212 R. Rice et al.
researchers took control of the session, but with the teacher remaining in the classroom to assist with any issues, such as with discipline. The topic of the intervention was ecosys- tems on Maio, and we used local examples to show the ef- fects of human activities on ecosystems, both detrimental (threats such as litter and vehicles) and beneficial (con- servation work such as turtle patrols and beach cleans). Firstly, we introduced the topic of ecosystems in a 10 min
presentation on the types of habitats on Maio and the spe- cies in each ecosystem. The focus was on the protected area Salinas do Porto Inglês. For this chosen ecosystem the class discussed what kinds of species are present and what the ecosystem comprises, including both biotic and abiotic components. For every organism suggested the class dis- cussed what that organism depended on, allowing them to make links between ecosystem components. We then helped the students create an ecosystem network containing all the organisms that were suggested and all the connec- tions discussed. We identified threats to the ecosystem, and we used five key examples for the activity: (1)quad bikes, (2) illegal sand extraction, (3) too many people, (4) lit- ter and (5) hotel construction. We then recreated this eco- system with the children. Every child represented part of the ecosystem (e.g. species of birds, turtles and plants, water and sand) by drawing cartoons on paper. The connec- tions between ecosystem components were represented by holding a rope at each end. The threats to the ecosytem were also represented by cartoons on paper, and either a re- searcher or a researcher with a student would hold the car- toon to represent the threat, depending on classroom size. For each threat we discussed what kind of problems this threat generated for an organism or a connection. If a con- nection (rope) between the organisms (students) was bro- ken by the threat (researcher or student), we placed the rope on the floor. We discussed all threats until all of the ropes were on the floor, indicating that the ecosystem was ruined. After the activity we held a group discussion to talk about the work of Maio Biodiversity Foundation and to dis- cuss what everyone could do to stop these threats from de- stroying local ecosystems.
Questionnaires
We designed a questionnaire to evaluate the environmental attitudes, aspirations and knowledge of local environmental issues of the students before and after the environmental education intervention (Supplementary Materials 1 & 2). The questionnaire comprised 14 statements, with responses to be provided on a 1–5 Likert scale (1, strongly disagree to 5, strongly agree) and three open-ended questions, categorized into five groups: (1) science, (2) animals, (3) litter, (4) aspira- tions and (5) knowledge of local environmental issues. We developed the questionnaire in English and then translated it into Portuguese, and the final editing of the questionnaire
was undertaken by a Cape Verdean with experience in schools (JA), to ensure the questions and language were appropriate and understandable. We applied the question- naires immediately before the intervention and 1 week after the intervention. In total, 131 students filled out at least one questionnaire. Nine students were absent for one of the two applications and therefore we analysed only the response of the 122 students who filled out both pre- and post-activity questionnaires. We anonymized student iden- tities by using a numbering system.
Analysis
The open-ended questions were interpreted by one author (RR) and converted into a score of 1–5. The highest score of 5 represented a complete answer showing full compre- hension of the question. The lowest score of 1 represented no useful answer, an incorrect answer or no understanding of the question. Two of the statements implied a negative attitude: (1) ‘I find science boring’ and (2) ‘I leave my litter on the floor’; therefore, the scores for these were reversed for the analysis. For each group of statements (science, an- imals, litter, aspirations and knowledge of local environ- mental issues) we applied a multivariate mixed model analysis to assess the effect of the intervention. We inves- tigated the relationships between the dependent variables (scores of questions) and three fixed independent variables (school, gender, intervention), with the student number used as a random effect. To determine the effect of gender and school on student learning, we calculated the differ- ence in scores before and after the intervention, and we conducted a two-way multivariate analysis of variance on these differences. Gender and school type were the inde- pendent variables and differences in scores per question were the dependent variables. We performed all statistical analyses using R 4.1.3
(R Core Team, 2020). For modelling we used the package lme4 (Bates et al., 2015)in R.
Results
Exposure to the environmental education intervention (variable Intervention) was the most influential in the ques- tionnaire outputs (Table 1). The scores of 11 of 17 state- ments and questions significantly differed before and after the intervention, and the scores of nine statements varied between schools. Responses did not vary between genders.
Opinions regarding science
The statement ‘I like science lessons’ was significantly af- fected by both Intervention and School. The students stated that they liked science lessons less after the intervention;
Oryx, 2024, 58(2), 210–217 © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605323000303
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