Children’s perceptions of sharks and understanding of its ecological significance for educational implications

Children’s perception of sharks

More than 57% participants believe sharks enjoying the butchering of marine organisms and about 19% believe the misfortune or disaster would come once sharks appear. More than 37% suppose human face frequent shark attacks, whereas 25% have considered killing the sharks because they are claimed to be bad guys. It is interesting to unveil the causes for developing such negative perceptions toward the sharks among the children. We suppose the mass media may exert a great effect to the perceptual belief of the children. This view is affirmed by the data obtained from this project. Our study explores the significant but negative correlation between the children’s perceptions and the information sources popularly accessed by the youth, including internet forum, entertainment magazines, book types of games and even the computer game itself. The discussion of the following contexts is based on these issues.

A focal group interview affirms that the fearful portray of sharks is induced by the mass media and movie. The emotive reaction and too much media hype may probably perpetuate the myths of shark attack (Peschak, 2006; Preen & Richards, 2006). The public responses of the attacks are commonly exaggerated and over-stressed, leading to the illusion that shark attacks are frequent and serious (Peschak, 2006; Rochat, 2006). A well known example is the phenomenon induced by a media show ‘Summer of the Shark 2001’. The TV programme not only sparked hot debates in America, but also triggered the press over-stressing on shark attack incidence during the show period. The similar situation occurs in local media. It is not uncommon to find frightening wordings and portrays in reporting shark attack events. For instances, a headline highlighted ‘Jaws is on show in Egypt – cutting swimmers into pieces’ in a local newspaper, Ming Pao on Dec 7, 2010 (page A25). Children’s perception of sharks might have been nurtured amid such engrossed public attention and emotive media (Corey, 2009). This may explain why about 37% of children believe we are facing the frequent shark attacks, whereas 50% of children don’t know or falsely believe the number of peoples being killed in shark attack is more than those in traffic accidents. Actually the number of people being killed by the shark attacks declined from 11 in 2000 to 6 in 2010 (Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, 2011), yet nearly 1.27 million peoples are killed in the road accident every year (WHO, 2008). Peschak (2006) suggested the media should play a more constructive role in communicating precisely on the factual issues of sharks to the public.

The improvement of the 3-dimensional or computerized graphic technique may improve the realism (Frank, 2003). Recently, such advanced imaging technique has been widely applied in making animations or movies. In some popular movies such as ‘Shark tale’ and ‘Finding Nemo’, sharks are described as gang members, mobs or mad guys. About 50% of the students have seen the above movies and described the sharks as bad guys as well in the focal group interview (data not shown in this study), whereas 30% of the children participating our study supports the view ‘sharks are bad animals’. These informal messages combining with the overstressed propagation would exaggerate the fact (Slovic & Fischhoff, 1977), easily projecting the fearsome or bad character into all sharks (Daskolia et al., 2006). Furthermore, children and teenagers play computer games very popularly. Some shark-related online games have been searched. The match results show that almost all games project the theme of sharks killing peoples. For example, in the online game ‘Mad Shark game’ http://www.funny-games.biz/shark-game.html, the player (shark) tries to escape from the human attack but need to eat enough food (including human) to keep their strength. In another game ‘Swim for your life’ http://www.freeonlinegames.name/en/games/swim-for-your-life.html, the player acts as a boat rider to avoid the attack from a hungry shark. Such ideas influence the children’s belief and perception, leading to the views like sharks enjoying the butchering of marine organisms and shark appearance associating with the misfortune or disaster. Such negative ideas also form a hindrance for handling the complex issue in the learning process (Menzel & Bögeholz, 2008).

