Abstract
A scale to measure college students' understanding of living environment studies was created, and factor analysis was carried out with 151 college students prior to their attendance of classes in living environment studies. Analysis of the results demonstrated the following points: (1) "Instructional effects on the learning of living environment studies" was extracted as the primary factor in the way in which students understand living environment studies. This factor comprised 10 sub-items, including: "Usefulness in daily life" and "Connections beyond the classroom." The second factor extracted was "Problems in learning living environment studies", and this factor comprised six sub-items, including: "Difficulty of guidance" and "Difficulty of evaluation." (2) The results of protocol analysis for each subscale within each factor demonstrated that the students constructed knowledge of living environment studies by themselves, based on indirect experience acquired through sources such as the mass media, and that the students tended to assign a meaning to "learning" styles by generalizing personal experience from their time at primary school. Based on these results, the future direction of instructional methods for living environment studies was discussed.
