Development of decision‐making skills and environmental concern through computer‐based, scaffolded learning activities

Abstract

This article focuses on the development of decision‐making skills and environmental concern by 11‐ and 12‐year‐old students through computer‐based, scaffolded learning activities. The enacted activities provided necessary scientific information and allowed for the consideration of multiple aspects of the problem, the study of the effects of every possible solution and the formulation and balancing of criteria. The optimization strategy for decision making was adopted, because it allows for the development of compensatory thinking which is more relevant to actual situations of decision making. Twelve students participated in the pilot enactment of the proposed activities. Data collection relied on students’ reports and pre‐ and post‐ tests as well as a closed questionnaire designed to measure students’ environmental concern. The teaching intervention proved quite successful in enhancing the decision‐making skills of the participating children. Moreover, students’ performance on the environmental concern questionnaire correlated in interesting ways with the improvement of decision‐making skills.

Keywords:

• decision making
• curriculum
• environmental awareness
• critical thinking

Acknowledgments

The research presented here was partially funded by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation. Learning materials are available at http://lsg.ucy.ac.cy/oikoskepsi.

Notes

1. We should note that important educational frameworks have been developed in environmental education (e.g. those described in Bardwell, Monroe, and Tudor 1994) and almost all of them include decision‐making activities as part of their learning procedure. However, they are not interventions specialized in developing decision‐making skills. Furthermore, while evaluation reviews for these educational frameworks have been reported, they focused on the effectiveness of the evaluated projects on promoting knowledge, attitudes and behavioural intentions of participants but not their decision‐making skills (Zelezny 1999; Rickinson 2001).

2. Because the research had to be undertaken within time limits set by school authorities, compromises in terms of time allocation to various activities of our research intervention were necessary. Thus we decided to use a Likert‐type questionnaire for measuring participants’ environmental concern, instead of an instrument that would possibly be more proper for our research, but time‐consuming (e.g. open questionnaire, or interviews). As presented in the ‘results’ section, the application of the questionnaire revealed results which, although they should be treated with caution due to the methodological reservations one can have, are worth mentioning