| 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 === 102 === The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness in promoting marine environmental literacy on the third grader students in an elementary school after taking an innovative self-designed curriculum. The curriculum was created in the context of inter-tidal beach, a common coastal wetland along the Taiwan’s west coast. In total of seventy-three students from 6 classes in ShengangElementatySchool attended this study. The results were assessed quantitatively in their performance in marine environmental literacy by quasi-experimental pretest-posttest experiment using a self-designed questionnaire as a tool. Several data including on-site learning responses of students, interviews with teachers, parents and students, both art works and learning files of students were analyzed qualitatively in order to understand the underlining factors influencing the improvement of marine environmental literacy.
The curricular theme on marine environment with four subjects was set into five different disciplines by adopting a game-based teaching and suited teaching methods. The curriculum was composed of both 12 indoor classes to build up the background knowledge for students and 7 outdoor classes. The performances in knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of performances in marine environment between students with and those without curriculum were compared to understand the effectiveness of curriculum.
Our results concluded that students taking the curriculum were significantly better in the performance in knowledge, attitude and behavior than those without curriculum. Moreover, students have shown strong motivation and better skills in learning marine knowledge and have environmental protection passions thereafter. Applying multiple media materials is useful to inspire motivation and to maintain high interest in learning, and the games will maintain the high learning interest of students to the end of course. The situated learning course, including setting up learning corners and situated exhibition and coastal field trips, encouraged students to review their learning in order to correct the misconception and arouse the passions for environmental protections as well.
Multiple assessments, based on multiple intelligence theories, taking the differences among student’s learning intelligences into considerations, not only revealed the differences in learning performances among students but also help to modify course design for teachers.
Based on our findings, we propose several suggestions for course design. In order to promote the student’s marine literacy, it is necessary to develop a school-based curriculum in the context of local environment. Coordinating teachers to form an interactive teaching group, introducing experts from community and bringing resources into teaching course are helpful to promote the initiatives of teachers. Applying multiple media, games and situated teaching are useful to enhance the learning effects of students. For the advanced studies, the survey might be extended into the students in different graders and into schools in both coastal and non coastal areas. Different from our teaching strategies, different learning theories and teaching strategies could be applied to explore the effectiveness to promote marine literacy.
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