Children's conceptual level

Not just the media or games, we believe the level of conceptual understanding about the shark issues is also important for shaping their perceptual thought. We have affirmed a positive and significant correlation bewteen the conceptual and perceptual scores, indicating that the higher level of conceptual understanding is associated with the more positive perception towards the sharks. It is noted that the conceptual score is generally not correlated to any genders, age and schools according to the current study. However it is found to have a positive correlation between the academic results of the subject General Studies. According to the General Studies for Primary Schools Curriculum Guide (Curriculum Development Council, 2011), one of the subject learning outcomes is to develop pupils’ care and concern for the environment under the strand of ‘People and Environment’. This strand aims to promote their basic understanding of the nature and the relationships between mankind and the environment. The current study reflects the effective alignment of the curriculum contexts to its intended learning objectives.

Ecological concepts are fundamental of environmental education for children (Munson, 1994; Hungerford et al., 2001; Jordan et al., 2009). The following discussion focus on the children’s understanding of the ecological concepts in aspects of feeding mode of sharks, their ecological significance and impacts on biodiversity. Feeding relationships among different species of a biotic community are regarded as the core study concepts in ecology and ecosystem (Griffiths & Grant, 1985; Gallegos et al., 1994; Leach et al., 1995). More than half of children realize the predator role of sharks in the ecosystem yet it is interesting to note that the information source obtained from teachers give a negative impact on this conceptual issue. Further exploration is required to clarify what the problem is. We have discussed the perception mediated by the sensational responses of the media and the computer games that sharks are generally described as man-eating animals. Thus it is not surprised to report about one fifth of the children having the false belief that human is their normal diet type. The results of these items also reveal their insufficiency of the ecological concepts. All sharks are carnivores and most of the species feed on relatively small fish (Carrier et al., 2004). Yet around one fifth of participants claim sharks feed on seaweed and more than half believed sharks could shift from carnivorous to herbivorous feeding mode, reflecting their poor understanding of the ecological and knowledge background about the sharks.

Nearly half of the children could not truly reflect the interaction among different organisms living in the marine ecosystem. The complexity of how the components interacting together in ecosystems (Hmelo-Silver & Azevedo, 2006) make the ecological concepts becoming the difficult topics for learning and understanding (e.g. Adeniyi 1985; Griffiths & Grant, 1985; Gallegos et al., 1994; Munson, 1994; Barman et al., 1995; Grotzer & Basca, 2003). For handling these complex issues, children may prone to use a simple way for reasoning (Groves & Pugh, 2002), leading to insufficient understanding or even the occurrence of misunderstanding (Papadimitriou, 2004). In our study, a conceptual item is raised to investigate their understanding of the relationship between the great white and plankton. Plankton is not the diet of the carnivorous great white but it takes an essential role as the producer to capture the light energy (phytoplankton). It participates in the energy transfer process in the form of biomass to other organisms of the higher trophic level and finally to the top predators within the ecosystem. This tiny plankton may thus support the whole ecosystem including the great white. However, about 43% of the participants do not realize the link between these two organisms, but about 96% realize the more obvious feeding relationship between shark and fish. Their misconceptions are associated with the difficulty in understanding the concepts in views of the holistic ‘system’ (Barman et al., 1995; Palmer, 1997; Grotzer & Basca, 2003). The children simply consider the direct link of predator and prey, but neglect the inter-dependency of other organisms (the whole ecosystem) living in the same habitat. A similar thought is also revealed in another study that the sharks would only be slightly affected if all producers disappear (Barman & Mayer, 1994). This may explain why young learners generally made a common misconception that the population of one organism is only important for the others on which it feeds or the two organisms are directly linked by the predator and prey relationship (Griffiths & Grant, 1985; Barman & Mayer, 1994; Munson, 1994).

