Science teachers’ selection of visual displays in communicating about climate change

This study investigated science teachers’ selection of visual displays for climate change instruction and compared the selection to those of climate scientists who provide public outreach education. Twenty-five secondary science teachers in the US were presented with 25 climate change visual displays and asked to choose five that they would incorporate into a climate change presentation. Teachers were interviewed to document their perspectives about the images and their selection rationale. Interview responses were analyzed using four dimensions from Construal-Level Theory: temporal (e.g., present/now versus future or past), social (e.g., me/us versus them), spatial (e.g., here versus there), and hypothetical (e.g., certain versus uncertain). Findings showed that teachers chose visual materials based on their existing lesson goals. Most teachers (96%) also considered how complex the images were for students to understand. Additionally, about 44% of teachers in this study thought about how the timing or sequence of events shown in the visuals related to students’ understanding of the topic. When the selections were compared to those of 11 scientists from a previous study, both teachers and scientists chose visual displays with future projections and representations of temperature changes. Neither scientists nor teachers tended to use representations that showed trends in data under different conditions or more complex representations. The findings of the study offer insight into the decision-making process employed by educators when selecting climate change visual displays. Implications include the need for professional development that helps teachers interpret and teach with more complex visual representations.