2024 Volume 33 Issue 1 Pages 1_2-13
Using data related to climate change, an education session was conducted with 597 fifth-grade students to promote statistical and information literacy and critical thinking. The contents of the educational program were as follows: (1) a lecture on the basics of climate change, (2) a practical assignment for making various graphs, (3) a lecture on misleading or deceptive graph techniques, (4) an exercise on interpreting data, and (5) a lecture on the science and uncertainty of climate change. According to text mining of the students' comments about their impressions of this program, the following educational effects were identified: (1) development of statistical literacy, (2) improvement in critical thinking attitudes and promotion of information literacy, and (3) a deeper understanding of climate change. An analysis of the relationships in the students' comments and answers to the closed-ended questions revealed the possibility that students who felt difficulty in interpreting data tended to recognize the necessity for critical thinking and information literacy. Based on the results of text mining, we developed the evaluation indices of environmental education to promote statistical and information literacy and critical thinking. Using these indices, a questionnaire survey or test can be developed to enable a quantitative evaluation of such a new environmental education program.
