The purpose of this study is to examine the predictive effects of epistemological beliefs about science and informal reading of scientific texts on students’ future-oriented optimism on the issue of climate change. Future-oriented climate change optimism is defined as encompassing hope and anticipation about the climate future. To identify the relationships among variables, structural equation modelling was conducted on the PISA dataset on 15-year-old students from Denmark, the UK and Finland which have the top three Environmental Protection Index. Students of all three countries demonstrated a consistently low optimism about the future of climate change. Also, the findings indicated that students’ epistemological beliefs about science had a significantly negative predicting effect on their future-oriented climate change optimism across all three countries, while their informal reading of scientific texts had a significantly positive predictive effect on their future-oriented climate change optimism in Denmark and the UK. Across all three countries, 15-year-old students’ awareness of the issue of climate change plays a significantly negative mediating role between their epistemological beliefs about science and their optimism in the future climate, as well as their informal reading of scientific texts and their optimism in the future climate. This calls for a new curricular environmental-science education model that addresses how students’ informal science reading and epistemological beliefs about science can address future-oriented climate change optimism which might in turn impact young people’s action competence to address the issues of climate change.

本研究的目的是检验科学认识论信念和科学文本的非正式阅读对学生在气候变化问题上面向未来的乐观态度的预测作用。面向未来的气候变化乐观主义被定义为包含对气候未来的希望和预期。为了确定变量之间的关系，我们对来自环境保护指数排名前三的丹麦、英国和芬兰的 15 岁学生的 PISA 数据集进行了结构方程建模。这三个国家的学生对气候变化的未来始终表现出不乐观的态度。此外，研究结果表明，在这三个国家，学生对科学的认识论信念对他们面向未来的气候变化乐观态度具有显着的负预测作用，而他们对科学文本的非正式阅读对他们面向未来的气候具有显着的正预测作用改变丹麦和英国的乐观情绪。在这三个国家中，15 岁学生对气候变化问题的认识在他们对科学的认识论信念和对未来气候的乐观态度之间以及他们对科学文本的非正式阅读和他们的看法之间起着显着的负中介作用。对未来气候持乐观态度。这就需要一种新的课程环境科学教育模式，解决学生的非正式科学阅读和对科学的认识论信念如何解决面向未来的气候变化乐观情绪，这反过来可能会影响年轻人解决气候变化问题的行动能力。