抄録
Background and Goal. For establishing a sustainable society, one of important parameters in considering the effects of Environmental Education (EE) is to recognize our material world with literacy on science. Our group has developed a new program for EE related with this. Our program should provide an opportunity for students to recognize that our life strongly influences on the environment with respect to large consumption of materials and energies. The goal of our program is their understanding of this picture with acquisition of science literacy related with industrial products. Outline of the program: The program is composed of several parts according to four learning steps, awareness, knowledge, recognition and understanding. This program was carefully designed from the standpoint of a life-cycle of products. Mobile phone, which is becoming an ordinary product in our daily life, plays a key role in our program. It is used as a material for introduction, and its three components, plastics, semi-conductors and batteries were determined as the particular educational subjects related with science literacy. The unit for these subjects includes both a lecture based part and a group work. A factory tour was also incorporated as an extramural learning opportunity. The students reconsider the life cycle of a mobile phone and their daily lives at the conclusion of the program.
Results and Discussion. The whole program was successfully designed and the corresponding educational materials have been developed. Among three units for the particular part, the details of the materials on plastics are described with the introduction and conclusion parts on mobile phone in this report. The developed program was put in practice at several high schools in Tokyo and Kanagawa prefectures from 2007 to 2008. A questionnaire survey was employed in order to evaluate the educational effects of the program by using multiple-choice and free-description methods. The result indicated that almost all the students had been aware the link between their daily lives and the environment with acquisition of new knowledge and recognition on a mobile phone and plastics. Conclusions and Perspectives: A new EE program focusing on material world and science literacy have been developed using mobile phone as an example. The intended educational effects of the program including the plastic unit were confirmed in its practice at several high schools. Development of the materials for the other two units, semi-conductors and batteries, are now in progress and their details will be reported elsewhere with their educational effects.
