Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Climate literacy'

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University 2015.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This survey research employed a criterion-referenced multiple-choice questionnaire to collect data from 194 FET Geography teachers in the Western Cape province to assess their level of literacy in both climate change science and climate change pedagogy, and to determine the influence of gender, age, qualification, specialisation, experience, grade mostly taught, their experience in providing instruction on climate change and the location of their school. Aspects of climate change science assessed include: climate processes and probable causes of climate change; climate change impacts; and climate change responses. Aspects of climate change pedagogy assessed include: the aims and significance of climate change education; and constructivist teaching principles and practice. The collected data was analysed using percentage frequencies to determine the teachers‟ level of literacy in climate change science and climate change pedagogy; the Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to determine the influence of the mediating variables on climate change science literacy and climate change pedagogical literacy, respectively. The results indicate that Geography teachers in the Western Cape Province demonstrated „High‟ literacy in climate change science and „Low‟ literacy in climate change pedagogy. Factors such as school location, gender, age and teaching experience were found to have a significant influence on climate change science literacy; whereas qualification, specialisation, grade mostly taught and experience in providing instruction on climate change did not. Conversely, teaching experience and grade mostly taught had a significant influence on climate change pedagogical literacy; whereas school location, gender, age, qualification, specialisation and experience in providing instruction on climate change did not. Based on these findings, it is recommended that professional development interventions in climate change pedagogy are required in order to expose Geography teachers to the aims and significance of climate change education and methods of facilitating problem-based, learner-centred instruction on climate change.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie opnamenavorsing het gebruik gemaak van ‟n kriteriumverwysing- meerkeusige vraelys om data by 194 VOO Aardrykskunde onderwysers in die Wes-Kaap provinsie te versamel om hulle vlak van geletterdheid in beide die wetenskap en pedagogie van klimaatsverandering te bepaal en om die invloed van geslag, ouderdom, kwalifikasie, spesialisasie, ervaring, graad wat die meeste onderrig is, hulle ervaring van onderrig oor klimaatsverandering en die ligging van hulle skool te bepaal. Aspekte van klimaatsverandering wat geassesseer is, het klimaatsprosesse en moontlike oorsake van klimaatsverandering, impakte van klimaatsverandering en reaksies op klimaatsverandering ingesluit. Aspekte van die pedagogie van klimaatsverandering wat geassesseer is, het die doelwitte en betekenisvolheid van opvoeding oor klimaatsverandering en konstruktivistiese onderrigbeginsels en -praktyk ingesluit. Die versamelde data is met persentasiefrekwensie geanaliseer om die onderwysers se vlak van geletterdheid in die wetenskap en pedagogie van klimaatsverandering te bepaal; die Mann-Whitney en Kruskal-Wallis toetse is gebruik om die invloed van bemiddelende veranderlikes op geletterdheid met betrekking tot die wetenskap en pedagogie van klimaatsverandering onderskeidelik te bepaal. Die resultate dui aan dat Aardrykskunde-onderwysers in die Wes-Kaap „Hoë‟ geletterdheid in die wetenskap van klimaatsverandering en „Lae‟ geletterdheid in die pedagogie van klimaatsverandering getoon het. Faktore soos ligging van die skool, geslag, ouderdom en onderrigervaring het ‟n betekenisvolle invloed op geletterdheid in klimaatsverandering gehad, terwyl kwalifikasie, spesialisasie, graad wat die meeste onderrig is en ervaring van onderrig oor klimaatsverandering nie so ‟n invloed gehad het nie. In teenstelling het onderrigervaring en graad wat die meeste onderrig is, ‟n betekenisvolle invloed op geletterdheid in klimaatsverandering gehad, terwyl ligging van die skool, geslag, ouderdom, kwalifikasie, spesialisasie en ervaring van onderrig oor klimaatsverandering nie so ‟n invloed gehad het nie. Op grond van hierdie resultate kan gesê word dat professionele ontwikkelingsingrypings in die pedagogie van klimaatsverandering nodig is om Aardrykskunde-onderwysers bloot te stel aan die doelwitte en belangrikheid van onderwys oor klimaatsverandering en metodes om probleemgebaseerde, leerdergesentreerde onderrig oor klimaatsverandering te fasiliteer.

Climate change is a persistent and growing threat to the well-being of both humans and nonhuman species, and little action has been taken to halt it. It is imperative the public gains a sufficient level of climate change literacy to be able to take action to mitigate climate change. Theatrical performance offers audiences diverse ways to engage with climate change through both improving scientific understanding and connecting with climate change’s effects through live, embodied performance. Employing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s tenets of climate literacy, I examine how climate change plays (specifically Steve Waters’ The Contingency Plan, Chantal Bilodeau’s Sila, Duncan Macmillan and Chris Rapley’s 2071, and E.M. Lewis’s Magellanica) can cultivate improved climate change literacy in audiences. Halting climate change will require not just climate science knowledge but a shift in values toward an ecologically sustainable future, and theatre offers vital space and tools for reimagining that future.

