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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 19, Issue 2, Article 13(Dec., 2018) |
The study took place at one high school situated close to the World Cultural Landscape Heritage in Bali Province, Indonesia, from early January until the end of April 2017. In total, 68 students from two classes were recruited (age 15–16 years; M = 15.8) with slightly more females than males (55.9% and 44.1%, respectively). They participated in STSE education by designing and presenting PP slides (n = 35) and PV (n = 33).
To measure changes in the students' attitudes toward the environment, we used two quantitative instruments—each consisted of 15 statement items. The first instrument was the NEP revised version (Dunlap et al., 2000) (see Table 1). It has been translated into Bahasa (Indonesian Language) with details of the mechanism required for translating and paraphrasing as reported by Surata (2017). The LEP was the second instrument and assessed the local perspectives of students toward the subak cultural landscape heritage (Surata, 2017) (see Table 2). We applied the LEP to complement the NEP because the scale is limited to a general environmental focus (Schuett & Ostergreen, 2003). Finally, we randomly selected five students from each presentation type (PP and PV) and interviewed them about why they agree or disagrees with item statements with the lowest overall score.
Teaching and Learning Activities
The STSE learning education was implemented from January to June 2017 using a subak rice field as a case study in exploring, understanding, and solving the problems of the local ecosystem and communities. We applied socio-scientific issues-based approaches "to include discussion of how science and society share a more complex interdependence" (Zandvliet, 2010, p. 16). As we mentioned above, the subak is a complex adaptive system that has been sustained for more than two millennia through co-evolution between the Balinese farmers and their local environment rich with socio-scientific values, concepts, and issues. Hence, the system is an excellent model to study higher concerns about the relationship between scientific and technological issues in the development of a sustainable society (Makrakis, 2012).
The teaching strategy included a 12-week plan consisting of two 45-minute classes each week. All teaching/learning processes were facilitated by one teacher to avoid bias by the different teachers. Week 1 comprised a pre-test after which a lesson introduction was given. Week 2 encouraged students to determine the relationship between global and local environmental issues by discussing global warming and reading a text entitled "Lansekap budaya subak. Belajar dari masa lalu membangun masa depan" (The Subak Cultural Landscape: Learning from the past to build the future) (Surata, 2013). Students were encouraged to discuss the connection between science and technology with the local and global environment and why this is essential. They were also encouraged to evaluate the impact of local farming traditions toward global warming. Week 3 comprised a short presentation by each student group about concerns related to environmental concepts, topics, and problems about the subak focused on critical thinking regarding integration of social, economical, ecological, and cultural aspects for sustainable living. Week 4 consisted of training groups on how to create effective PPs and PVs after which each group was required to make either a PP or PV using the main ideas or topics discussed in week 3 regarding solving the environmental problems of the subak. Weeks 5–6 included a visit to the subak rice terraces where students interviewed farmers, took photos, recorded videos, and investigated issues that display the relationship among science, technology, society, and the environment.
Weeks 7–8 were spent on group work focused on editing and producing PPs and PVs as tools to take collective action based on their concerns and experiences during the field visit. Next, weeks 9–10 saw the groups deliver their PPs and PVs and leading class discussions. We followed Pedretti's (2003) suggestion in the context of STSE by encouraging students to discuss ethics and moral reasoning via socio-scientific issues of the subak system. In week 11, students participated in a post-survey that included the NEP and LEP items. Finally, in week 12, our research group interviewed five students from each PP and PV class and asked them why they agreed or disagreed with statements from items 6 and 14 of the NEP and LEP, respectively (these items received the lowest score overall from the post-survey administered at week 11).
The NEP and LEP scales were distributed to all students before and after the teaching/learning process. They were asked to rate the extent to which agreed or disagreed with each statement from the NEP and LEP items according to a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Items 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 14 were reverse scored (1 = strongly agree to 5 = strongly disagree) for both the NEP and LEP. The environmental concern variable for the NEP and LEP items were calculated by totaling the students' scores for all 15 items. A collective agreement was observed if the average of the 15 item scores equaled 3 (neutral) with <3 indicating human-centered and >3 indicating environment-centered.
Data were analyzed descriptively by calculating the items' average scores, which are visually presented in tables. The Wilcoxon test was used to examine students' scores before and after the STSE approach, Meanwhile, the Mann-Whitney U test measured the difference between the PP and PV classes. The results were assessed according to significance levels of 0.001, 0.01, and 0.05.
To determine the validity of the NEP and LEP, these tests were conducted on students not included in the samples with α = 0.80 and 0.76 for NEP and LEP, respectively. Internal reliability was also determined with α = 0.72 (NEP) and 0.71 (LEP).
