
• Assume all knowledge claims are initially uncertain
• Study and quantify uncertainty (error bars,
inferential statistics)
• Communicate about uncertainty (e.g., by how
sources are cited)
• Follow strategies to reduce uncertainty
• Giving authority to arguments from evidence rather than
individual people
• Commitment to rigor in research methods
• Collective validation through consensus of scientific
communities (peer review)
• Identifying sources for knowledge claims
Policy Implications
• School science and cultural cognition have
some important similarities: Both privilege
trusted authority (but different trusted authorities)
over personal experience OR scientific data
• This puts school science in a weak position to
argue for belief that climate change is occurring:
“My authority is better than your authority.”
• Learning about scientific inquiry can help IF it
helps students become aware of “unknown
unknowns” and strategies for identifying and
reducing uncertainty.
Coming back to Accounts….
Discourses: Communities of practice, identities, values, funds of
knowledge
Explaining and Predicting
(Accounts)
What is happening in this
situation?
What are the likely
consequences of different
courses of action?
Investigating (Inquiry)
What is the problem?
Who do I trust?
What’s the evidence?
Deciding
What will I do?
America’s Climate Choices: Need
for Action
Climate change is occurring, is very likely
caused by human activities, and poses
significant risks for a broad range of human and
natural systems. Each additional ton of
greenhouse gases emitted commits us to
further change and greater risks. In the
judgment of the Committee on America’s
Climate Choices, the environmental, economic,
and humanitarian risks of climate change
indicate a pressing need for substantial action
to limit the magnitude of climate change and to
prepare to adapt to its impacts. (p.1)
Iterative Risk Management as a
Framework
… a valuable framework for making
decisions about America’s Climate Choices
is iterative risk management. This refers to
an ongoing process of identifying risks and
response options, advancing a portfolio of
actions that emphasize risk reduction and
are robust across a range of possible
futures, and revising America's Climate
Choices responses over time to take
advantage of new knowledge. (p.1)
Essential Elements of an Effective
National Response
• Enacting policies and programs that reduce risk by limiting the
causes of climate change and reducing vulnerability to its
impacts;
• Investing in research and development efforts that increase
knowledge and improve the number and effectiveness of
response options available;
• Developing institutions and processes that ensure
pertinent information is collected and that link scientific
and technical analysis with public deliberation and
decision making;
• Periodically evaluating how response efforts are progressing
and updating response goals and strategies in light of new
information and understanding. (p.1)
Education Challenges from
America’s Climate Choices
• Preparing leaders, scientists, and workers
with the expertise to plan and enact
strategies for mitigation and adaptation
within a framework of iterative risk
management
• Preparing all citizens to understand the
risks of both action and inaction and to
engage in effective deliberation about
America’s climate choices
Conclusions
• We need scientific inquiry as a tool kit for
managing uncertainty
• We need scientific accounts to help us
project the future and enact iterative risk
management.
• We need science education to help our
citizens master these tools.