An evaluation of the effectiveness of a scientific research volunteer tourism program in inculcating environmental awareness in youths

Abstract

Environmental education is an important component of the common school curriculum. Pedagogy like learning outside the classroom has been developed and refined over the years to make environmental education programs more relevant and relatable to the current generation of students. Scientific research volunteer tourism programs is one example of such a program. Students get to learn concepts in environmental protection and biodiversity through hands-on field work and experiential learning on such programs. Program providers then use the funding provided from these student participants to manage and restore the biodiversity of ecologically diverse parts of the world through research programs and local collaborations. However, challenges like costs and safety have to be overcome in any school-led programs. This makes an assessment of the effectiveness of these programs valuable so that schools can better allocate their often limited resources to maximise their students’ learning. This research focuses on one particular program run by Operation Wallacea, one of the commercial providers of scientific research volunteer tourism programs. The researcher led a group of ten students on an expedition to Madagascar in 2015 and carried out a combination of focus group interviews and questionnaires on these students to qualitatively evaluate their environmental awareness. A baseline survey of the students’ environmental awareness was also obtained from similar questionnaires administered on eight other students from the same grade who did not participate in the expedition. Results of this research show that experiential learning pedagogical methods like learning outside the classroom are generally very popular with students. More importantly, the students’ responses also show that this program was particularly effective in improving the knowledge aspect of environmental awareness, but the impact was short-lived and did not last nine months after the program had ended. Reinforcement activities, as in most affective education programs, could have helped to bridge this gap.