This research paper forms the first half of this thesis exploring how the introduction of Secondary SEAL (SSEAL) has impacted on pupils’ emotional literacy and resiliency levels (as measured by the NfER Emotional Literacy Questionnaire and the Resiliency Scales For Children and Adolescents – A profile of personal strengths (RSCA) Questionnaire). The aim of Paper 1 is to explore whether the SSEAL programme is associated with relevant pupil skills, to show resilience with a difficult situation; be more in tune with their emotions and the emotions of those around them. The research questions for paper 1 were: Question 1: What are the associations between the introduction of SSEAL into a secondary school and Year 8 pupils' emotional literacy levels? Question 2: What are the associations between the introduction of SSEAL into a secondary school and Year 8 pupils' resilience levels? Question 3: How has the introduction of SEAL had an impact on pupils’ emotional literacy and resiliency levels since the introduction of SEAL into the school? Question 4: To what extent are there any gender differences from students’ responses on the emotional literacy and resiliency questionnaires? This paper adopted a pragmatic epistemological stance and used a mixed methods design, where quantitative data was gathered from teachers and Year 8 pupils using both the NfER Emotional Literacy Questionnaire and the Resiliency Scales for Children and Adolescents: A Profile of Personal Strengths Questionnaire. The quantitative data was triangulated with the semi-­‐structured interviews from Paper 2 to inform the results of research question 3. The sample was derived from three secondary schools in the East Midlands. There were 64 pupils (31 males and 33 females) and three form tutors who completed the questionnaires. The qualitative data was gained from 6 teachers from the three secondary schools in the East Midlands using a semi-­‐structured interview. The results gained from paper 1 found that there was not a significant result for pupils’ emotional literacy scores between 2009 and 2010 for schools X, Y and Z. There was a significant ANOVA result for the teacher’s version of the emotional literacy questionnaire. The results gained from the resiliency scores showed that School Y had a significant result for pupils’ resourcefulness scores and School Z had a significant result for pupils’ vulnerability scores. The ANOVA results showed that there was a significant result for both resourcefulness and vulnerability from the results gained in 2011. The correlational data for school X, Y and Z found an association between pupils’ emotional literacy and resilience scores. The data indicated that males scored lower on the emotional literacy and resiliency questionnaires to females. A significant result was found for male scores on the Vulnerability questionnaire between 2010-­‐2011 and there was a significant difference between males and females on the vulnerability questionnaire. In conclusion, it can be suggested that SEAL had not significantly had an impact on pupils’ emotional literacy, but had impacted on pupils’ resilience scores. Moreover, the qualitative data indicated that SEAL has made pupils more aware of their social and emotional needs and the emotional needs of others. Moreover, the results indicate that staff had become more aware of the social and emotional needs of their pupils. However, it can be concluded that the introduction of SEAL has not necessarily increased pupils’ emotional literacy or resilience and other factors including, the Key Stage Three curriculum and the pastoral system has had an impact on these. From these results, the role of the EP could be to support schools in applying appropriate social and emotional assessment tools and interventions and support staff to recognise a pupil with high/low emotional literacy and resilience and the most appropriate way to support these. The aim of Paper 2 was to focus on the processes involved within a secondary school when introducing SEAL and whether SEAL had an impact on school climate as perceived by school staff. The research questions for this study were: Question 1: How has SEAL been implemented into the school’s curriculum and pastoral system? Question 2: What are staff perceptions of school climate since the introduction of SEAL? Question 3: What are the most effective sources of analysis to explore how effectively SEAL has been introduced into a secondary school (including OFSTED reports, Questionnaires and semi-­‐structured interviews) and its impact on school climate? A pragmatic epistemological approach was adopted for this research study where a mixed design was implemented. Semi-­‐structured interviews were carried out with six teachers, (two members of staff from the three secondary schools). A school climate questionnaire (OCDQ-­‐RM) was administered to 42 teaching staff. The results from both the semi-­‐structured interviews and the OCDQ-­‐RM questionnaire were triangulated. A thematic analysis was completed on the semi-­‐structured interviews adopting Braun & Clarke’s (2003) model. The results indicate that the three schools implemented SEAL into their curriculum quite differently. School X implemented SEAL into all subjects using their curriculum competencies; School Y introduced SEAL into their creative arts curriculum and School Z introduced it into their Humanities and English curriculum. Each school introduced SEAL into their pastoral system in different ways – School X had an activity week, which involved the local community and completed CASE during tutor times and had SEAL-­‐type themes in assemblies. School Y explicitly taught two of the SEAL units per term through the PSHE curriculum, and during tutor time and as part of the assemblies the students engaged in ‘Thought of the week’. Students were involved in an activity day about ‘Being Healthy’. The school had training staff to use Circle of Friends with students. School Z used SEAL type themes as part of their Global-­‐Eye and Thinking Through Schools Programme, which were delivered during assemblies and in tutor time. The school had also trained Teaching Assistants to use the Circle of Friends programme with pupils. The results gained from the OCDQ-­‐RM indicate that school Z had a closed climate, school X had an engaged climate and school Y had an open climate. The conclusions from this study suggest that SEAL had not improved school climate (as perceived by school staff) although it had made staff more aware of what school climate is and had improved relationships between students and staff. Finally, the role of the educational psychologist is important when supporting a school when implementing a whole school social and emotional learning programme and when staff perceive the school climate as being Closed or Disengaged.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the factors affecting mathematical literacy of 15-year-old students in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) across different cultural settings. The present study was conducted across three countries. These countries are Brazil, Japan and Norway. The countries were selected on the basis of their rankings in PISA 2000 study. Japan represented a high performing country with an average score of 557, Norway represented an average performing country with an average score of 499, and Brazil represented a low performing country with an average score of 334. The study explored how mathematical literacy is stimulated by predictors related to the students, the families and the school. A separate factor analysis was carried out for each questionnaire such as student questionnaire and cross curricular competencies questionnaire within the data of each country. Since the results of factor analyses of three countries were parallel, the observed variables representing the latent variables were selected from the student questionnaire and cross curricular competencies questionnaire administered in PISA 2000 in order to be used in the structural equation modeling. The included factors affecting mathematical literacy in PISA 2000 are attitudes towards reading, student-teacher relations, climate, communication with parents, usage of technology and facilities, attitudes towards mathematics and reading literacy. The proposed model was tested using structural equation modeling across three different cultures with different performance levels in PISA 2000. The findings of the study show that the latent independent variable having the strongest effect on mathematical literacy is the usage of technology and facilities in Brazil, communication with parents in Japan and attitudes towards reading in Norway. Moreover, the results were as follows: (1) Reading literacy significantly and positively influences mathematical literacy in all three countries. (2) There is a reciprocal relationship between the attitudes towards mathematics and mathematical literacy. In Brazil, the influence of attitudes towards mathematics on mathematical literacy is higher. However, the influence of mathematical literacy on attitudes towards mathematics is higher in Norway. (3) The attitudes towards reading have a negative direct effect and a positive indirect effect on mathematical literacy. (4) The student-teacher relations have a positive effect on mathematical literacy in Japan and Norway. But, in Brazil, this effect is negative. (5) The student-related factors affecting school climate are significantly and positively related to mathematical literacy in Brazil. On the other hand, the effect of climate on mathematical literacy is negative in Japan and non-significant in Norway. (6) Communication with parents significantly and positively influences the mathematical literacy in all three countries. (7) The usage of technology and facilities significantly and positively affects mathematical literacy in Brazil. However, this effect is negative in Japan and non-significant in Norway.

