The pressing nature of climate change and its associated impacts requires a climate literate citizenry. Climate change education in K-12 settings may provide a unique opportunity to make inroads towards climate literacy. However, many K-12 teachers avoid teaching climate change because they are uncomfortable with the subject or do not see its relevance to their curriculum. Removing barriers to climate change professional development (CCPD) for teachers may help increase confidence in teaching about climate change. To understand the perceived barriers to participating in CCPD, a survey was conducted with 54 middle school science teachers who did not respond to a previous invitation to participate in a CCPD program. The most significant barrier was time to participate. The participants were also asked to rate their confidence about whether climate change is happening. The results were compared between teachers who were confident climate change was happening and those who were not to examine whether these beliefs influenced teachers’ perceptions of barriers. Those who were confident climate change was happening were less likely to perceive administrative support, interest in the workshop, and knowledge of climate change content as barriers. However, both groups of teachers reported that time was the primary barrier rather than the topic. This suggests that, rather than developing unique strategies, existing best practices in teacher professional development can be used to support CCPD opportunities. Additional recommendations include thinking creatively about how to create time for teachers to attend and making the professional development directly relevant to teacher’s local contexts.

Virtual presence describes a users’ perception of a virtual reality (VR) environment (VRE), specifically, of their involvement (sense of control within a virtual environment with minimal distractions) and immersion (multi-input sensory engagement providing apparent realism of objects and interactions). In education, virtual presence is a significant construct as highly immersive VREs have been linked to users reporting memorable and exciting teaching experiences. Prior research has described that adults and children report different levels of presence when subjected to identical VREs, suggesting cognition may play some role in users’ perceptions of presence. According to Piaget, concrete operational development is a watershed moment when adolescents develop the ability to understand abstract concepts and make assessments what is and is not reality. This period in cognitive development may influence children’s and adolescents’ perceptions of presence. This is an exploratory study of seventy-five 6th-grade and seventy-six 9th-grade students who participated in an instructional module about cardiac anatomy and physiology using a 3-D, haptic-enabled, VR technology. When surveyed on their perceptions of virtual presence, there were no reported differences between grade levels. When assessed using a Piagetian inventory of cognitive development, the analyses indicated that the sixth-grade students’ understanding of spatial rotation and angular geometry was positively correlated with the reported perceived control and negatively correlated with distraction. This study suggests that the spatial acuity of younger learners plays an important role when using VR technologies for science learning. This research raises questions about the relevance of users’ cognitive development when using emergent VR technologies in the K–12 science classroom.

Although images play a significant role in environmental communications, few studies have empirically examined whether positive or negative images are more effective at engaging attention and promoting behavior change. We conducted a 6‐week public experiment at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, Florida, to test whether viewing a photography exhibit featuring images of the impacts of marine plastic pollution on ocean ecosystems (negative valence) or images of pristine ocean ecosystems (positive valence) would increase engagement, monetary donations to conservation, and pledges to help protect the ocean from plastic pollution. We tracked 1179 adults while observing the negative exhibit and 1304 adults while observing the positive exhibit. Of the adults tracked, significantly more engaged with the negative exhibit (270; 22.90%) than the positive exhibit (159; 12.19%). The mean number of pledges per visitor for the negative exhibit was significantly higher than for the positive exhibit. However, there was not a significant difference in donations between the two exhibits. These results suggest that environmental organizations that seek to capture attention should consider using images that show the negative impacts of human behavior on the environment.