Abstract
Education for disaster prevention incorporating Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) has been introduced in many schools’ curricula along with the general effort to increase people’s awareness after the aftermath of 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. It is now required to introduce earthquake education with the aim of awakening students to disaster prevention. However, the current knowledge about earthquakes provided in the 6th grade science classes’ curriculum is as limited as “a possible trigger for the changes in land”, without indicating any countermeasures against it. In fact, surveys have shown that elementary school science students and even adults do not fully understand the significance of EEW. Thus, in order to enrich the understanding of earthquakes and disaster prevention, EEW must be addressed in science classes at the elementary level.
Considering our survey result, which has shown that students beyond the 4th grade level already have a sufficient empirical knowledge of earthquakes, we gave further science lessons at levels above the course of study. These lessons introduced 6th grade students to additional basic scientific information about earthquakes, the Omori formula, and EEW. As a result, it was found that these students had developed an understanding of EEW.
From these findings, it is proposed that more in-depth earthquake education be introduced in elementary schools.
