Secondary core science teachers’ perceptions of teaching climate change

Despite being an interdisciplinary issue, climate change concepts have typically been taught in Earth and environmental science classes at the secondary level. However, few high school students can take these classes. This means few high school graduates know or have learning experiences with these topics. This study assessed core science (biology, chemistry, and physics) teachers’ ideas “many of whom also teach Earth or environmental science,” <i>via</i> an extensive survey including Likert scale and open-ended questions distributed electronically across the United States to secondary science teachers. We looked at where they believe climate change should be taught, had them identify which climate concepts they connected to their subject, and identified barriers teachers encountered when incorporating climate concepts in their classes. We found that most teachers felt all core sciences should integrate climate change within their content areas. Our findings also reveal topics related to climate change that these teachers make within all science disciplines. These results have implications for science teacher professional development (PD) providers, science teacher professional associations, and preservice science teacher educators as they show there is unequal access to Earth and environmental science courses with their associated climate science content, as well as a inconsistent catalog of climate change topics being addressed in the core sciences suggesting the need for additional PD and climate change curricula be made available to all science teachers.