Inledning: Matsvinn bidrar till en negativ klimatpåverkan och svinnet av animalier, speciellt nötkött, genererar stora mängder onödigt växthusgasutsläpp per kilo. Att minska svinnet av animalier bör prioriteras för att snabbt minska växthusgasutsläppen. Syfte: Syftet är att undersöka konsumenters inställning till att köpa nötkött som frysts ner dagen innan bäst före datum har passerat i ett försök att minska köttsvinn. Vidare studeras om matrelaterade kunskaper, färdigheter och beteenden, sammanfattade i begreppet food literacy, påverkar inställningen till att köpa nötkött som frysts ner dagen innan bäst före datum har passerat. Material och metod: Data samlades in via en webbenkät och en fokusgrupp. Databearbetning och analys av den kvantitativa datan utfördes i Excel där chitvå-test användes som statistisk metod. Den kvalitativa datan transkriberades och analyserades med hjälp av kodning och tematisering. Resultat: Den kvantitativa datan visar en positiv trend där majoriteten av konsumenterna kan tänka sig att köpa nötkött som frysts ner dagen innan bäst före datum har passerat. Resultaten visar att graden av food literacy ökar med åldern. Faktorer som visar sig vara betydelsefulla för konsumenter är pris, kvalitet, förpackning och ursprung. Slutsats: Majoriteten av respondenterna oavsett ålder är positivt inställda till att köpa nötkött som frysts ner dagen innan bäst före datum har passerat. Resultatet pekar åt att andelen respondenter med hög grad av food literacy ökar med ålder och faktorer som styr vid inköp av nötkött som frysts ner dagen innan bäst före datum har passerat är pris, kvalitet, förpackning och ursprung.
Introduction: food waste contributes to a negative climate impact and the meat wastage, especially beef, generates large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram beef. Reducing animal wastage should be a priority in order to quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Aim: The aim is to investigate consumers' attitude to buying beef that has been frozen the day before the best before date has passed in an attempt to reduce the meat wastage. The study also investigates whether food-related knowledge, skills and behaviors, summarized in the concept food literacy, affect the attitude of buying beef that has been frozen the day before the best before date has passed. Method: Data was collected using a web-questionnaire and a focus group. The processing and the analysis of the data was performed in Excel using Chi-Square tests. The qualitative data was transcribed and analyzed using coding and thematization. Results: The quantitative data shows a positive trend where the majority of consumers can see themselves buying beef that has been frozen the day before the best before date has passed. The results show that the level of food literacy increases with age. Factors that prove to be important for consumers are price, quality, packaging and origin. Conclusion: The majority of respondents regardless of age are positive about buying beef. The result indicates that the proportion of respondents with a high degree of food literacy increases with age and factors that prove to be important for consumers when buying beef are price, quality, packaging and origin.

This study was designed to examine the benefits of positive school climate and to measure the perceptions of school climate for intermediate grades in a Northeast Tennessee School district. An online school climate survey was used to collect responses from participants in intermediate grades and focused on the 3 major components of school climate: school engagement, school environment, and school safety. Data were collected for 2 consecutive years in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018. Response totals included 1,955 student responses, 116 teacher responses, and 210 parent responses that were analyzed and used for this study. Of the student totals, some students that were in 5th grade in 2016-2017 may have completed the survey again as 6th graders in 2017-2018. Findings indicated that there were no significant difference in the perceptions of students, parents, and teachers in school climate over a 2-year span for this district. Research indicates there are multiple benefits to a positive school climate, including higher academic achievement, lower chronic absenteeism, and a decrease in discipline referrals.

 

Les jeunes pré-adolescents qui fréquentent les écoles secondaires du premier cycle vivent une période délicate : ils ne sont pas simplement occupés à affronter un parcours scolaire inédit et plus complexe, mais ils sont aussi occupés dans leurs tâches quotidiennes à former et négocier leurs identités et leurs rôles dans les différents groupes des pairs. Ce complexe scénario est élargi par leurs premières expériences, loin des yeux des adultes, avec les technologies : outils qui vont se superposer à l’univers relationnel qu’on vient de décrire, une dimension existentielle qui ouvre des nouvelles formes de communications médiées par les contextes numériques. Est-ce qu’il y a une influence des technologies sur les dynamiques relationnelles qui ont lieu entre élèves et aussi entre élèves et enseignants ? De quel rapport s’agit-il ? Quelles dynamiques sont impliquées ? Quel type de technologie est en jeu ? Est-ce qu’il existe un rapport d’influence entre les relations médiées par les contextes numériques et le climat social d’un environnement d’apprentissage ? Quel type de rapport ? Jusqu’à quel point les élèves dépendent des relations médiées par les enivrements numériques pour satisfaire leurs besoins relationnels ? Quelle perception ont les élèves et les enseignants des dynamiques relationnelles médiées par les contextes numériques ? Et quel rôle accordent-ils à l’école dans cette problématique ? Pour fournir une réponse à ces questions, la recherche présente une phénoménologie de le témoignage de 21 enseignants et 365 garçons et filles qui font partie des 4 établissements scolaires, dans deux villes en deux différents pays : France et Italie
Young pre-teens attending junior high schools are going through a very delicate period: they are not just engaged in a new and more complex school career, but they are also engaged in their daily tasks of training and negotiating their identities and their roles in the different peer groups. This complex scenario is expanded by their first experiences, far from the eyes of adults, with technologies: tools that add, on the relational universe just described, an existential dimension that opens up new forms of communication mediated by digital contexts. Do technologies have an influence between on the relational dynamics that take place between students and their peers and between students and teachers? Which kind of influence? What dynamics are involved? What kind of technology is at stake? Is there a relationship of influence between the relationships mediated by the digital contexts and the social climate of a learning environment? What kind of influence? How much do students rely on digital-enriched relationships to satisfy their relationship needs? What perception do students and teachers have of relational dynamics mediated by digital contexts? And what role do they give to the school in this problem? To try to provide an answer to these questions, the research presents a phenomenology of the witness of 21 teachers and 365 boys and girls who are part of 4 schools, in two cities and in two different countries: France and Italy

