Climate change is a subject that students should be intimately familiar with as it will continue to impact their lives in myriad ways. Yet college biology textbooks published between 1970 and 2019 in the United States lacked sufficient content when it came to climate change, study finds. new study carried out by researchers at North Carolina State University.
“Climate change is a potent threat to human society, biodiversity and ecosystem stability. However, a 2021 Gallup poll found that only 43% of Americans view climate change as a serious threat to their life.”, point out the scientists, adding that they analyzed the content of 57 university textbooks on biology to determine the priority given to climate change in them.
“Our findings show that coverage of climate change has steadily increased, although the largest increase occurred during the 1990s due to increasing threats from climate change.”, explain the researchers.
“Over time, coverage shifted from a description of the greenhouse effect to a major focus on the effects of climate change; the most discussed impact was the alteration of ecosystems. Sentences dedicated to possible solutions to climate change peaked in the 1990s at over 15% of text, then declined in recent decades to 3%.”, they clarify.
Climate change in the 1990s
Prior to 1990, textbooks averaged fewer than 10 sentences related to climate change, but the length of climate-related content increased to 30 sentences in the 1990s and then to 52 sentences in the 2000s. In the following decade, the amount of coverage in textbooks dropped, on average, to 45 sentences, meaning that most university textbooks published in that decade contained less information on the subject than in the previous decade.
That happened “despite significant advances in our understanding of how climate change is influencing ecosystems and the environment“, emphasize the scientists. To make matters worse, they add, the position of topical sections has continued to decline in textbooks, rising from the bottom 15% of general text in the 1970s to the bottom 2.5% of text in the 2010s.
Needless to say, this is a problem, as most students assess the importance of a subject taught at school based on the priority given to it in curricula and textbooks.
“These books are the basic texts to help students understand the science of life on Earth, but they provide very little information about a phenomenon that is having a profound impact on habitats, ecosystems, agriculture, almost every aspect of life on Earth.says Jennifer Landin, study author and associate professor of biological sciences at the university.
The nature of the content
Along with length, the nature of weather-related content has also changed over time, the researchers note. “For example, sentences devoted to actionable solutions to climate change peaked in the 1990s with over 15% climate content. However, in more recent decades, possible solutions represent only about 3% of climate content.”, they explain in a statement about their findings.
“One of the most worrying findings was that textbooks spend far less space addressing climate solutions now than they did in the 1990s, even as they focus more on the effects of climate change. This suggests to students that nothing can be done, which is extremely misleading and contributes to a sense of fatalism about the problem.Landin watches.
“However, not all bad news”, adds the scientist. “Textbooks in the 2000s and 2010s began to include a greater variety of relevant information for climate, for example, how climate affects the distribution of species, which can help students understand the various impacts of climate change”.
The researcher says she hopes that the study “serve as a wake-up call to editors and instructors” which will better incorporate climate change into college biology courses so students can better understand the role it is playing in shaping life on Earth.
