What I have learned by doing youth environmental education online

Time flies by and the Covid-19 situation in Taiwan is getting worse with the Delta variance. At this time, it is a pity that I cannot do in-person research and giving local marine issues exhibitions in the museum settings. However, it turns out that sometimes misfortune is a blessing in disguise. Specifically, I got an opportunity to make a marine environmental issue website to share with the public. Before discussing what I’ve learned during the website construction, I would like to talk a little bit more about OSU’s IRB application.

To start the project, I will have to apply for OSU’s IRB. One thing worth mentioning is that my research subjects are mainly early adolescents – the youth; therefore, I will need to have additional steps when providing the documents to apply for the IRB. For those of you unfamiliar with the term “IRB” I will provide you some basic idea of what is IRB? According to the FDA’s definition, the term “IRB” – “Institutional Review Board” – is a committee that provides reviewing and approval of applications for research projects involving human subjects. So, what is the purpose of IRB in human subjects’ research? The main purpose of the IRB is to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects. Particularly, children are more vulnerable and require special considerations in the research. I followed the Research Ethics Committee Guidance Research Involving Children to design and conduct research that is suitable for the youth.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term “IRB” I will provide you some basic idea of what is IRB? According to the FDA’s definition, the term “IRB” – “Institutional Review Board” – is a committee that provides reviewing and approval of applications for research projects involving human subjects. So, what is the purpose of IRB in human subjects’ research? The main purpose of the IRB is to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects. Particularly, children are more vulnerable and require special considerations in the research. I followed the Research Ethics Committee Guidance Research Involving Children to design and conduct research that is suitable for the youth.

As for making an outreach website, I started to find information regarding marine issues around the world for my website. Something interesting is that although different places have different kinds of marine issues, it seems that these issues are not independent to each other. I found that they will finally point to one of the critical problems related to humans – marine food security. This is the ‘Aha’ moment for me. Because one of the challenges of communicating abstract issues with the public is that they are rarely related to people’s life experiences. And this finding could be one of the keys to making people link their life with abstract or/and complicated issues. In addition, by doing so people would raise their awareness on critical environmental issues especially marine issues in this case.

Overall, one of the challenges for me is that, although there is a large amount of online information, I need not only select specific marine environmental issues that are suitable for the public but also be careful to edit educational video and text contents that I wrote for the youth. To be more specific, knowing your audience is an important step in science communication.

Things that I have practiced from what I have learned are useful for scientific outreach. First of all, “being inspired”, is somewhat important when communicating science to the general public of any age. That is because people usually want to learn something new and interesting or exciting that more or less makes them see or learn the world differently. Additionally, researchers have indicated that in museum settings keeping the audiences engaged or pay attention can be difficult at the best of times. And in my case, not to mention science education (environmental education in particular) for the youth.

Following the guide that “children just starting out in primary school may only be able to focus on an activity for around 10 minutes or so” the contents that I selected should hook children’s eyes and not going too far that is beyond their understanding. Although there are challenges to work with the youth, one of the advantages of my research in youth environmental education is that local marine issues would be as place-based learning for the youth and this may hook their eyes. Also, I believe through learning new knowledge from this virtual museum, early adolescents could construct or refine their environmental identity and stewardship.

To conclude, no matter what age of my audience is, things that a general public audience would be willing to learn – from the museum exhibitions or the online learning website (or virtual museums) – are interesting, inspiring, and somehow related to their life experiences. Therefore, if someone would like to try doing science outreach, I would recommend you think about what excites you regarding your work and then build it into a talk that is suitable for your audience. Above all, you should amaze yourself first. Finally, the greatest thing I enjoy in science outreach is I can engage with people, create a scientific dialogue and listen to their life stories – their life experiences with marine science.