This thesis contributes to knowledge about how Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as educational online platforms can be utilized in achieving the purposes of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Starting out from a view that, in the face of global challenges every individual is an important actor with agency to drive for necessary social changes, the overall ambition of this thesis is to investigate the role of MOOCs, as a specific form of online learning, in empowering and enabling learners to acquire the competences needed to take responsible actions and informed decisions in a rapidly changing, interdependent and unequal world. More specifically, this thesis aims at providing a deeper insight into the question of whether the pedagogic approaches used in ESD (learner-centered, action-oriented and transformative learning) and the learning processes that they promote, can be incorporated in the MOOC environment. This issue holds importance due to the global and intergenerational character of ESD where providing access to training and learning for sustainable development for all is vital. In this respect, MOOCs have been envisioned as revolutionary in the provision of access to education to a wider audience. Nevertheless, the “massive” part of MOOCs could pose a challenge in connection to ESD, due to the fact that ESD is not easily generalized and aims at upholding local relevance. Therefore, this thesis also looks into the question of the implications posed by scale and the issue of scalability when investigating how MOOCs can enable the application of ESD pedagogic approaches, thus also contributing to the achievement of the purposes and learning objectives of ESD and Climate Change Education as its constituent part. Utilizing a case study methodology, the MOOC in Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University is chosen as a case example of the MOOC learning environment and learning circumstances. By conducting a content analysis of the MOOC materials as presented on the online platform, and developing an analytical framework based on the ESD pedagogic approaches, this thesis reaches the conclusion that some aspects of the ESD approaches benefit from the networked environment and large-scale participation in the MOOC environment, while the incorporation of others is more challenging and asks for further research and improvement of the MOOC learning environment in order for them to provide for the optimal learning circumstances and outcomes in connection to ESD.

This thesis is a work of creative practice-led research comprising two components. The first component is a speculative thriller novel, entitled Diamond Eyes. (Contracted for publication in 2009 by Harper Collins: Voyager as the first in a trilogy, under the name AA Bell.) The second component is an exegesis exploring the notion of re-visioning a novel. Re-visioning, not to be confused with revision, refers to advance editing strategies required when the original vision of a novel changes during development.

As climate change in the Anthropocene rises to prominence in public discussions, literature and translation that engage with ecological issues are also gaining attention in Anglophone academia and the book market. This dissertation seeks to analyse Taiwanese author Wu Ming-yi 吳明益’s most recent short story collection, Where Rain Falls Amiss (Kuyu zhi di 苦雨之地, 2019), and discuss my translation process of one of the short stories, Here Lie Clouds, Two Thousand Metres Up (Yun zai liangqianmi 雲在兩千米). Drawing on ecocriticism and posthumanist theories, my analysis and interpretation of Where Rain Falls Amiss illustrates how it explores the interconnection between human beings, nonhuman organisms, physical landscapes, and technological environments, in a way that incorporates local environmental history and indigenous traditions as well as influences from Anglophone environmental writing and scientific research. Turning to the translation, I contextualised my understanding by interviewing the author Wu Ming-yi and the translator Darryl Sterk, who has translated two books by Wu into English, and I drew inspiration from ecotranslation theories and techniques advocated by Michael Cronin and Darryl Sterk. The commentary presents detailed examples to discuss how I approached the translation of bionyms and descriptions of flora and fauna as well as culture-specific content such as indigenous beliefs and localisms. Overall, I sought to negotiate a balance between terminological precision, cultural specificity, and textual fluency on a case-by-case basis, hoping to produce a translated text that is both instructive and engaging for the target reader. My translation and the source text of Here Lie Clouds, Two Thousand Metres Up can be found at the end of the dissertation.

