Investigating how 7th grade students understand the climate system

Human activities are primary drivers of global climate change. Unfortunately, climate change is a particularly difficult concept to grasp because of its spatial scale (global, with varying local implications) and time scale (including long-term changes that span multiple lifetimes). A deep understanding of the natural world is critical for meaningful and lasting pro-environmental beliefs and behaviors. Scholars believe that recognizing the climate as a larger system demonstrates a deep and holistic grasp of the concept. Although research exists on student knowledge of the climate and on systems thinking in general, no studies have focused on how students conceptualize climate as a system specifically. This research investigated how 7th grade students in the Midwestern U.S. understood the climate as a system by exploring their systems thinking capacities in the context of climate science.

Systems thinking involves conceptualizing the bigger picture—the holistic inputs and outputs of a given process or situation—and understanding how the individual components interact with each other through multi-directional relationships. Systems thinking is valuable in the context of climate because it emphasizes the complex relationships that exist in the natural world, including positive and negative feedback loops. Specific to the climate, students should comprehend how energy and matter flow between components of the climate system over time and space, and how each component changes as energy and/or matter is exchanged.

This study was conducted in the Midwestern U.S. in 7th grade classrooms of teachers involved in an existing climate change research project that the authors were conducting. Comparison to national statistics indicated that participants in these classrooms were representative of 7th grade classrooms in the Midwest. To gather data, 42 students (12-13 years old) with limited formal climate education were given an open-ended survey. The survey included three writing prompts asking how 1) the components of the climate, 2) greenhouse gases, and 3) global warming, impacted the climate respectively. Data from the written responses were analyzed for patterns.

Overall, participants had basic knowledge about the climate, and described linear, cause-and-effect relationships among components of the climate. Respondents made relatively few connections between climate components (three or less) and failed to acknowledge how those connections could serve as feedback or be multi-directional. Although a few students discussed the transfer of energy between the sun and earth, the idea that energy or matter could be transferred between other components of the climate was absent. Results from this study aligned with previous findings in general systems thinking capacity research, such as challenges with time delays, feedback processes, and long-term consequences of systems with other immediate impacts.

The authors identified eight components of the climate system cited in student responses: atmosphere, sun, ocean, lakes and rivers, ice, life, land, and humans. Each component was further broken down into more specific descriptions used in student responses, and the frequency of each component was recorded per prompt. The most frequently expressed concept across all three prompts was that the temperature of the atmosphere will increase. When students were asked how global warming impacts the climate, over half of the students (22) mentioned the melting of ice and snow in their responses.

This study did not investigate how the students arrived at their understanding of climate systems. There are no K-6 state standards for learning about the climate, indicating that student knowledge was likely derived from informal educational media such as the internet. While this study sample is representative of 7th grade classrooms in the Midwestern U.S., the results may not reflect national or international student populations. The researchers emphasized that they did not track the student responses according to their identities, so their findings reflect the sample as a whole, but not individual students. The authors also recognized that their climate-centric experiences, perspectives, and academic background likely influenced how they interpreted and analyzed the students' responses.

The authors recommend focusing on systems thinking when teaching about the climate and other related topics, such as the water cycle and ecosystems. Systems thinking emphasizes the numerous and complex relationships that exist in the natural world. Students should grasp how energy and matter flow between components of the climate system, and how each component transforms as energy and/or matter is transferred. Current K-6 state education standards include learning about weather, but not about the greenhouse effect, global warming, or climate change. The authors recommend updating the K-6 state educational standards to include learning about the climate system and for practitioners to use multi-disciplinary curriculum to meet those standards.