The Effect of Modifying and Applying Waste Management Program on Environmental Sensitivity and Environmental Conservation Behavior

폐기물 관리 프로그램의 구안과 적용이 환경 감수성과 환경보전 행동에 미치는 영향

In the sustainable waste management, the necessity of environmental education which improves acquisition of the knowledge, attitudes and values for the environment is being emphasized to help students make environmentally desirable decision and promote responsible environmental behavior. However, the environmental education in high schools, as a whole, would be susceptible to many problems caused by tile educational administration focusing only on the college entrance examination. Therefore, this study modifies and applies a program using four teaching/learning methods (Investigation study, Internet-based learning, Field work, Issue analysis study) which deals with the sustainable waste management as the learning subject for the environmental education, and tries to find its effects on the students' environmental sensitivity and environmental conservation behavior in high schools. The main results of this study are summarized as fellows. First, the waste management program had little influence on the environmental sensitivity of experimental groups, while it had positive effect on their improvement of the environmental conservation behavior. Second, there were little meaningful effect on general environmental conservation behavior, but there were some significant results to environmental conservation behavior related to the sustainable waste management. In addition, positive results were found in ecomanagement and consumerism, whereas there were no meaningful results about in persuasion and legal action, which were sub-domains of the waste management program. Among the waste management programs, the school waste investigation study had the most positive effect on the students' recognition and solution of environmental problems as well as improvement of environmental conservation behavior. The easiest one of the four teaching/learning methods was the Internet-based learning, while the most difficult one of them was the issue analysis study. Consequently, in order to achieve the goals of the environmental education in the academic field, there has to be selected the most suitable one of the teaching/learning methods and to be applied to the class, according to the detailed objectives and loaming contents for the environmental education.