Earth, Energy & Environment

Earth, Energy & Environment

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Students' Conceptual Understanding and Images on Climate Change

Volume: 46  ,  Issue: 1 , February    Published Date: 22 February 2020
Publisher Name: IJRP
Views: 953  ,  Download: 1052

Authors

# Author Name
1 Brando C. Palomar
2 Rosyl S. Ingcol

Abstract

The issue of climate change has a real impact in the students. There are noted unusual changes in rainfall patterns, increase the number of strong tropical cyclones and occurrence of extreme weather conditions. Accordingly, the students need to have a conceptual understanding and images on the different concepts concerning climate change to engage students in explaining a phenomena using their context and possibly they can suggest possible solutions to the problem. Also, it is critical to comprehend students’ visual representations or images since it reflects their explanations, translations, and mental understanding of their learning. The image that students can generate is also a reflection of students’ understanding. On the other hand, the developed instrument Explain and Illustrate Task Instrument (EITI) was utilized in this study through survey-method to two hundred twenty-four (224) high school students to find out students’ conceptual understanding and images on climate change. The results were analyzed based on students’ responses and drawings in the EITI with the corresponding rubrics. Hence, results revealed students’ understanding described as partial understanding of the causes of the increase of temperature while the concepts on rainfall, cyclone, drought, extreme meteorological condition and greenhouse gases concepts were described as no understanding.  However, students demonstrated specific misconceptions about the concepts of the effects of rainfall, cyclone, and drought while no understanding of the concepts temperature, extreme meteorological condition, and greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, the students' images on the selected concepts related to climate change were described as depiction. But there is a strong significant relationship that exists between students’ conceptual understanding of the causes, effects and images of the concepts of cyclone, extreme meteorological condition and greenhouse gas. Yet, a very weak significant relationship exists between students’ conceptual understanding on the causes and images of the concepts of temperature, rainfall, and drought.

Keywords

  • students' understanding
  • students' images
  • climate change