Supporting secondary students’ climate change learning and motivation using novel data and data visualizations

Abstract

National science standards at the secondary level currently recommend that students make sense of data constituting evidence of human-induced climate change; yet, secondary students continue to hold serious misconceptions about the topic. Thus, there is a need to create learning contexts that support climate change understanding, motivation, and data literacy for secondary students. The purpose of this preregistered study was to test an online intervention that presents novel climate change data and uses number-line data visualizations to support climate-change learning and motivation for secondary students. To this end, I conducted an experimental online study with 248 secondary students randomly assigned to either engage with the intervention, the intervention supplemented with number-line visualization feedback, or a control group. Findings revealed that the game conditions improved climate change knowledge and situated interest compared with the control, and knowledge effects were stronger among learners who expressed more openness to reason with belief-discrepant evidence. There were no significant effects of supplementing the game with number line feedback. Exploratory path analyses revealed that there were also indirect effects of the intervention on climate change learning, plausibility, and climate efficacy through epistemic emotions and motivation. Namely, the intervention was linked to these outcomes by decreasing boredom which predicted utility value and science interest. The study contributes to conversations around the role of data-literacy in supporting motivation for science learning and showcases an intervention that can be easily shared online.