Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T02:31:55.821Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Testing efficacy of a multi-site environmental education programme in a demographically and biologically diverse setting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2019

Ella R. Brown ,
Muhammad Ali Imron Open the ORCID record for Muhammad Ali Imron [Opens in a new window] ,
Marco Campera  and
K.A.I. Nekaris Open the ORCID record for K.A.I. Nekaris [Opens in a new window]
Ella R. Brown
Affiliation:
The Little Fireface Project, Cipaganti, West Java, Indonesia
Muhammad Ali Imron
Affiliation:
Department of Forest Resources Conservation, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Marco Campera
Affiliation:
The Little Fireface Project, Cipaganti, West Java, Indonesia Nocturnal Primate Research Group, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK
K.A.I. Nekaris*
Affiliation:
The Little Fireface Project, Cipaganti, West Java, Indonesia Nocturnal Primate Research Group, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK
*
Author for correspondence: K.A.I. Nekaris, Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Creating and assessing relatively broad conservation education curricula is important when trying to reach a variety of students. We used a curriculum centred around a storybook in 12 schools in four separate areas of Indonesia, reaching 529 students. We visited each school twice, and taught the ecology and importance of the target taxa, Indonesia’s seven threatened slow loris species (Nycticebus spp.). Through cultural consensus analyses and structural equation modelling, we found that students from all regions showed improvements in knowledge, and that the distance from the forest to where children lived, teachers’ use of given education materials, and students’ use of the storybook all affected student performance in drawing and essay accuracy. Here we make suggestions for creating and evaluating multi-site environmental education programmes. We recommend creating curricula that are not inclusive of any particular community; providing teachers with materials to supplement a conservation intervention; giving each child their own copy of any visual materials used in the lessons; following up with students and teachers about the use of such materials; and interviewing teachers and students regarding their experience with and attitudes towards the study subject. Furthermore we suggest practitioners share their materials and have confidence in adapting them for other species and locations.

