Developing and evaluating the effectiveness of a place based climate change education toolkit in Missouri
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[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI SYSTEM AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Climate change is the most serious environmental issue facing humans in modern society. It is more relevant today than ever before since a massive increase in greenhouse gas emissions is predicted to occur during the next 50 years. Since humans are major contributors to this irreversible change, there are primary two ways to respond to this threat: mitigation and adaption. Strategic action is needed, and education is key to raise public awareness and understanding of climate change impacts. Parks and protected areas are ideal locations to communicate the impacts of climate change. People regard parks as highly important and many of them have special connections with these places, thus, they are more likely to respond to impacts that they can see first-hand. According to a recent study, state park interpreters in Missouri showed interest in talking to visitors about climate change if the approach is place-based. Place-based education features local impacts that have the potential to deepen public awareness and understanding of climate change. This study developed and evaluated the effectiveness of a place-based toolkit for climate change education by using a quasi-experimental design. The study involved 38 high school students. We hypothesized that place-based education would promote student knowledge, awareness about climate change, sense of responsibility, and hope to take individual and collective actions regarding climate change as compared to the traditional teaching method. Program effectiveness was assessed using a set of pre- and post-test instruments. Results of the study suggest that carefully designed place-based climate change education can be an effective way to engage high-school students with climate change. There was a significant amount of increase in student knowledge, sense of responsibility, awareness, and hope regarding climate change after implementing the place-based education program as compared to those who were taught about this environmental issue in a traditional manner.
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