Climate change and ozone- A socioscientific inquire for Danish High Schools

MSc thesis defence by Andreas Nymark

Censor:  Kresten Cæsar Torp, Aalborghus Gymnasium and UVM

Examiner/supervisors: Helge Ro-Poulsen, Biology, and Robert Evans, IND.

Abstract: 
To investigate how well students learn and understand the socio-scientific issue of climate change, a lesson was constructed for Danish high school students. The goal was to examine student understanding of the counterintuitive fact that rates of photosynthesis in plants increase due to global warming and the resulting increased level of CO2 in the atmosphere. The lesson was iteratively developed with an inquiry model and concluded with a virtual web based role-playing environment developed for the project. The study concluded that the use of inquiry teaching and use of iterations increased learning as judged by student results and teacher interviews. Student’s understanding of climate change can be improved using the lesson designed as part of this project.