Assessing the knowledge and attitude of middle and higher secondary school students towards waterbirds in Bhutan

ABSTRACT

Assessing the knowledge of and attitudes towards species is critical for shaping the next generation of conservationists and environmentally conscious citizens to foster a sense of responsibility and engagement with the natural world. However, no studies have been undertaken from Bhutan to date concerning the knowledge of and attitude towards waterbirds. We conducted an online survey of 741 students encompassing 185 middle and 556 higher secondary schools. The results indicated that the majority of students have a poor level of knowledge but a strong positive attitude towards the waterbirds. Conditional inference tree (CIT) analysis revealed that the most statistically significant factor associated with knowledge was region followed by age, gender and grade, respectively. Similarly, CIT analysis showed that the female students exhibited a stronger positive attitude than males and others. Further, there was a statistically significant but weak positive correlation between knowledge and attitude. The current study suggests that there is a pressing need to address the substantial knowledge gap concerning waterbirds among Bhutanese middle and higher secondary students. Therefore, we recommend that emphasis should also be placed on teaching outdoor waterbird biology, potentially infusing it into school curricula, which would foster a deeper understanding of Bhutan’s waterbirds and their habitats.

KEYWORDS:

• Species knowledge
• attitude
• biodiversity
• Bhutan
• Bhutanese students
• waterbirds

Acknowledgments

We thank the students for their participation in the survey and school principals for the support. We also thank Alexander J. Sivitskis for editorial assistance and two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).