The most troubling aspect of this study was that professors political ideology was the most powerful predictor of their classroom approach. This would suggest that the biggest determinate of how our children are presented information about climate change in science classroom is driven by a factor that is incredibly hard to change and largely independent from science. North Carolina State University provided written informed consent. Students and their parents/guardians were given either a passive consent form or an active consent form, per the preference of the professors and school. The passive consent from was only signed and returned if the parents or students did not want to participate. The active consent form was signed and turned to indicated consent to participate in the study.
For this study the University of North Carolina State chose to focus on middle school students because they are at an age where they start applying their knowledge to real world situations and making informed decisions. The participating professors were each
asked to randomly select a class to be involved in the study by flipping a coin. To measure student and professor beliefs in anthropogenic global warning, they used two items from one of the only published instruments used with both adult and adolescents population. They measure climate change knowledge among students and professors thought global warning was happening and another measured whether they thought it was human caused. They found that only professors belief that climate change was happening predicted the beliefs of their students. Specifically, they found that professors belief that global warming was happening was strong, positive predictor of students belief that global warming was happening and human caused. They also found that students climate change knowledge was a strong, positive predictor of students belief that global warming is happening and human caused, supporting our assertion that if students can assemble the basic background information they will figure out human causes independent of professors beliefs in them.