Differences in the social representations about Climate Change in a group of students of different education levels.

Abstract

Social representations are a sociopsychological theory used to identify prior knowledge about specific themes of interest that could be used in an educative investigation context. The following report is about a specific case description using qualitative methods with the purpose of identify the differences between the prior knowledge and the proximity perception in relation to the climate change phenomenon in two groups of students of different education levels. The objective of this work was to evaluate a quiz as our data source for future implementation in bigger groups. We worked with two different groups of students of different scholar levels and different social environment. One group studies at high school and junior high school at rural schools of El Marqués, Querétaro, and the other group studies at the university level in Querétaro city. We found as a result that the prior differences were observed in the information sources of the prior knowledge and the proximity perceptions about climate change and its effects on the community and personal level, we conclude these differences exist because of the age differences between groups and the social context.