Regardless of adults or children, they are always confronted with such coverages, that is , the tropical rainforest has been vanishing in a surprising speed. For example, it 's easy for children to understand a kind of graphic illustration, namely. Facing with the frequent and vivid media coverages, children are able to form a series of ideas about the rainforests without any formal education: about what and where they are, and why they are important, and what endangers them, etc. Obviously, these views might be erroneous.
Many studies indicate that children harbour misconceptions on the scientific knowledge learnt at school, and the misconceptions are not isolated, but incorporated with multifaceted, organised and conceptual structure, making ideas stronger, but some of the ideas selves are wrong, so that they are readily accessible to modification. These erroneous ideas are formed by the information from the public media. Sometimes the original information is also false. Schools seem to don't give children an opportunity to re-express their viewpoints, so that the teachers and other students cannot help them test and correct these erros.
Although the media make lots of coverages about the destruction of rainforests, there exists fewer of the information concerning children' relevant ideas. Therefore, the purpose of the study contemporarily is to start provide teachers such information to help them design teaching strategies to build good views upon the students and displace their misconceptions, launching the programs in environmental studies at school.
The study surveys the scientific knowledge and attitudes of children towards rainforests. It requires some students at the secondary school to fulfill a questionaire containing five open-form questions. As for the first question, the commonest response to it is the description of the term of "rainforest".Some children describe it as a wet or hot place. The second question is about the geographical location of the rainforest, and most of response refers to continents or countries: Africa(43%), South Africa(30%), Brazil(25%). And some children gave more common response like "near equator".The third is concerned with the importance of rainforest. The 64% of pupils said that the rainforest provides animals habitats, and fewer of them mentioned that it provides plants habitats, and a little mentioned the indigenous population in this area, in which more girls (70%) than boys (60%) regard it as the home animals.
Similarly, in lower level, more girls(13%) than boys(5%) thought that rainforests provide human beings habitats. These viewpoints are consist with the precious results of the studies about the development and conservation of rainforest, which suggests that girls show more sympathy to small animals.And their ideas are more readily based on animals rather than human beings.
The fourth question refers to the courses of rainforest destruction.Encouragements are that more than 59% of pupils draw it to the human activities, even some use "us" to connect the two parts. Approximately 80%of pupils give blame to the logging activities.
10% of pupils made a mistake that acid rain is destroying the rainforests, and other 10% pupils thought pollution is the main cause. It seems that students mix the causes of rainforest destruction with the destroyed reasons of west forests. 40% pf [u[ils thought that the tropical rainforests provide people with oxygen. In some way, such a response contains a misconception that the vanishing of rainforests will reduce the oxygen in the atmosphere, which leads to unsuitable air for human beings.When it comes ro the significance of rainforest conservation, most of students think that human beings can not survive without rainforests. Only 6% of pupils mentioned that the disappearance of rainforest will cause the global warming.With reference to the extensive coverages about this issue from media, such a result surely beyonds our imaginations. And some students thought that it doesn't matter whether we protect rainforest or not.
The result suggests that some ideas obviously count more in the pupils' ideas about rainforest. On some issues, for example, they said that rainforests are the habitats of plants, animals, and human beings, and the relationship between climatic change and rainforest destruction. The responses from pupils indicate that they have misconceptions on some basic scientific knowledge.
The answers of students cannot figure out that they understand the complex causes of rainforest destruction. In other words, there are not any signs indicating they know the significance of rainforest to people and behind which the social, economic, political factors exist. However, it encourages us that some studies similar to the environmental ones indicate that children have acquired the abilities to appreciate, realise and remark the contradictive viewpoints. And environmental education is sure to provide a platform for developing such skills, which will surely make a positive effect on these future decision-makers.