In the impacts of biodiversity, about half participants believe ‘too many sharks’ is the main cause of the fish catch decline, revealing that children tend to think about the interrelatedness in a simple link of the predator-prey relationship (discussed in the previous section) and the linear cause-effect pathway as similar as other studies reported (Griffiths & Grant, 1985; Munson, 1994; Barman et al., 1995; Leach et al., 1996; Green, 1997). An interesting finding obtained from a similar scenario shows that more than third quarters realize shark catchers should take the greatest accountability for the drop of shark population whereas only about one third claim the responsibility of fin eaters (data not shown in the result section). It is believed the children neglect someone left behind - who drives the shark catchers hunting more sharks. Children generally like to use this simple linear model to explain the direct link between the cause and effect in various ecological scenarios and thus they have the difficulty in grasping the concepts of multiple causality to account of the relation (Green, 1997; Grotzer & Basca, 2003). Therefore Jordan et al. (2009) suggested enhancing the explicit delineation of the concepts ‘systems’ and ‘cycles’ for promoting the deeper understanding of the interactions and connections.

Information sources and reading preference

Another interesting finding is the way of information acquired for the development of conceptual framework in shark and ecological issues. Not only books, television programme and internet websites have also been regarded as the typical materials and sources of information for facilitating the conceptualization in the modern world (Tsikalas et al., 2007). Among the various information sources in study, only the parental source is found to have a significant and positive correlation to the total conceptual scores. Parental involvements have been proved to have beneficial effects to academic outcomes and achievement of children (e.g. Eccles & Harold, 1993; Strage & Swanson-Brandt, 1999; Hill, 2001; Rosenzweig, 2001; Epstein & Sanders, 2002). Ho and Willms (1996) agreed home discussion like talking with parents is strongly associated with the academic achievement of children. Rintoul et al. (1998) suggested more parental interactions may facilitate the children’s cognitive development, whereas Hoff-Ginsberg (1986) and Vibbert & Bornstein (1989) reported the information providing by the parents may exert positive effects on the growth of the children’s cognitive skill. Our study also reveals that the parental information source is constructive for the promotion of the children’s performance, especially significant to boys, whereas book preference on nature and TV documentary are found to be significantly associated with the performance of girls. It may be explained that females are reported to preferably use reading and well-organized materials for learning (Keri 2002) or more significant use of learning strategies (Valle et al., 1997; Rusillo & Arias, 2004). However the conceptual scores and PCA results support that the information source from the internet forum and computer games exert the negative influence to the performance.

Educational implications

This study reveals a high proportion of children getting negative perceptions and poor conceptual understanding of sharks. We suggest three approaches for improving the children in learning the issues.

Conceptual background: This study verifies the positive correlation between the perceptual thought and the conceptual understanding. Negative perceptions and misconceptions are grounded on the insufficient knowledge framework and understanding of the ecological significance of the sharks and the relevant ecological issues. We believe the promotion of the shark and environmental conservation should be based on the correct and throughout understanding of this animal and its relevant ecological knowledge.

Information sources: Another approach is the identification of constructive information sources in learning process. Those books and TV documentary should be actively promoted, while the parental education is a very potential way to be developed for fostering the children’s environmental understanding and literacy. However for those children preferring to acquire information from internet forum or entertainment magazines, or like playing computer games and reading books about games (computer), more guidance should be given for avoiding any potential occurrence of misconceptions and negative attitude.

Pedagogical approaches: The third approach is the improvement of pedagogical strategy for promoting their conceptual change. This study reveals the gender sensitive attributes and thus the specific pedagogical strategies can be developed on the basis of the gender needs. For example, encouraging more parental involvement and support may have a big gain in the conceptual performance of their children, especially for boys. More seminars or workshops can be organized for the parents. More book types of nature and TV documentary should be provided in school or at home, yet girls may get a big gain from this approach instead. A good reading habit should also be encouraged to all children. The effect of computer game is bidirectional (Vigdor and Ladd 2010) and thus this tool can also be transformed into an informative learning aid if correct information and positive attitude towards the issues is aligned into the game design.

In general, this study provides some significant insights into the development of children’s perceptions and conceptions of sharks and related ecological issues. These perceptual belief and conceptual understanding may form the critical foundation for promoting the environmental education and developing children’s environmental literacy.