| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺中教育大學 === 科學應用與推廣學系環境教育及管理碩士班 === 101 === Although Dashan Community has now met the general requirements of an environmental learning center and that in the past it also held local environmental learning activities, its development goals are still unclear. Besides, most of its internal members are lacking in professional knowledge and skills related to environmental education. The center’s subsequent development, therefore, is worrisome. In accordance with internal studies conducted in the past, assistance from outside the community would be most useful in the establishment of an internal self-evaluation system to replace the existing external review mechanism.
Based on this, my thesis applies the model of ‘Sustainable Evaluation Framework’ (abbrev. as SEF) by Powell, Stern, and Ardoin (2006) to conduct a case study. First, I inspect the resource facilities in the center and, second, the process and problems encountered in developing environmental learning activities. I then have the research team apply SEF in order to coach and assist the community members in establishing their own self-evaluation system. I adopt three study methods, including focus group interviews, document analysis, and participatory observation, to collect qualitative data. I consider the four major elements constitutive of this environmental learning center—resources facilities, personnel, plan, operation management—in order to assess the impact that Sustainable Evaluation Framework has on the community and to discuss whether these effects will bring substantial help to this community or not.
This study lasted two years. My results have shown that the Sustainable Evaluation Framework does indeed have an important impact on Dashan Environmental Learning Center. The SEF cannot produce practical effects on the aspect of resource facilities of all these four major elements, but in the aspect of personnel, it produces a direct and positive effect on the four secondary factors including business managers, expert assistants, interpreters and volunteers, and curriculum design personnel. In the aspect of program planning, it only has a direct impact on the environmental education program and leisure experience program. Lastly, in terms of operating management, it only makes a direct impact on management and publicity.
Lastly, based on the results, I propose relevant suggestions to Dashan Environmental Learning Center, its supervising office, and future researchers. The process of developing environment learning activities in this community requires external experts to give assistance and instructions on the development of professional knowledge and skills and to establish an internal evaluation mechanism. The members of the coastal environmental learning center can thus have the ability to self-examine the development direction of activities and to enhance their event-holding ability as they work to keep the center in sustainable development.
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