Undergraduate student conceptions of climate change impacts on animals

Abstract Climate change is a critical environmental issue and is a recommended core concept in the Ecological Society of America’s 4‐Dimensional Ecology Education framework. Limited work describes K‐12 students’ conceptions of the biotic impacts of climate change, yet research is lacking to explore undergraduate students’ conceptions on this topic. Our goal was to describe undergraduate student conceptions of the biotic outcomes of climate change, and characterize how these student conceptions of animal responses to climate change align with accepted scientific ideas. We used an interpretive qualitative research design and interviewed 13 undergraduate students who were enrolled in either an introductory biology or general ecology course. Through two independent codings of the same dataset, we separately addressed each of our research goals. Prior to this study, we identified three general biotic outcomes from climate change, which were confirmed by outside experts: changes to an animal’s Growth and Survival, their Reproduction, or their Distribution. Our student interviewees as a whole mentioned all three of these outcomes, and most individuals mentioned all three in their responses. Additionally, we found that most student ideas were aligned with Scientific conceptions, while a third of student ideas contained some scientific conceptions but were incomplete. Only a small percent of conceptions voiced in our sample were identified as alternative conceptions that did not align with accepted scientific ideas. These findings are important for educators who teach climate change, as they suggest that undergraduate students come to our classes with productive resources; however, our findings also identify concepts where students may struggle or enter classrooms with a more incomplete understanding.