Keywords

NycticebusIndonesiastructural equation modelfreelistscultural consensus analysis
Type
Research Paper
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 47 , Issue 1: Thematic Section: Bringing Species and Ecosystems Together with Remote Sensing Tools to Develop New Biodiversity Metrics and Indicators , March 2020 , pp. 60 - 66
Copyright
© Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adam, AW, Legge, JD, Leinbach, TR, Mohamad, GS, Wolters, OW and McDivitt, JF (2019) Indonesia. In Encyclopædia Britannica.Google Scholar
Ainsworth, S, Prain, V and Tytler, R (2011) Drawing to learn in science. Science 333, 1096–1097.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asunta, T (2003) Knowledge of Environmental Issues: Where Pupils Acquire Information and How it Affects their Attitudes, Opinions, and Laboratory Behaviour. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylä University Printing House.Google Scholar
Balestri, M, Campera, M, Nekaris, KAI and Donati, G (2017) Assessment of long-term retention of environmental education lessons given to teachers in rural areas of Madagascar. Applied Environmental Education & Communication 16, 298–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bettinger, TL, Kuhar, CW, Lehnhardt, K, Cox, D and Cress, D (2010) Discovering the unexpected: lessons learned from evaluating conservation education programmes in Africa. American Journal of Primatology 72, 445–449.10.1002/ajp.20735CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bögeholz, S (2006) Nature experience and its importance for environmental knowledge, values and action: recent German empirical contributions. Environmental Education Research 12, 65–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, M (2002) Drawing to learn (Doctoral dissertation, University of Alberta).Google Scholar
Comrey, AL and Lee, HB (2013) A First Course in Factor Analysis. New York, NY: Psychology Press.10.4324/9781315827506CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crudge, B, O’Connor, D, Hunt, M, Davis, EO and Browne-Nuñez, C (2016) Groundwork for effective conservation education: an example of in situ and ex situ collaboration in South East Asia. International Zoo Yearbook 50, 34–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erhabor, NI and Don, JU (2016) Impact of environmental education on the knowledge and attitude of students towards the environment. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education 11, 5367–5375.Google Scholar
Esson, M and Moss, A (2016) The challenges of evaluating conservation education across cultures. International Zoo Yearbook 50, 61–67.10.1111/izy.12113CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espinosa, S and Jacobsen, SK (2011) Human–wildlife conflict and environmental education: evaluating a community program to protect the Andean bear in Ecuador. Journal of Environmental Education 43, 55–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gnidovec, T and Torkar, G (2019) Primary school students’ conceptions about owls, experiences with owls and their sources of information. Journal of Baltic Science Education 18, 254–263.10.33225/jbse/19.18.254CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grieser, M, Rawlins, B and Khulood, T (2000) Water conservation in Jordan: a novel approach to curriculum development. In: Environmental Education and Communication for a Sustainable World, eds. Day, BA and Monroe, MC, pp. 121–129. Washington, DC: Academy for Educational Development.Google Scholar
Hooper, D, Coughlan, J and Mullen, M (2008) Structural equation modeling: guidelines for determining model fit. Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods 6, 53–60.Google Scholar
IUCN (2018) The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2018–2, Table 6a. URL http://www.iucnredlist.org.Google Scholar
Jacobson, SK (1991) Evaluation model for developing, implementing, and assessing conservation education programs: examples from Belize and Costa Rica. Environmental Management 15, 143–150.10.1007/BF02393846CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobson, SK and Padua, SM (1995) Conservation education using parks in Malaysia and Brazil. In: Conserving Wildlife: International Education and Communication Approaches, ed. Jacobson, SK, pp. 1–15. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Jiménez, A, Díaz, MJ, Monroe, MC and Benayas, J (2015) Analysis of the variety of education and outreach interventions in biodiversity conservation projects in Spain. Journal for Nature Conservation 23, 61–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleiman, DG, Reading, RP, Miller, BJ, Clark, TW, Scott, JM, Robinson, J, Wallace, RL et al. (2000) Improving the evaluation of conservation programmes. Conservation Biology 14, 356–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhar, CW, Bettinger, TL, Lehnhardt, K, Townsend, S and Cox, D (2007) Evaluating the impact of a conservation education programme in the Kalinzu Forest Reserve, Uganda. International Zoo Educators Journal 43, 12–15.Google Scholar
Kuhar, CW, Bettinger, TL, Lehnhardt, K, Tracy, O and Cox, D (2010) Evaluating for long-term impact of an environmental education program at the Kalinzu Forest Reserve, Uganda. American Journal of Primatology 72, 407–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linder, SM and Simpson, A (2018) Towards an understanding of early childhood mathematics education: a systematic review of the literature focusing on practicing and prospective teachers. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 19, 274–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marriott, S (2002) Red in tooth and claw? Images of nature in modern picture books. Children’s Literature in Education 33, 175–183.10.1023/A:1019677931406CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCabe, S and Nekaris, KAI (2018) The impact of subtle anthropomorphism on gender differences in learning conservation ecology in Indonesian school children. Applied Environmental Education & Communication. DOI: 10.1080/1533015X.2018.1427011.10.1080/1533015X.2018.1427011CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mueller, ST and Veinott, ES (2008) Cultural mixture modeling: a method for identifying cultural consensus. ARA Technology Review 4, 39–45.Google Scholar
Nekaris, KAI (2016) The Little Fireface Project: community conservation of Asia’s slow lorises via ecology, education, and empowerment. In: Ethnoprimatology, ed. Waller, M., pp. 259–272. New York, NY: Springer International Publishing.10.1007/978-3-319-30469-4_14CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nekaris, KAI, Shepherd, CR, Starr, CR and Nijman, V (2010) Exploring cultural drivers for wildlife trade via an ethnoprimatological approach: a case study of slender and slow lorises (Loris and Nycticebus) in South and Southeast Asia. American Journal of Primatology 72, 877–886.10.1002/ajp.20842CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nekaris, KAI, McCabe, S, Spaan, D, Ali, MI and Nijman, V (2018) A novel application of cultural consensus models to evaluate conservation education programmes. Conservation Biology 32, 466–476.10.1111/cobi.13023CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norris, KS and Jacobson, SK (1998) Content analysis of tropical conservation education programs: Elements of success. Journal of Environmental Education 30, 38–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Padua, S and Jacobson, S (1993) A comprehensive approach to an Environmental Education Program in Brazil. Journal of Environmental Education 24, 29–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinlan, M (2005) Considerations for collecting freelists in the field: examples from ethobotany. Field Methods 17, 219–234.10.1177/1525822X05277460CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ressurreição, A, Gibbons, J, Kaiser, M, Dentinho, TP, Zarzycki, T, Bentley, C, Austen, M et al. (2012) Different cultures, different values: the role of cultural variation in public’s WTP for marine species conservation. Biological Conservation 145, 148–159.10.1016/j.biocon.2011.10.026CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosa, CD, Profice, C and Collado, S (2018) Nature experiences and adults’ self-reported pro-environmental behaviors: the role of connectedness to nature and childhood nature experiences. Frontiers in Psychology 9, 1055.10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01055CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schrauf, RW and Sanchez, J (2008) Using freelisting to identify, assess, and characterize age differences in shared cultural domains. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 63, S385–S393.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sobel, D (2003) Place-based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities. Great Barrington, MA: Orion.Google Scholar
Spiteri, A and Nepalz, SK (2006) Incentive-based conservation programmes in developing countries: a review of some key issues and suggestions for improvements. Environmental Management 37(1), 1–14.10.1007/s00267-004-0311-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torkar, G, Gnidovec, T, Tunnicliffe, SD and Tomažič, I (2019) Assessing students’ knowledge of owls from their drawings and written responses. Journal of Biological Education 53, 54–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trundle, KC, Troland, TH and Pritchard, TG (2008) Representations of the moon in children’s literature: an analysis of written and visual text. Journal of Elementary Science Education 20, 17–28.10.1007/BF03174700CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsoi, KH, Chan, SY, Lee, YC, Ip, BHY and Cheang, CC (2016) Shark conservation: an educational approach based on children’s knowledge and perceptions toward sharks. PLoS ONE 11, e0163406.10.1371/journal.pone.0163406CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wallis, J and Lonsdorf, EV (2010) Summary of recommendations for primate conservation education programmes. American Journal of Primatology 72, 441–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wells, NM and Lekies, KS (2006) Nature and the life course: pathways from childhood nature experiences to adult environmentalism. Children Youth and Environments 16, 1–24.Google Scholar
de White, TG and Jacobson, SK (1994) Evaluating conservation education programmes at a South American zoo. Journal of Environmental Education 25, 18–22.10.1080/00958964.1994.9941960CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, L and Yin, F (2014) Wildlife consumption and conservation awareness in China: a long way to go. Biodiversity and Conservation 23, 2371–2381.10.1007/s10531-014-0708-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, W, Goodale, E and Chen, J (2014) How contact with nature affects children’s biophilia, biophobia and conservation attitude in China. Biological Conservation 177, 109–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar