Investigating Students' Conceptual Understanding of Socio-Environmental Problems

Introduction

As part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, world leaders agreed on seventeen objectives, the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015). These objectives draw attention to common needs across nations, societies, and cultures for practices that preserve the survival of environmental and social institutions while also taking into account people's economic needs. Therefore, it is crucial to pay more attention to the environment and raise awareness about different problems around us and raise a new generation of people who already are prepared for the rapidly changing future. The educational system plays a significant part in increasing future generations' consciousness. Science education in particular can be viewed as a tool for achieving social change and engaging with the world ethically (Jeong, Sherman & Tippins, 2021). Fast developing technology is giving us new ways of working and learning that have never existed before, however, technology itself won’t solve the problems. People are the ones who will solve the problems, for that we need to raise students who are capable of doing it.

Outdoor learning has gained increased attention in recent years in the context of sustainability and global environmental issues. The emergence of location-based approaches has refocused attention on the pedagogical value of place and the power of direct embodied experience in education, as going outside provides numerous opportunities for learning through everyday socio-economical environmental problems inherent to a particular location (Roberts, 2018). In outdoor settings, this creates issues for pedagogical models and instructional designs (Mettis & Väljataga, 2020). There is a need for a location-responsive pedagogy that recognizes and uses the local environment, culture, and place (Gray, 2019). The core concept of place-responsive education is that it “implies openly educating by means of an environment with the goal of understanding and enhancing human–environment relationships” (Mannion, Fenwick & Lynch, 2013, p. 803).

There is a significant number of studies about mobile technology use in learning outside in both formal (Kärki et al., 2018) and informal environments (Squire & Jan, 2007; Land & Zimmerman, 2015). Several studies (Nikou & Economides, 2017; Sung, Chang & Liu, 2016; Zacharia, Lazaridou & Avraamidou, 2016) show that meaningful mobile outdoor learning events may be created that are collaborative, active, and contextual, with favorable outcomes for student learning. However, assessing students' scientific concept development and vocabulary acquisition in order to describe complex socio-environmental phenomena, as well as obtaining scientific understanding in order to present critical and evidence-based arguments, has not been a priority. In secondary science education, there is a knowledge gap in mobile technology-supported inquiry-based learning (Liu, et al., 2020), particularly in terms of understanding how to use mobile technologies to empower students' scientific inquiry and comprehension in authentic situations. Furthermore, there is also a lack of research in the non-gamified usage of mobile technology in outdoor learning (Kraalingen, 2021).

Based on the previous research, we have run an experimental study with 3 schools, using a mobile outdoor learning design, where students investigate a problem relevant to society and how to approach it in a scientific way. The instructional aim of this study was to raise students’ awareness about socio-environmental problems and provide conditions to practice forming an evidence-based opinion and arguments about a specific problem in society, to start thinking in scientific terms.