碩士
長榮大學
資訊管理學系(所)
104
The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed that global warming increases the frequency of extreme weather and disasters. With increasing importance on the issue of climate change, it is necessary for public to enhance their knowledge and clear any misconceptions on climate change. Previous studies that construct a framework of climate literacy indicators not only consumes time and labor, but also has a very complicated research process. This study will construct a framework of climate literacy indicators from media that people have contact with most frequently. The first step of this study is to collect data from multiple sources. These include “Climate Literacy-based on Principles of Climate Science Guide” published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the “United Daily News,” which includes three million news media articles dated through 2000 to 2009. The next step is extracting and matching keywords through an automated system. The results are as followed: 1. 51 keywords were extracted in total, and further divided into climate change causes (11 keywords), the impact of climate change (20 keywords), the response of climate change (7 keywords) and other related phrases (13 keywords). 2. Seven climate literacy core keywords that possess high relevance were chosen to couple with climate change-related issues. Results showed out of that these keywords (carbon dioxide, warming, energy, greenhouse gases, fossil fuels, species, and climate change), climate change headed the charts. After analysis of the coupling on climate change issues, two high frequency coupling paths were the most apparent, “Energy-greenhouse gas-climate change” and “global warming-greenhouse gasses-climate change.” 3. Choosing “climate change” as the main keyword to analyze the 3 levels of climate literacy, this structure needs to be further utilized. Compared to teaching materials of climate change adaptation published by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan, this study noticed that the teaching material was lacking in explaining climate change and its cause. The study shows that climate change literacy can not only be used to increase climate change education, but also develop more teaching materials on climate change based on climate literacy association map in the future.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
環境教育研究所
102
It has been reported by IPCC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that global warming is a undisputed fact, and it was very likely cause by human beings. In addition, the overdevelopment of land worsens the vulnerability of environment. The right knowledge and concepts of citizens is a key to solving environmental problems. However, many studies have pointed out that the media is the main sources of environmental and scientific Information for citizens. Therefore, it is important that journalists have the expertise and the right attitude. This research targeted the TV News Journalists in Taiwan as the subjects and was primarily aimed to examine the knowledge, attitude and behavior for climate change issue. At the same time, this research analyzed the relationships among the background variables of the participants and three dimensions. And also focus on operation of media. A questionnaire was designed as the research tool of this quantitative study, and purposive sampling was employed as the sampling method, a total of 200 questionnaires were released and 145 were valid. The findings indicate: they were showed a poor level of climate change knowledge. The common problems of them in facing climate change issue, which were lack of scientific knowledge of climate change and the concept of mitigation and adaptation, poor understanding about the situation of climate change between global and Taiwan. The results indicate that the most trusted sources of information were scientific journals, experts, environmental groups (NGOs). And the TV News Journalists trusted newspapers and magazines more than TV. There were no significant effect in knowledge dimension; in attitude dimension and behavior dimension, there was a significant effect in working years. And there was no significant positive correlation between knowledge and attitude, and between knowledge and behavior intention, but there were a significant positive correlation between knowledge and behavior. People's lives were affected by climate change. People have to be consensus about solving environmental issues. However, TV news as the most important source of information for the public, the journalists must have more concerns on climate change issues. This survey shows that journalists’ climate change literacy level is poor, media organizations have to implement the climate change education.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
森林環境暨資源學研究所
106
According to IPCC AR4 and AR5, human activities is the most important reason of the climate change and the acceleration of the global warming since the twentieth century. The emission of the CO2 has tremendous effect on future climates. Facing the unstoppable climate changing process, all countries have to develop strategies to deal with the upcoming challenges. By educating the students on the importance of the climate change, we can rise the literacy of the citizen on climate change. With detailed understanding on knowledges of climate change, people will understand the importance of the climate change, care about it, and may be more willing to participate on the protection of the environment, even able to voice strongly at the policy level. Therefore, it is important to teach climate change at school. This not only increases people''s understanding on this issue, but also an important act to support the Paris Accord. This research is based on the questionnaire designed by Shih-Hsin University. There are three main topics: knowledge, attitudes, and action and skill. The test body is from three years students from Song-Shang Senior High School, and the result is also compared with the result from the high school students from the whole country. The promotion plan implements on the second-year students . The result shows that the climate change related courses increase the climate change literacy of the students significantly, especially on action and skill. The result from this study will help schools at all levels on climate change related educations.

碩士
國立臺中教育大學
科學教育與應用學系環境教育及管理碩士班
105
Climate change is the significant and most affected issue leading to the humanity’s natural environmental disasters presently. The most people whether have related right knowledge and concepts to face and adapt the environmental issues lead by climate change. A lot of studies were indicated the interpretation volunteers in environmental education fields were the people’s main source channel of information. This study, through the questionnaire investigation, tries to understand interpretation volunteers’ literacy response to climate change in the fields, including knowledge, attitude, skill and behavior. And to help interpretation volunteers to understand the climate change and natural disaster prevention work in the fields that will help them to interpret and guide visitors on climate change. The study explored the interpretation volunteers’ literacy performace on climate change, and the correlation and affectiveness of climate change related terms, knowledge, attitude, skill and behavior. And discussed background factors how to influence volunteers’ literacy. The interpretation volunteers of our country’s 133 certified environment educational fields were the target objectives of questionnaire investigation. There were 665 copies of questionnaires set out, and 305 valid copies were recoveried, the valid return rate was 45.3%. The statistical results showed the knowledge resources of interpretation volunteers on climate change most came from the internet and social media. The volunteers’ teaching adopted more outdoors experiencing or theme learning than visiting environmental education fields. (1)The volunteers’ cognition, attitude, skills and behavior are mutually positively correlated. The volunteers’ cognition on climate change positively affected the attitude; the attitude positively affected the skill; the skill positively affected the behavior. (2) So the environmental education fields can try to enrich the knowledge of volunteers to cultivate their positive attitude. Further, through training, to strengthen volunteers’ interpretation skills to promote volunteers’ behaviors on climate change.

Despite more than 30 years of communication and public awareness of climate change, there continues to be a widespread lack of understanding of climate science and a lack of engagement in climate-friendly activities. Worldview bias is considered one of the most pernicious and difficult communication and education barriers with regard to public engagement in relation to climate change. For example, socio-cultural worldview is known to be the strongest predictor of adult attitudes related to climate change in the US and Australia, even stronger than educational attainment or scientific literacy. Due to this influence, efforts aimed at encouraging climate-friendly attitudes and behaviour have prioritised engagement with identity constructs such as values, ideology, and self-identity and are considered more effective at motivating climate-friendly attitudes than efforts to improve knowledge deficit. There are, however, several important considerations that have been overlooked with regard to the value and influence of the knowledge deficit model, including: knowledge deficit as a treatment or intervention; the age when such interventions should start as a factor for worldview development; and the specific content or curriculum that forms the foundation of the specific knowledge deficit intervention in relation to climate education. This thesis revisits knowledge deficit as an intervention and explores the role of knowledge deficit in the public education arena in the early adolescent age group via the interventions of a 3D interactive serious educational climate science game. In order to revisit knowledge deficit in relation to worldview development, literature pertaining to the intellectual and physiological development of early adolescents was reviewed, finding that early adolescents are a highly suitable age group for knowledge deficit interventions. To ensure this age group are receptive to learning about Earth's climate, early adolescent climate opinion data was collected and analysed (n=463), finding that early adolescents are more concerned (Austria: 85%, Australia: 89%) about climate change than their respective or proxy adult population (Austria: 71%, Australia: 63%) and their opinions (that climate change is something to worry about, is caused by humans, and is happening now) are all correlated. To examine knowledge deficit, a prototype climate science literacy (CSL) framework was constructed which measured incidental (pre-existing) knowledge and showed shared knowledge levels and patterns across borders (culture, language, education system). For the purpose of this thesis, specifically in relation to knowledge deficit interventions, CSL is defined here as a systematic and integrated understanding of how the natural climate system works, including drivers of natural variation, and the roles of feedback systems and anthropogenic emissions in driving climate change. After playing a proof-of-concept 3D interactive climate science game (n=401), results show that shared knowledge patterns persist and suggest that CSL may be able to be improved in this age group, particularly at the unistructural and multistructural levels (SOLO Taxonomy Levels 1 and 2). These results suggest that knowledge deficit interventions, for example using a 3D interactive climate science game, can potentially improve knowledge in early adolescents. Such interventions, delivered at a crucially formative age, could help counter the worldview effects that entrench climate-unfriendly attitudes in many sections of the population and help trigger a transformation towards a sustainable future.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
科學教育研究所
105
This study aims to explore students’ improvements in decision-making abilities (i.e.,identifying controversies, differentiation, generating criteria, comparing pros and cons using strategies, making and evaluating a decision), and climate change adaptability literacy (i.e., cognition, attitude and action) after socioscientific issue teaching. The one-group pretest-posttest design was adopted with a technique of convenient sampling (37 sophomore students from a senior high school in Taoyuan City) in the study. The data including the pre- and post- tests of decision-making ability, questionnaire of climate change adaptability literacy, and worksheets were collected and analyzed with nonparametric statistics. The results showed that i) students’ overall decision-making ability was improved significantly after socioscientific issue teaching; ii) students’ overall climate change adaptability literacy was improved significantly after socioscientific issue teaching; iii) most students intended to make their decisions from the “ecological protection” view; iv) the students with higher pretest scores in decision-making ability had significant better decision-making performances in worksheets than those with lower pretest scores. However, the students with lower pretest scores in decision-making ability improved their decision-making ability significantly more than those with higher pretest scores after socioscientific issue teaching.

