Effects of eco-animations on nine and twelve year old children’s environmental conceptions: How WALL-E changed young spectators’ views of earth and environmental protection

Abstract

This study investigates changes in children’s environmental conceptions through their experience with the eco-animation WALL-E. The study uses an analytical framework informed by Social Representations Theory, accompanied with a word association approach to collect data. A total of 84 children (35 nine-year olds and 49 twelve-year olds) participated in the study. The animation reinforced both the idea of a polluted planet and the idea of the planet as an agent of life. The 9-year old participants expressed a more relational view of humans and nature than the 12-year olds. The process of anchoring new information to preexisting conceptual frameworks and the environmental views promoted through education are discussed as possible explanations of the ways participants interpret and assimilate environmental messages communicated by eco-animations.

Keywords:

• eco-animations
• environmental conceptions
• Social Representation Theory
• conceptual transformation
• word associations

Notes

1 For the purpose of triangulation of our data and more especially of confirming the categories of content analysis and the interpretation we gave to the meaning of the clusters in cluster analysis, we ask from ten nine-year-old and ten twelve-year-old respondents to write a short text using the word associations they recorded. Afterwards, we interviewed them in order to ask them to explain in more details the meaning they attribute to the associations they use. The outcomes from the analyses of the texts and the interviews confirmed the content analysis categories we created, as well as the way we discussed the results of the cluster analysis.