Knowledge, interest, and engagement of Science education undergraduates in climate change and mitigation actions in Imo State, Nigeria

This study examined the knowledge, interest, and engagement of Science Education Undergraduates in Climate Change and Mitigation actions in Imo State, Nigeria. The relationships existing among knowledge, interest and climate engagement was specifically studied. This study adopted a descriptive survey and a correlation design. Using a researcher-made 3-sectioned instrument, the researchers collected data from the respondents. To answer the research questions, frequencies, percentages, pie charts, mean scores, and standard deviations were used while the hypothesis was tested with Pearson r statistics at a 0.01 significance level. From the major findings, it is seen that 54% of the sampled students demonstrated high knowledge of climate change while 22% and 24% demonstrated moderate and low knowledge of climate change respectively, high climate interest levels exist among the respondents (mean =3.27), majority of the students participate in personal actions which help to mitigate climate change effects such as changing their lifestyle (84.90%), considering environmental impacts in choice of goods (93.00%), water conservation (91.80%), planting of trees and flowers (79.70%) and waste recycling (70.90%), there is low involvement of the undergraduates in online and offline climate change and climate change mitigation awareness (19%), 67% of the respondents engage in climate change mitigation actions to a high extent, 22% of the participating undergraduates have moderate engagement levels in climate change mitigation actions while 11% of the respondents have low engagement levels in climate change mitigation actions, high and significant relationships exist between climate change knowledge and climate interest among the undergraduates (r= 0.750, p<.05); significant relationship also exists between interest in climate change/mitigation actions and engagement in climate change actions (r=0.323, p<.05) while the relationship between knowledge of climate and engagement in climate change mitigation activities is low and non-significant (r=0.117, p>.05). The findings imply that the use of digital tools to create climate change awareness should be greatly emphasized by lecturers, as this will promote undergraduates’ interest and digital participation in climate actions and universities should incorporate climate change topics into various courses, making environmental knowledge a fundamental part of students' academic experience.