LEADING SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS TO FACE THE DISCIPLINARY, EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND SOCIETAL CHALLENGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE: DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF MULTI-DIMENSIONAL TEACHING/LEARNING EXPERIENCES

The scientific community has been debating climate change (CC) for over two decades. In the light of certain arguments put forward by the aforesaid community, the EU has recommended a set of innovative reforms to science teaching, such as incorporating environmental issues into the scientific curriculum, thereby helping to make schools a place of civic education. However, despite these European recommendations, relatively little emphasis is still given to climate change within science curricula. The main goal of the research project described in this thesis is to study if, how and why the scientific contents related to CC could be reconstructed so as to integrate the many dimensions involved in the issue. Specifically, the project set out to create and test innovative materials and activities for secondary school students, designed to foster: i) effective and meaningful understanding of the concepts involved in CC (disciplinary dimension); ii) a growing personal involvement in environmental issues supported also by the maturation of rational arguments for moving consciously through the political, economical, social and ethical dimensions (societal dimension); iii) epistemological reflections aimed at problematizing the traditional and outdated image of science which is still widespread among citizens (epistemological dimension). In the design and analysis of the materials, we start from the conjecture that behind many conceptual difficulties and psychological barriers lie particular epistemological obstacles related to a naïve and stereotypical view of science. In order to reach the main goal, the work has been organized according to four research questions (RQs): RQ_1: What operational criteria can be identified for reconstructing physics so as to integrate the many dimensions considered in the main goal? RQ_2: (a) Which models of greenhouse effect and GW are effective for implementing the criteria identified? (b) What experimental activities can be designed in order to promote an inquiry-based approach to the study of environmental issues, and to help students understand the models and their multi-dimensionality? RQ_3: How do secondary school students react to the proposed materials? Are the materials effective in achieving the main goal of the research? RQ_4: Which analytic methods can be used to investigate the multiple dimensions of a teaching/learning classroom experience? In Chapter 1, the analysis of a selection of research papers and international reports is presented. The selected papers and reports concern: the conceptual difficulties that students usually encounter in dealing with physics concepts related to CC; the sociological and behavioural reactions of citizens facing CC; the crucial points regarding the scientific debate on CC; the status of the research on modelling in science education. The match among the main results in so many different research fields led us to point out some design principles which guided the process of instructional design of a multidimensional proposal on climate change intended for upper secondary school students (grade 11th, 12th and 13th). The design principles, the teaching materials and the developed conceptual path are described in chapter 2. The multidimensional conceptual path was implemented in four different teaching experiences and many data were collected in order to keep tuned the many dimensions involved in the study. The contexts of implementation, the role of each one and the data sources properly designed are described in chapter 3. The materials and the data tools were initially validated in a pilot-study which aimed to test and revise both the teaching materials and the data sources (chapter 4). On the basis of the results of this pilot-study, the materials have been reviewed in order to emphasize the epistemological dimension. Specifically, the results led us to make the epistemological fil rouge on the models and modelling stronger and more evident; to revise (in form and content) the lesson on complexity; and to insert specific tools of investigations aimed at indepth investigation of the epistemological dimension. The data collection and data analysis focused initially on the single dimensions (conceptual, behavioural, epistemological) and later on the correlations among them. This strategy implied the development of new and original analytic tools able to bootstrap from the data results related to each dimension, but also analytic techniques that could render the results of each dimension comparable to each other (chapters 5-6-7). As a global result, the analyses highlighted a positive overall trend both on the three dimensions considered individually and with respect to the identification of positive influences and impacts among the different dimensions. Nevertheless, some critical elements emerged from the analyses. As far as the disciplinary dimension is concerned (chapter 5), the conceptual path revealed to be effective in providing a chance i) to resolve the problem of confusing climate change with different environmental phenomena, like the ozone layer depletion and general pollution, and ii) to relate the greenhouse effect to the properties of absorbance, reflectance and transmittance. The analysis, however, revealed the permanence in the students of conceptual difficulties which are well-documented in the research literature, such as i) the difficulty in managing the concept of emission and ii) the confusion between heat and radiation. These two problems are those in which there is the greatest discrepancy between common sense and scientific thinking and, as our other studies on thermodynamics show, they must be addressed indepth from the moment that the basic physics concepts of thermodynamics and electromagnetism are introduced. However, the type of analysis we were able to carry out did not allow us to thoroughly investigate the nature of these unresolved problems. As far as the societal dimension is concerned, the data analyses showed positive behavioural responses in all the teaching experiments. The analysis of the mutual interaction between knowledge and behavioural response (chapter 6) strengthens this result. Moreover, the evolution of a certain type of knowledge and, mainly, the introduction of the epistemological perspective of complexity appeared potentially able to provide students with the cultural tools necessary to rationally navigate through the jungle of ideological/media wars about environmental issues. The epistemological dimension constituted the particularly original feature of this research work (chapter 7). As we said above, this study originated from the conjecture that climate change represents not only a societal and disciplinary but also an epistemological challenge. Scientific debates imply sophisticated epistemological argumentations which refer, more or less implicitly, to a refined way of looking at modelling in climate science. In the light of the results of our analysis, we can assert that, under certain conditions, specific epistemological know-how can positively impact not only productive disciplinary engagement, but also a more personal and authentic involvement in climate change. The decision to keep together the societal and conceptual dimensions, thanks to the epistemological dimension, proved to be a successful choice. It offered the students the opportunity to understand the increasing importance of the role of models and modelling in coping with scientific issues that have direct impact on the social aspects of people's lives (e.g. climate change, earthquakes, nuclear physics, modern physics applied to medical studies). Besides the epistemological dimension, the other element of originality of the research work is the construction of new analytic methodologies constructed to exploit the data and correlations between the different dimensions. These new methods can make, in our opinion, a positive contribution to the current debate on methodology in science education research.