• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.209-223
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• 2023

This study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a polar literacy education program for elementary and middle school students, and to derive implications for new education to respond to climate change. We developed modular education programs based on the seven principles of polar literacy established by the Polar-ICE team. We divided them into two courses, one emphasizing science concepts and another emphasizing humanities and sociological issues. We then selected and structured detailed programs suitable for the two courses. These two courses were applied to 26 elementary and middle school students for approximately 69 hours in a Saturday science class hosted by the Department of Science Education at a university in Seoul. The 26 students were divided into three groups. Two groups completed the science education program for polar literacy and a humanities and social studies education program for polar literacy, respectively. The third group, the control group, received general science education unrelated to polar literacy. Before and after running the programs, all three groups responded to a polar literacy test and questionnaires that used vocabulary and presented scenes associated with polar regions. The test results were expressed using Wilcoxon signed ranks, which is a non-parametric test method, and improvements made upon completion of the program were analyzed. From a cognitive aspect, all three groups showed improvement after completing the program in the knowledge area; however, the experimental groups showed a greater degree of improvement than the control group, and there was a clear difference in the contents or materials explicitly covered. From an affective aspect, the difference between before and after the program was minor, but the group that focused on humanities and social issues showed a statistically significant improvement. Regarding changes in polar imagery, the two experimental groups tended to diverge from monotonous images to more diverse images compared to the control group. Based on the above results, we suggested methods to increase the effectiveness of polar literacy education programs, the importance of polar literacy as appropriate material for scientific thinking and earth system education, measures to improve attitudes related to the polar region, and the need to link to school curriculums.