碩士
國立臺南大學
教育學系教育經營與管理碩博士班
103
Creativity is very important to modern society, it can not only enhance our competitiveness, but also one of the country's powerful and advanced indicators. Therefore, the national culture of creativity is the trend to be reckoned with in the future. This study mainly explores the impact of student's information literacy on studentt's creativity, the impact of classroom climate on student's creativity, and the moderatoring effects of classroom climate between the impact of student's information literacy on student's creativity. The methodology of this study uses the questionnaire surveys for data collection and target the senior grade elementary school students from Tainan. Survey participants consist of 349 students from 10 elementary schools. This research used SPSS20.0 to apply descriptive statistics, pearson correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, and hierarchical linear modeling. Main findings of this study included the following. It is a positive impact of studentt's information literacy on studentt's creativity. It is a positive impact of classroom climate on studentt's creativity. And it is no moderatoring effects of classroom climate between the impact of studentt's information literacy on student's creativity. Finally, based on the results and analysis of this study, we made recommendations to school administrant, teachers, families and the future researchers.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
環境教育研究所
102
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues in the world today, and also the emphasis in teaching and research in higher education. Environment-related departments in universities play an important role in both climate change research and the resulting climate change literacy of the students. The concern of this study is on whether the core competencies built for school curriculum were well correlated with climate change literacy. Thus, the objective of this study is to understand the climate change literacy of students through questionnaire surveys, and further examine the relationships between the core competencies and climate change literacy. A questionnaire was designed as the research tool for measuring and evaluating the climate change literacy of students of two major categories, environmental engineering and environmental education. The results indicate that students in graduate institutes of environmental education perform better than those in graduate institutes of environmental engineering on the aspects of knowledge, attitude, and action; whereas no significant difference can be identified for skill . Cluster analysis was also explored and the students can be categorized into “activeness”, “knowledgeable”, “practical”, “passive”, and “negative”. More students in environmental engineering are “passive”, whereas more students in environmental education are “aggressive”. Content analysis and semi-structured interviews were then also carried out to examine the relationships between core competencies and climate change literacy, as well as the reasons for the differences between the two groups of students. Students in environmental engineering treat themselves as more like "scientists". On the other hand, students in environmental education play a more active role as "communicators" in climate change.

The aim of this research was to explore the principals’ perceptions of their instructional leadership role in the improvement of literacy and numeracy in the Foundation Phase. This study was guided by a desire to find out and understand what principals perceive as their instructional leadership role in the improvement of literacy and numeracy. Although instructional leadership has been studied intensively, these studies have not explicitly considered principals’ perceptions of this concept. Most of the research has tended to explain this phenomenon from other stakeholders’ point of view. There has been very little research that has sought to understand how and in what ways principals view their instructional leadership role. As a domain of school leadership, instructional leadership is viewed by many as the primary role of principals which is meant to ensure effective and efficient teaching and learning. The deteriorating level of learner performance in both national and international tests has prompted the South African ministry of education to redirect efforts and seriously consider the importance of basic numeracy and literacy skills. The Department of Basic Education introduced programmes, namely the Foundations For Learning Campaign, the Annual National Assessment and Action Plan to 2014 to address the problems of learners’ inability to read, make basic calculations and write. This study is, thus, premised on the assumption that literacy and numeracy are prerequisites for learners’ future learning. To best understand instructional leadership, six primary school principals were purposefully sampled according to their schools’ performance in the 2012 Annual National Assessment results. They were sampled as “good”, “average”, and “poor” performing schools. All these participants shared the same socio-economic background and were situated in the deep rural villages of Limpopo Province. Semi-structured interviews were used as a data collecting technique for the study.
Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2014.
gm2014
Education Management and Policy Studies
unrestricted

