Climate change is one of the most important environmental issues affecting our society today and we need to educate the citizens about the impact on human lives. An attempt was made to integrate experiential-based climate change education into the teaching and learning of secondary school Biology lessons on the topic of Endangered Ecosystem to improve students’ knowledge on climate change and increase motivation towards caring for the environment. Two classes from a school were randomly assigned to experimental (N = 30) and control groups (N = 32). Following the intervention, a one-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with pre-test data as covariate showed statistically significant differences in knowledge and motivation. Experiential-based climate change activities enabled students to construct the knowledge socially and also satisfied the three basic human needs: competence, autonomy and relatedness, which have subsequently promoted motivation. The findings described in this study are similar with other studies which reported that constructivist-based experiential learning has successfully developed awareness and encouraged learning and critical thinking about climate change.
27 December 2016 in International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education
The purpose of this article is to describe a best practice: an approach to teaching chemistry that our quantitative research has shown to produce large differences between experimental and control groups in terms of achievement, pro-environmental attitudes, values, and motivation. Our interest in teaching chemistry by focusing on sustainable development arises from the environmental concerns that as the country of this study, Malaysia is facing in many different areas—including rampant logging and pollution. As educators, we are interested in educating future generations so that they can cope with the environmental challenges that not only this nation but also the world as a whole is increasingly facing. The “green chemistry” approach we describe here may be just the answer that other developing nations and emergent economies in closing the gap with industrialized nations. We provide a detailed description of how green chemistry has been implemented in a curriculum for pre-service science teachers and in the curriculum of secondary school chemistry.
It has been more than 20 years since the value-belief-norm theory of environmentalism has been conceptualized. The said theory has been used as a lens and has guided scholars in exploring and understanding pro-environmental behavior, however to date, there has been no study conducted that attempted to explore and report the bibliometric properties of studies related thereto. Aimed at determining research opportunities and future research directions, this paper reports a study that explored the bibliometric properties of studies conducted pertaining to the above-mentioned theory. Data were extracted from Scopus database and analyzed using Microsoft Excel, Publish or Perish, and VOSviewer. Results showed that while there is an increasing trend of studies using value-belief-norm theory, there is still considerably small and limited number of papers published, as well as scholars, institutions, and countries engaged on studies using the theory. Considering the inter/multidisciplinary nature of pro-environmental behavior, it may be necessary to encourage the conduct of more context-specific studies using available and more advanced methods across cultures, sectors, and levels.