Abstract
<p>Metaphor is a powerful tool of verbal reasoning that helps individuals understand complex phenomena and plays a central role in climate change communication. However, children’s still-developing metaphor comprehension abilities may limit the effectiveness of figurative environmental messages. To address this issue, we extended the MetaCom training by developing MetaCom-Green, a novel intervention combining metaphor training with climate change education. Each session revolved around a metaphor describing an environmental phenomenon (e.g., The ocean is a soup or Animals are eating bites of fire). A group of fourth graders were assigned either to MetaCom-Green or to a control condition receiving an equivalent, metaphor-free environmental program. Pre-training assessments indicated that the two groups were comparable on linguistic, socio-cognitive, and most environmental measures. Post-training, children in the MetaCom-Green group showed greater improvements not only in metaphor comprehension, but also in climate change knowledge. Moreover, they developed richer conceptualizations of climate change phenomena and showed changes in environmental attitudes, with greater hope, lower despair about the future, and more pro-environmental behavior. These findings suggest that metaphor constitutes a powerful “learning-by-thinking” tool, fostering reasoning, conceptual reframing, and possibly embodied experiences that may enhance children’s engagement with environmental challenges.</p>