The purpose of this study is to understand secondary school students’ perception and understanding of global climate change for climate change education. To this end, the study constructed climate change educational content, based on which, the cont...
The purpose of this study is to understand secondary school students’ perception and understanding of global climate change for climate change education. To this end, the study constructed climate change educational content, based on which, the contents regarding climate change in social and science textbooks were analyzed. In addition, the study includes the result of a survey on secondary school students’ perception and understanding of global climate change. Moreover, the study tried to find the relations between contents regarding climate change in social and science textbooks and secondary school students’ perception and understanding of global climate change.
In this study, to reorganize educational system about climate change, I’ve researched many studies about climate change education in South Korea and other countries considering the fact that the impact of climate change is significantly different from region to region.
With this reorganized educational content system about climate change, I’ve also researched what contents about climate change were in social and science textbooks in middle and high school based on 7th educational curriculum in South Korea.
According to reorganized educational content system regarding climate change, the survey was divided into three parts, the scientific basis principles of climate change, the relationship between climate change and human life, and the attitude(adaptation&mitigation) of students towards climate change.
The survey was distributed to three secondary classes from two middle schools, and three upper secondary classes form two high schools, all located in Nowon Gu, Seoul. This survey took 6 days, starting from April 17, 2009. The survey papers were added up to 401, recollected, and analyzed by SPSS win 14.0 descriptive statistics.
The following is the result of the research:
First of all, middle & high school social and science textbooks do include contents for climate change. But the textbooks should supplement scientific knowledge about climate change, and provide various causes of climate change deeply and widely.
Second of all, the result of the analysis on the students’ understanding of scientific information showed that the 8th graders and the 11th graders had similar level of knowledge on the climate change. In a question regarding greenhouse gas, all the students who participated in the survey knew three kinds out of six kinds of greenhouse gases, CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O. However, when selecting an answer about greenhouse effect, 8th graders chose the correct answer more than 11th graders.
Third of all, the result of the analysis on understanding of the relations between climate change and human life showed that both the groups had similar knowledge on the causes of global warming. Also, both the groups had similar understanding of global warming. However, when asked to select the signs of climate change in the surroundings, the 11th graders chose the correct answer more than 8th graders.
Fourth of all, the result of the analysis on the attitude(adaptation & mitigation) of students towards climate change showed that both the groups are not even familiar with the Climatic Change Convention. Also, most students thought individuals play an important role in a way to prevent climate change. Moreover, the students thought that changing habits in a way that could prevent climate change, saving energy would help climate change to be reduced. In a question asking which country is responsible the most of climate change in greenhouse gas emission, 8th graders chose every country regardless of its greenhouse gas emission, and 11th graders chose the countries which emit greenhouse gas at present. More than a half of the students chose TV/radio, and the Internet useful when getting information about climate change rather than their school’s curriculum.
This study will be useful as basic information for climate change education for secondary school students.