CHANGING CHILDREN’S ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES BY CHANGING THE FAMILIAR STORIES? RESULTS OF AN EXPERIMENT
CHANGING CHILDREN’S ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES BY CHANGING THE FAMILIAR STORIES? RESULTS OF AN EXPERIMENT

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents the results of an experiment regarding a pre-test and post-test study of environmental attitudes in children before and after reading a particular collection of eco-stories. The main aim of this research was to empirically establish whether reading literature with an explicit eco-pedagogical dimension would improve children’s environmental attitudes. Four eco-stories were read to children over a 3–4-week period in a school environment. The experiment was performed with 5th and 6th graders (mostly11-year-old children), in two eco-schools and two regular schools in wider Split area. It was presumed that results would differ due to differing levels of previous ecoeducation. Children read stories from the collection Fairy-Tales for a Better Tomorrow(2010) in which popular children’s literary and media texts are reworked in an environmentally aware fashion. To obtain the answers to the posed questions, a mix of instruments was used: quantitative pre- and post-reading questionnaires, openended comprehension questions in story response sheets, as well as autonomous creation of children’s own stories. Eco-school students were found to have more positive environmental attitudes overall, but no difference of attitudes was shown before vs. after reading the eco-stories across both groups of schools. Results of this study are compared to a recent study with opposing results (Ebersbach and Brandenburger 2020), whereas some suggestive trends emerging from the present study are discussed. Most notably, we have arrived at the trend suggesting a correlation of children’s previous environmental education and personal experience to the way they read and respond to eco-stories.

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