The Study on the Effectiveness of Self-Directed Environmental Education on Alternative School Children’s Climate Change Awareness, Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practical Competence in Responding to Climate Change

Objectives The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of self-directed environmental education on alternative school children’s climate change awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and practical competence in responding to climate change. Methods The subjects of this study are 17 middle and high school students from S Alternative School in Seoul who participated in self-directed environmental education. The tendencies of the research variables were examined using mean and standard deviation, while normality was assessed through skewness, kurtosis, and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests. The effectiveness of self-directed environmental education was examined using the Wilcoxon test, a non-parametric statistical method for analyzing differences between paired pre-test and post-test samples. Results The main results are as follows: First, the analysis of pre- and post-trends in climate change awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and practical competence in responding to climate change through self-directed environmental education showed improvements ranging from a minimum of 0.28 points to a maximum of 1.04 points. This suggests that the effectiveness of self-directed environmental education has been somewhat validated. Second, statistical significance was found in the post-test scores for attitudes towards climate change (S-W) and practical competence in responding to climate change (K-S), as well as in the pre-test scores for reflective capacity (K-S, S-W) and the post-test scores for reflective capacity (S-W). The sample size was also less than 30, confirming the necessity of using non-parametric methods for statistical analysis. The pre- and post-test results of climate change awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and practical competence through self-directed environmental education showed that while climate change awareness did not yield statistically significant results, there were statistically significant differences in climate change knowledge and attitudes. There were statistically significant differences in practical competence in responding to climate change and its sub-factors (climate change knowledge, climate change sensitivity, reflective capacity, integrative thinking, communication skills, and decision-making skills). Conclusions The results of this study confirm that, beyond merely recognizing climate change, self-directed environmental education can enhance climate change knowledge, attitudes, and practical competence in responding to climate change. Therefore, it is essential to continuously develop and disseminate these educational programs and to verify their effectiveness by applying them in a variety of educational settings.