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\begin{document}

\title{Misconceptions about Climate Change and Ozone Depletion: Textbooks,
Instructors and Media Influence on Ghanaian Pre-Service Teachers}



\author[1]{Samuel Nyarko}%
\author[1]{Heather Petcovic}%
\affil[1]{Western Michigan University}%


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  \date{June 10, 2024}


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\begin{abstract}
The need to train a scientific workforce in order to mitigate the
impacts of climate change drives an international need for climate
change education, including in Ghana. How pre-service teachers
understand the concept of climate change, and the often misunderstood
relationship between ozone depletion and global warming, critically
impacts the students they will teach and the community at large. This
mixed-method, descriptive study documents pre-service teachers' climate
change and ozone depletion conceptions, and describes the sources of
these conceptions. An open-ended and Likert-type questionnaire adapted
from Boyes and Groves (1994) was administered to 300 participants from
three colleges of education in Ghana. Thirty of the participating
pre-service teachers then completed a semi-structured interview.
Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS, and interviews were
audio-recorded, transcribed and coded together with the open-ended
survey questions. Results of the quantitative analysis suggest that many
pre-service teachers hold the idea that climate change results from
ozone holes allowing more ultraviolet solar radiation to reach the
Earth. Participants understand that ozone is a layer of gas high up in
the atmosphere that protects the Earth from ultraviolet radiation, but
they lack an understanding of what causes ozone depletion and the
consequences of depletion. Participants also identified textbooks
(79.9\%), instructors (63.5\%) and the media/internet (62.1\%) as the
sources of their ozone layer and climate change knowledge. Qualitative
data suggest that participants lack an understanding of the exact
position of the ozone layer in the atmosphere, how ozone forms, its
relation to ground level UV radiation and natural processes that lead to
ozone depletion. Participants also confused climate change with the
change in seasons and weather, and could not clearly articulate why they
think ozone depletion is linked to climate change. This study adds to
existing climate change conceptions literature, identifies new
misconceptions held by pre-service teachers and identifies the sources
of their conceptions, which provides further information about the
learning resources available to students.%
\end{abstract}%



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