The Importance of Environmental Education Activities Assessment: the “School Of Nature” Project Case Study
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1
Other, Portugal
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2
Viana do Castelo Environmental Monitoring and Interpretation Center, Portugal
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3
University of Minho, Portugal
Environmental Education (EE) is an area that has been gaining importance in today’s world, by its important role in the transmission of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values for a conscious and responsible citizenship. Through EE, the individual takes on certain behaviors and internalizes a certain set of values that will gain “life” through attitudes. EE, by its objectives, aims essentially at the acquisition of knowledge and, consequently (we hope…), the change of values and attitudes (Vasconcelos, 2013).
Since 2011, the Viana do Castelo Environmental Monitoring and Interpretation Center (CMIA-VCT) has been developing, among other initiatives, the School of Nature environmental education project. This is an educational project that aims to bring young school communities (and indirectly the community in general) closer to the natural heritage and Natura 2000 sites in the region, encouraging and fostering knowledge and respect for and appreciation of biodiversity and the local natural ecosystems (the sea, the river and the mountain). As a well-defined work methodology and with a set of educational resources prepared specifically for the target age groups of the local educational project, until 2019 it has involved 2 899 students, 162 classes, with 387 field events and 255 classroom activities and study visits.
There are numerous on-going environmental education projects in Portugal, but few of them carry out the necessary evaluation of its effects on the participants. Evaluation is a fundamental step in order to correct the course of action, to reinforce its positive aspects or even to define new paths and improve the quality of the actions developed. (IPAMB, 2000). In this sense, in the 2011/2012 academic year, the CMIA-VCT developed a study to adjust an evaluation methodology that would allow the analysis of the extent to which this educational project promoted the acquisition of knowledge, as well as changes in behavior and attitudes in the students involved. This study allowed us to improve the methodology of the educational project itself and the pedagogical interventions over the following academic years.
The assessment focused on applying “pre-test” and “post-test” questionnaires to each of the students involved in different project phases. The pre-test was performed at the beginning of the first school period, before starting any kind of activity or approach of concepts. The “post-test” was applied in the third school period, at the end of all the pedagogical interventions of this educational project. The questionnaires were developed according to the target age range, the syllabus of the subjects of the natural sciences areas and the concepts that will be explored along the various pedagogical interventions. They have exactly the same structure and content so that an analysis of the impact the project may have had on different areas of student learning process was possible. The same set of questions were made, with the possibility of 2 types of answers: a) closed ones, conditioned to the type of answer to be given and with a clearly quantitative assessment; b) open ones, allowing the analysis of other concepts and also the student’s perception about nature conservation in general and the importance of studying and protecting natural values in particular.
From the overall analysis of the results it was found that the contextualization of learning, provided by pedagogical interventions, in the context of classroom and fieldwork, contributed positively to a significant conceptual change (figure 1A). As the age of the students increases, it was found that the students’ level of pre-knowledge about the subjects also increased and, therefore, the differences after the pedagogical interventions were minor (figure 1B, 2A and 2B). Regarding the assessment of attitudes, it can be concluded that the activities developed under the environmental education project did not significantly influence the student’s predisposition for the preservation of the ecosystems under study.
All themes revealed statistical significative differences between the pre- and post-tests. The theme of the forest was the one that always represented the smallest amplitude in the correct pre-test and post-test answers, being also the theme with the highest percentage of correct answers obtained (figure 1B, 2A and 2B). The results of the themes associated with the coast (rocky beach and dune systems) showed a remarkable difference between initial and final evaluations, revealing that near-sea communities do not yet have the desired ocean literacy.
Proximity to the sea is not necessarily synonymous with recognizing its ecosystems as a natural heritage full of particularities and conservation values. Primarily, these natural spaces are valued for their landscaping and bathing function and not necessarily for all the biodiversity contained within and the extreme abiotic factors that characterize them. As for the river theme, which usually has a larger range in the pre-test and post-test answers, it is considered that the typology of activities developed is very well received by students and teachers However, the theme in which the project was focused was not very familiar to most teachers and the contents to be explored were not initially associated with the ecosystem concerned.
Being one of the objectives of this project to ensure that each class “exhaustively” explores a particular environment - sea, river or forest - the assessment tool that was carried out has proved to be fundamental in the optimization of the intervention methodologies and processes developed and put into practice. In addition to the reinforcement and special attention that needs to be devoted to topics such as the coast and the riparian ecosystems, it was recognized that secondary students needed a different approach, as they, in general, presented high percentages of correct answers in the post-tests.
As a result, a new educational project called “Sea Scientists” was conceived and implemented, hopping to lead the older students to a higher level of demand. As this project was implemented only in the academic year of 2018/19, there are yet no results available.
Figure 1A: Percentage of correct student responses to knowledge survey questions before and after pedagogical interventions. Bars with different letters, in the same subject of study, represent significant differences (P <0.05) in the answers after the pedagogical interventions. Figure 1B: Percentage of correct answers from primary school students to knowledge survey questions, before and after pedagogical interventions.
Figure 2A: Percentage of correct answers of students in the 2nd and 3rd cycle of basic education to the questions of the knowledge surveys, before and after the pedagogical interventions. Figure 2B: Percentage of correct answers from secondary school students to knowledge survey questions, before and after pedagogical interventions.
Acknowledgements
We are therefore grateful to the PO SEUR and all the partners, namely to the Municipalities of Esposende and Vila Nova de Cerveira, the University of Coimbra (Instituto do Mar), the Center for Molecular and Environmental Biology of the University of Minho and the Butterfly Conservation Center of Portugal (Tagis). We also thank the schools, students and teachers who collaborated with us and contributed to the success of this project.
References
Viana do Castelo Environmental Monitoring and Interpretation Center. (2017). School of nature. Didactic Catalog. Natura 2000 Network of Viana do Castelo.
Viana do Castelo Environmental Monitoring and Interpretation Center. (2017). School of nature. Summary Catalog. Natura 2000 Network of Viana do Castelo.
IPAMB, 2000. Resource Guide on Environmental Education. Institute for Environmental Promotion. Lisbon.
Vasconcelos, L. (2013). Evaluation of the Viana do Castelo Environmental Monitoring and Interpretation Center environmental education project - “School of Nature”. (Master Thesis in Environmental Management and Spatial Planning). Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo.
Keywords:
Environmental Education,
assessment,
knowledge,
change,
attitudes
Conference:
XX Iberian Symposium on Marine Biology Studies (SIEBM XX) , Braga, Portugal, 9 Sep - 12 Sep, 2019.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Ecotourism, Environmental Education, Citizen Science and Dissemination of Science
Citation:
Cruz
L,
Vasconcelos
L,
Pereira
S,
Castro
S,
Gomes
M,
Faria
F,
Pascoal
M and
Gomes
PT
(2019). The Importance of Environmental Education Activities Assessment: the “School Of Nature” Project Case Study.
Front. Mar. Sci.
Conference Abstract:
XX Iberian Symposium on Marine Biology Studies (SIEBM XX) .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fmars.2019.08.00197
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Received:
07 Oct 2019;
Published Online:
09 Dec 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Mx. Leonor Cruz, Other, Viana do Castelo, Portugal, cmia@cm-viana-castelo.pt
Mx. Liliana Vasconcelos, Viana do Castelo Environmental Monitoring and Interpretation Center, Viana do Castelo, Portugal, cmialv@cm-viana-castelo.pt
Mx. Pedro T Gomes, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal, pagomes@bio.uminho.pt