The effectiveness of the nature school's exploratory training method on the environmental knowledge, environmental behavior and attitude of elementary students.

Subject Areas : Education

mahmoud sharafi ¹ , sirous mahmoudi ² , bahman hosseinbar ³

1 - professor
2 - Payame Noor University
3 - education

Received: 2018-10-17 Accepted : 2021-08-02 Published : 2021-04-21

Keywords: Environmental Attitudes, environmental behavior, Environmental Knowledge, Exploratory Training, nature schools,

Abstract :

Background and Objective: Acquiring environmental awareness is the first step towards sustainability, and basically the condition for the future survival of humanity is environmental awareness, the ability to understand the principles of knowing the environment and living based on them.The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the nature school's exploratory training method on environmental knowledge,environmental behavior and attitude ofelementary students at Kavikonj School of Natural Sciences in Mashhad. The validity of these instruments was approved by environmental education experts and professors.
 Method: The statistical population of the study consisted of all elementary school students in the academic year of 1396-97 in a number of 75 students. Of these, a sample of 50 students from the second baseline were selected by random sampling method was divided into two experimental and control groups. The experimental group was trained at the nature school during 10 sessions of 40 minutes. The data gathering tool included Ali and McAnneri's Achievement Questionnaire (2001), Don lop & Johnson Environmental Attitude Questionnaire (2001) and researcher-made Environmental Knowledge Questionnaire. The reliability of this Questionnaire was 0.85, 0.65 and 0.85, respectively. 0.79 was calculated. The validity of these tools was approved by environmental education experts and faculty.The findings were analyzed using descriptive statistics and covariance analysis.
Discussion and Conclusion: The results  showed that the nature school's exploratory education has a positive effect on the environmental knowledge, environmental behavior and attitude of elementary students. Finally, compared to traditional education, it was found that exploratory education had the most impact on environmental behavior. After environmental behavior, there is an environmental attitude and, finally, the least has been the effect of exploratory training on environmental knowledge. As a result, using the environment can be considered as one of the approaches and components of success in teaching and teaching the content of different courses.

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