Extreme human-induced environmental pressures are being felt across the globe. Scientific evidence increasingly alerts for the urgent need to induce societal engagement in climate change mitigation to achieve carbon-reduction targets. This thesis’ overreaching purpose aimed at appraising the extent to which a gamification-based system may increase carbon literacy and empower individuals to adopt lower-carbon lifestyles. Simultaneously, this study explores the hotspots where policy action should be taken to reduce the contextual barriers to more pro-environmental lifestyles. Given the multitude of factors influencing behaviors, the research herein described disaggregated national data to local levels. To attain the set objectives, a gamified-survey tool was developed, as the primary learning and data collection instrument: The Carbon Footprint Movement. Results showed carbon footprint was not a primary deliberation preceding everyday behavior and that respondents’ misconceptions regarding the environmental effects of their actions prevailed. Additional findings also reinforced contextual factors further detached intentions from behaviors, intensifying the so-called value-action gap. Notwithstanding, participants reported carbon literacy increases (23%) and pledged imminent behavioral changes, over the course of the intervention. This dissertation reinforces high-magnitude carbon emissions to be locked-in at the household level, and the potentiality of gamified interventions to unlock substantial reductions. However, it simultaneously unveils large potential savings to remain unfulfilled, suggesting active civic engagement also calls for wider structural adjustments The methodology devised might be used to guide the development of future gamified interventions.
Pressões ambientais extremas estão a ser sentidas em todo o mundo. Evidências científicas alertam para a necessidade urgente do envolvimento da sociedade na mitigação das alterações climáticas. Esta dissertação visa avaliar em que medida um sistema baseado na gamificação pode aumentar a literacia de carbono e capacitar os indivíduos para adotarem comportamentos mais sustentáveis. Paralelamente, este estudo explora os pontos críticos em que devem ser tomadas medidas para a redução de obstáculos a estilos de vida mais pró-ambientais. Para atingir os objetivos estabelecidos, foi desenvolvido um instrumento de aprendizagem e de recolha de dados: The Carbon Footprint Movement. Os resultados indicam que a tomada diária de decisões raramente é precedida de uma deliberação sobre a respetiva pegada de carbono, que as pessoas mantêm ideias erradas sobre a eficácia ambiental das suas ações, e que os fatores contextuais desassociam ainda mais as intenções dos comportamentos. Não obstante, os participantes reportaram aumentos em literacia de carbono (23%) e afirmaram mudanças comportamentais ao longo da intervenção. Esta dissertação destaca a potencialidade de intervenções gamificadas na redução substancial de emissões de carbono, bloqueadas ao nível doméstico. No entanto, este estudo revela que um envolvimento cívico mais ativo no combate às alterações climáticas exige, simultaneamente, ajustes estruturais fundamentais. A metodologia descrita poderá ser utilizada para orientar o desenvolvimento de futuras intervenções gamificadas.

This diploma work raises the issues and subsequently the diagnostics selected didactis koncept of Students Primary School Teachers. The aim of this work was to find out to what extent the perception of some chosen didactic concepts are related comparing students of pedagogical faculty and primary school teachers. The theoretical part aims to the technical definition of the semantic differential research method and defines of the concepts. In the practical part the data relating to conception didactic concepts were found and processed by method of semantic differential.

This dissertation on “Climate Change, the Ruined Island, and British Metamodernism” proceeds from the premise that a perspectival shift occurred in the early 2000s that altered the tenor of British climate fiction published in the decade that followed. The release of a third Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), less than a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, prompted an acute awareness of the present as a post-apocalyptic condition bracketed by catastrophe and extinction. In response, British authors experimented with double-mapping techniques designed to concretize the supranational scope of advanced climate change. An increasing number of British authors projected the historical ruination of remote island communities onto speculative topographies extrapolated from IPCC Assessments to compel contemporary readers to conceive of a climate-changed planet aslant. Given the spate of ruined-island- as-future-Earth novels published at the turn of the millennium, this dissertation intervenes in extant criticism by identifying David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004), Will Self’s The Book of Dave (2006), and Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007) as noteworthy examples of a metamodernist subgenre that makes a distant future of a “futureless” past to position the reader in a state of imagined obsolescence. This project consequently draws on metamodernist theory as a useful heuristic for articulating the traits that distinguish metamodernist cli-fi from precursory texts, with the aim to connect British post-apocalyptic fiction, climate-fiction, and literary metamodernism in productive ways. As the body chapters of this dissertation demonstrate, metamodernist cli-fi primarily uses the double-mapped island to structurally discredit the present as singular in cataclysmic consequence and, therefore, deserving of an unprecedented technological fix. Ultimately, in attempting to refute the moment of completion that would mark history’s end, metamodernist cli-fi challenges the givenness of an anticipated future through which to anchor the advent of an irreversible tipping point. Given the relative dearth of literary scholarship devoted to metamodernist cli-fi, this project posits that this subgenre warrants greater critical attention because it offers potent means for short-circuiting the type of cynical optimism that insists on envisioning human survival in terms of divine, authoritarian, or techno-escapist interventions.
Graduate
2021-08-08

This creative writing thesis begins with the premise that climate change poses critical outcomes for the Australian continent, and asks what the consequences of this are as the precariousness of Australia’s future in relation to climate change continues to gather pace. Comprising a novel (70%) and exegesis (30%), the thesis as a whole seeks to explore the connections between climate change, land and culture in Australia, and to investigate settler Australian understandings regarding ‘place’, ‘belonging’ and ‘home’ in relation to both settlement and unsettledness in contemporary times.