Virtual museum study approach – my dissertation plan B under the Covid-19 2nd outburst

Things are changing quickly especially the impacts of Covid-19 on the research plan. Originally, I planned to start my pilot study in July in Taiwan. And I planned to start my Phase I and II study in early September or mid-December based on Taiwan’s cooperating school’s curriculum. Also, the study in the western U.S. will be conducted in August at Hatfield Marine Center and at cooperating schools after the school year starts (September). Schools in both Taiwan and the western U.S. will be those that cooperate with the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium (Taiwan) and the Hatfield Marine Science Center (US). As for the phase III study, I decided to conduct the interview in December or early January of next year (both Taiwan and the western U.S.). However, the timeline above is under an ideal situation. Because of the pandemic worldwide, my research plan should be flexible to change so the research team has had several meetings to discuss a plan B for my research plan.

Overall, the contexts of the three-phase studies in plan B will stay the same. The only difference is that these studies will be done online. Specifically, we will set up a website consisting of links to the phase I survey, phase II PMM pre-test, local marine issues (e.g., outreach videos, interactive online activities, photos, etc.), and phase II PMM post-test. As for phase III in-depth interview, the selected subjects (the same selection methods in the original research plan) will receive an email asking whether they would be willing to participate in the last phase of the study – in-depth interview – through zoom. The link (or QR code) of the website will be sent to teachers (schools) who cooperate with the museums or aquariums to ask them to share with the potential subjects (i.e., early adolescents) who would like to participate in this research.

Since the mutate Covid-19 is happening now in Asia including Taiwan, I am now setting an online outreach website. I first constructed the website framework and asked the technical team to set it up for me. After the team sends me the sketch of the website, I will discuss it with aquarium curators and educators (especially environmental educators) to see what should be added or deleted on my website. It will be interesting to do an online PMM since the participants could choose different types of marine issues that they would like to learn more about. And this could be a precious opportunity to study cultural impacts on the public’s perceptions and interests on these issues even though some of the issues are not local.

How could distal influence in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory affect one’s perception and learning experiences on ocean acidification free-choice learning?

I am a new scholar and since this is my first post, so I’ll start by introducing myself, my background, and then briefly talking about the research topic and the theory as well as paradigm that frame my research.

My name is Shu-Min Tsai, and I am the Malouf Scholar for Oregon Sea Grant. I am pursuing my Ph.D. degree in Environmental Science at Oregon State University. I just finished my prelim and now am a Ph.D. candidate. I am now doing my dissertation research in Taiwan, Brazil and the U.S. Graduate school can be hard and a dredge, and it is not an exception for me especially during the pandemic since my dissertation project is mainly based on museum study regarding the environmental issue – ocean acidification perception among the public.

I am from Taiwan, an island country with a diverse ecosystem and culture. Since ocean acidification (OA) is a serious problem to Taiwan’s coral reef ecosystem and fisheries, also, it is having considerable effects on the Oregon coast, I want to understand more how people’s environmental identity (EID) and worldview could affect their learning experiences on this abstract and complicated climate change issue in a free-choice learning setting (i.e., aquariums and museums).

In the real world, although OA has profound impacts to our marine ecosystem and coastal communities and is often thought of as the evil twins of climate change, the acknowledgment, and understanding of OA among the public is low. The reasons is that to most people, OA is irrelevant to their life experiences also most people are not familiar with its chemical reaction that cause harm to the marine ecosystem; so, all of the reasons cause the awareness of OA and its impacts low among the public. What’s more, OA is a complicated issue not just due to its scientific aspects, it also connects to other aspects that involve personal and social factors such as personal worldview, family education, social norms, and national beliefs. In summary, these factors that I’ve mentioned make the engagement with OA concepts in public settings difficult. So how could we solve this problem?

According to several studies, one of the ways to link people with the environment is through environmental education (EE). Several studies have shown that EE and early childhood experiences with nature can help shape one’s EID. Here, I want to clarify that the EID I mention here and in my dissertation is a combination of Clayton’s environmental identity and environmental worldviews.

So again, I have mentioned that the EE and early childhood experiences with nature can help shape one’s EID. And I believe, reciprocally, one’s EID also affects one’s beliefs or perceptions on specific environmental issues, or their willingness to engage in environmental problem solving, and to address specific issues in the public. In other words, I think, this is a process that has a feedback loop that if an individual has effective EE experiences, these experiences could help us construct EID, literacy. And then ideally, we would put more trust and equity to nature, and then this process could strengthen our environmental identity or even refine or reconstruct it.

