How Climate Change Beliefs among U.S. Teachers Do and Do Not Translate to Students

Research suggests climate change beliefs among science teachers mirror those of the general public, raising questions of whether teachers may be perpetuating polarization of public opinion through their classrooms. We began answering these questions with a survey of middle school science teachers (n = 24) and their students (n = 369) in North Carolina, USA. Similar to previous studies, we found that though nearly all (92.1%) of students had teachers who believe that global warming is happening, few (12%) are in classrooms with teachers who recognize that global warming is anthropogenic. We found that teacher beliefs that global warming is happening and student climate change knowledge were the strongest predictors of student belief that global warming is happening and human caused. Conversely, teacher beliefs about human causes of global warming had no relationship with student beliefs, suggesting that science teachers’ low recognition of the causes of global warming is not necessarily problematic in terms of student outcomes. These findings may be explained by previous research suggesting adolescents interpret scientific information relatively independently of ideological constraints. Though teacher polarization may be problematic in its own right, it appears that as long as climate change information is presented in classrooms, students deduce anthropogenic causes.