“Human/Nature: American Literary Naturalism and the Anthropocene” examines works of fiction from the genre of American literary naturalism that sought to represent the emergence of the environmental crisis known today as the Anthropocene. Reading works by Jack London, Frank Norris, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Charles W. Chesnutt, I show how the genre’s well-known tropes of determinism, atavism, and super-individual scales of narration were used to create narratives across vast scales of space and time, spanning the entire planet as well as multi-epochal stretches of geologic time. This reading expands existing definitions of American literary naturalism through a combination of literary analysis, engagement with contemporary theory, and discussion of the historical context of proto-Anthropocenic theories of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Whereas most earlier understandings of naturalism have focused on human nature as it is determined by environmental conditions, I follow the inverse: the impact of collective human action on the physical environment. Previous definitions of naturalism have only told part of the story of determinism, making it impossible to recognize until now the genre’s unusual capacity to aesthetically capture humanity’s pervasive impact on the planet. Each of the dissertation’s four chapters focuses on a single author, a single aesthetic strategy, and a single problematic in Anthropocene discourse. My first chapter argues that Jack London’s late work (1906–1916) balanced his attempts to understand the human as a species with a growing interest in sustainable agriculture, resulting in a planetary theorization of environmental destruction through careless cultivation. But London’s human-centered environmental thinking ultimately served his well-known white supremacism, substantiating recent critiques that the Anthropocene’s universalism merely reproduces historical structures of wealth and power. Rather than the human per se, Frank Norris put his focus on finance capitalism in his classic 1901 novel The Octopus, embodying the hybrid human/natural force that he saw expanding over the face of the planet in the figure of the Wheat, a cultivated yet inhuman force that is as much machine as it is nature. I show how Norris turned Joseph LeConte’s proto-Anthropocenic theory of the Psychozoic era (1877) into a Capitalocene aesthetics, a contradictory sublimity in which individuals are both crushed by and feel themselves responsible for the new geologic force transforming the planet. While London and Norris focus on the destructive capacities of human agency, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1915 novel Herland takes a utopian approach, depicting a society of women with total control of their environment that anticipates conceptions of a “good Anthropocene.” Gilman built on the theories of sociologist and paleobotanist Lester Ward as well as her own experience in the domestic reform movement to imagine a garden world where the human inhabitants become totally integrated into the non-human background. Yet Gilman’s explicitly eugenic system flattens all heterogeneity of culture, wealth, and power into a homogenous collective. My final chapter builds on the critique of the Anthropocene’s universalism that runs through the preceding chapters by asking whether and how the Anthropocene can be approached with more nuance and less recourse to universals. I find an answer in the stories of Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman (1899) and the theory of the Plantationocene, which sees the sameness of the Anthropocene not as “natural” but as produced by overlapping forms of racial, economic, and biological oppression. Registering this production of homogeneity and its counterforces at once, Chesnutt models what I call Anthropocene heteroglossia, juxtaposing multiple dialects and narrative forms in stories set on a former plantation, depicting heterogeneous social ecologies as they conflict and coexist in markedly anthropogenic environments.

碩士
國立中興大學
教師專業發展研究所
100
The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of school climate and reading attitudes based on reading literacy. It also tests the mediatory effect of reading attitudes between school climate and reading literacy. The PISA database has the multilevel characteristics: one is the student level, and the other, the school level. It is feasible to analyze PISA 2009 database by hierarchical linear model (HLM). The total number of students included in the study is 5,025 selected from Programme for International Student Assessment 2009 (PISA 2009). The unit in level-1 is about students’ variables of joys of reading, teacher-student relationship and disciplinary climate in classrooms. Level-2 is the unit about schools’ variable of school climate, including both the behavior of teachers and students.HLM is used to analyze the data multilevel. The results are as followings: 1. The variables of students’ level can be positively significant on predicting students’ reading literacy. It means: the more joys of reading students have, the better their reading literacy performance is; the more teacher and student relationship promotes, the more preferable their reading literacy performance becomes; the more controllable the disciplinary climate in classrooms is, the more desirable their reading literacy performance gets. 2. The variables of school level only on ‘students’ behavior can be a positive and significant predictor of students’ reading literacy. It means the better students behave, the stronger their reading literacy grows to be. However, teachers’ behavior does not affect directly students'' reading literacy. 3. The variables of students’ level mediate the relationship between the variables of school level and their reading literacy. It means that students’ reading joys mediate the relationship between students’ behavior and their reading literacy; the teacher student relationship mediates the relationship between students’ behavior and their reading literacy, and the disciplinary climate mediates the relationship between students’ behavior and their reading literacy. According to the findings, implications and suggestions for practical education and future researches are provided.

Many people do not like thinking about the future. If they do, over 50% of Canadians think “our way of life” (p. 7) will end within 100 years and over 80% of Canadians think “we need to change our worldview and way of life if we are to create a better future for the world” (Randle & Eckersley, 2015, p. 9). There is a good reason for this. Alarms have sounded over global urgent complex problems with potential for catastrophic consequences such as the development of artificial intelligence, climate change, mass extinction, nuclear war and pandemics (Marien & Halal, 2011). Society is also increasingly fragmenting as imminent crises build on lack of understanding, the sense of incapacity to act, fear, distrust, blame and a lack of hope. This struggle for humanity’s survival is complicated by the turbulent global environment in which institutions continue to follow path-dependent trajectories set forth in a different time and context. Governments at various levels face a problem of “fit” between current structures and processes, that have not progressed sufficiently to meet changing needs of a global society mired in complexity and governance challenges. However, hope exists. Incremental progress on many fronts and a massive amount of efforts and resources are being engaged worldwide. There are emerging fields, lenses and tools that can potentially alleviate complex problems and address this emergency. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand and assess dialogue-based foresight practices being applied towards complex problems in Canada to provide insights into how these practices can assist society to alleviate global urgent complex problems and their impacts, within this backdrop of looming crises. Foresight, alternatively known as future studies or scenario-building, is a forward-looking practice recognized and used globally with over 100 research organizations focused on foresight, widespread usage by firms and over 18 countries involved in foresight activities (Berze, 2014b). Overall literature findings suggest foresight is widely and at least incrementally effective with a number of impacts in various areas (Calof, Miller, & Jackson, 2012; March, Therond, & Leenhardt, 2012; Meissner, Gokhberg, & Sokolov, 2013) but the extent of this effectiveness, the mechanisms involved, and the specific foresight benefits per type of project needs further research and evidence. For instance, limited literature exists on whether foresight can transform complex situations and if so, under what conditions. Thus, opportunities exist for assessing and increasing foresight’s impact. This dissertation is a contextualized, systematic empirical study that taps into transdisciplinary literature and practice, case studies of how foresight has been used to address specific types of complex problems in Canada, as well as surveys and interviews with foresight experts and participants. This dissertation uses a foresight community scan and a comparative case study approach to provide practical and theoretical benefits to foresight and complex problem area stakeholders. The research focuses on studying the broad interactions of foresight and identifying the impacts of dialogue-based foresight projects on people and the outcomes of complex problems. The dissertation concludes that dialogue-based foresight is a valuable and unique practice for ameliorating complex problems and their consequences. Insights are offered towards dialogue-based foresight’s potential contributions within the context of other efforts directed at humanity’s struggle for survival and global complex problems. These insights can then foster the further development and application of dialogue-based foresight on a global scale to alleviate complex problems and their effects. The dissertation outlines recommendations on key next steps to realize these potential contributions.
Graduate