loading page

Misconceptions about Climate Change and Ozone Depletion: Textbooks, Instructors and Media Influence on Ghanaian Pre-Service Teachers
  • Samuel Nyarko,
  • Heather Petcovic
Samuel Nyarko
Western Michigan University

Corresponding Author:samuelcornelius.nyarko@wmich.edu

Author Profile
Heather Petcovic
Western Michigan University
Author Profile

Abstract

The need to train a scientific workforce in order to mitigate the impacts of climate change drives an international need for climate change education, including in Ghana. How pre-service teachers understand the concept of climate change, and the often misunderstood relationship between ozone depletion and global warming, critically impacts the students they will teach and the community at large. This mixed-method, descriptive study documents pre-service teachers’ climate change and ozone depletion conceptions, and describes the sources of these conceptions. An open-ended and Likert-type questionnaire adapted from Boyes and Groves (1994) was administered to 300 participants from three colleges of education in Ghana. Thirty of the participating pre-service teachers then completed a semi-structured interview. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS, and interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and coded together with the open-ended survey questions. Results of the quantitative analysis suggest that many pre-service teachers hold the idea that climate change results from ozone holes allowing more ultraviolet solar radiation to reach the Earth. Participants understand that ozone is a layer of gas high up in the atmosphere that protects the Earth from ultraviolet radiation, but they lack an understanding of what causes ozone depletion and the consequences of depletion. Participants also identified textbooks (79.9%), instructors (63.5%) and the media/internet (62.1%) as the sources of their ozone layer and climate change knowledge. Qualitative data suggest that participants lack an understanding of the exact position of the ozone layer in the atmosphere, how ozone forms, its relation to ground level UV radiation and natural processes that lead to ozone depletion. Participants also confused climate change with the change in seasons and weather, and could not clearly articulate why they think ozone depletion is linked to climate change. This study adds to existing climate change conceptions literature, identifies new misconceptions held by pre-service teachers and identifies the sources of their conceptions, which provides further information about the learning resources available to students.