However, although we have acknowledged the power of EE and how EE helps construct or refine one’s EID, few studies have focused on how one’s EID affects their further environmental learning experiences. Not to mention what role does EID plays in abstract issues education such as OA learning experiences or people’s will to learn. Therefore, I think it would be worth doing such research focusing on how EID affects one’s EE learning experiences, especially in free-choice learning settings.

To sum up, my overall research goals are to evaluate the influence of EID in abstract environmental concepts perception (e.g., climate change & ocean acidification) in free-choice learning settings and hope to provide a forum for researchers and educators to facilitate future museum exhibition designs and interpretation regarding the public awareness on abstract and complex environmental issues.

To access my research goals, I conduct three study phases to answer three different but related questions as follows:

Phase I, identifying one’s relationship with nature using the EID survey

Phase II, investigating one’s perception before and after they visit the museum and what contributes to their perceptions (this includes their childhood memories or past education) through PMM.

Phase III, conducting an in-depth interview to understand what personal life stories contribute to their EID enactment and their learning experiences.

However, before we go deep into my research, I want to first discuss the theory and paradigm that frame this research. To study the relationship between one’s EID and people’s learning in a free-choice learning setting, I think we should consider how one’s EID is constructed and then refined during one’s lifetime. So, I would like to introduce Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system theory to you since Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system theory would be a suitable model for us to think about EID’s construction and refinement.

Specifically, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory sees child development as a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment, from immediate settings of family and school to broad cultural values, laws, and customs.

To study a child’s development and how a child learns, educators must look not only at the child and his/her immediate environment but also at the interaction of the larger environment as well. And in my study, this larger environment points to the free-choice learning settings, especially museums and aquariums regarding my research topic on people’s understanding of complex and abstract scientific concepts – climate change and ocean acidification.

In my opinion, museums settings are places that meet the criteria of cognitive development in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system theory – individual’s values and identity (e.g., EID) would be influenced by not only their own life experiences (e.g., education) or family values, but also the history, cultural-artifacts, or even from the community or the society (social norms, national identity, and etc.) In other words, we could expect to observe not only proximal influences (e.g., family values, individual beliefs, etc.) but also distal influences on the individual’s EID and values construction in these settings.

What I want to emphasize is that, in his theory model, media, museums are considered as the distal influence of one’s ID construction. Therefore, I consider it is important to think about how we as museum researchers or educators could influence an individual’s EID from the macrosystem. Or in other words, how we can use these distal influences to affect an individual’s EID construction or promote the public perceptions on OA and even trigger pro-environmental behaviors and stewardship. 

Besides Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological System theory, I use sociocultural theory as my research epistemology. It is because studies have indicated that the important aspect in maintaining and constructing identity is the recognition by others. And for the purpose of this research, I am focusing on both the personal and sociocultural contexts that are both important contexts that construct visitor’s museum experience. Also, since I believe that an individual’s EID is shaped by cultural-historical contexts such as artifacts and ways of thinking passed down from generation to generation, the sociocultural theory will be a good fit for my research since it emphasizes both social contexts and the mediating role of cultural-historical perspectives of the community encoded into artifacts.

Last but not the least, I consider this study will be conducted under the pragmatism paradigm since it acknowledges the importance of social-cultural contexts in human knowledge and worldview construction and refinement. And this claim is complimentary with the sociocultural theory that social and cultural contexts play a critical role in learning. Another reason is that I believe different types of research questions within a specific topic need specific methods to access. And this is what the pragmatism paradigm asserts – “the best method is the one that is most effective in producing the desired consequences of the inquiry.”

I am now collecting data in Taiwan’s museums and aquariums and also in the future in the U.S. and Brazil. I am now excited to see the differences between northern Taiwan and southern Taiwan where has different types of shoreline (sand versus rock), education levels, economic and resources status, etc. Hope you will enjoy my further post on my dissertation research around the world.