The Disconnection Between Educator Perceptions and Audience Expectations of Climate Change Education

Education staff at zoos, aquariums, nature centers, museums, parks, and other informal learning venues regularly face the complexity of communicating about climate change as they promote understanding and action among their visitors. Visitors enter these venues with prior experiences, understanding, and attitudes that drive what they expect, notice, and ultimately take away. These factors also influence how and what informal educators communicate with their visitors. Beyond general theories, little is known about the educator-visitor relationship in the context of climate change communication. This study compared informal educators' perceptions and visitors' expectations with regard to climate change education programming.

Adults who visited at least one of 10 informal education institutions in two mid-Atlantic states completed an online survey focused on their attitudes about climate change and related education efforts. Of the 530 participating adult visitors, most were teachers or school contacts, the median age was 52, about two-thirds were female, the majority were white or non-Hispanic/Latino, and many had advanced degrees; they reported being repeat visits to the institutions that distributed the survey. Sixty education staff members working at informal education institutions in these same two Mid-Atlantic states completed a different, but complementary, online survey on their climate change education programming. The educators averaged 13 years of teaching and interpretive experience; they were not necessarily educators at the institutions that posted the visitor questionnaire. Researchers analyzed the survey responses looking for trends in responses from the two questionnaires.

The study findings point to two disconnections. First, most respondents to the educator survey indicated a belief that their institutions should offer climate change 28 education, viewing it as aligned with their institutional mission and creating no tension with funders or other conservation messages. Additionally, all of the educators reported being alarmed or concerned about climate change and generally believed that their visitors were interested in this topic. Despite strong beliefs and perceived lack of barriers, however, they described only limited climate change-related programming at their institutions. These findings align with other similar studies, which suggest minimal amounts of climate change education and interpretation in such settings. This recognition of urgency, yet paucity of education, may be driven in part by lack of training and resources (as highlighted by surveyed educators) as well as the topic's complexity.

Second, available climate change-related programming primarily targets K–12 students and teachers, with a topical focus on addressing misconceptions while providing cursory information. Visitor respondents, by contrast, indicated that their interest in and motivation to learn about climate change comes from a leisure perspective, rather than a professional perspective. (That is, most visitors are not teachers and, as such, are not seeking K–12-related professional development and/or teaching related materials.) Furthermore, in contrast to educators' perspectives, visitors indicate general acceptance of human-driven climate change—a finding that aligns with other general-public surveys related to climate change. Visitors also indicate a desire for programming focused on concrete ways they might respond to this environmental crisis, a finding that also aligns with other climate change related polls.

Visitor and educator perceptions align in their agreement that informal learning institutions are appropriate and trusted venues for climate-change education. The two disconnections, however, suggest that current programming efforts are based on inaccurate perceptions of visitors' interests and, therefore, may not advance visitors' understanding of and action in response to climate change.