• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.1625-1634
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• 2011

The aim of this study is to clarify what influence has on elementary school children's environmental awareness in time of teaching environmental problems from an animistic viewpoint and from non-animistic viewpoint. For this purpose, this study carried out its research targeting 126 students in fourth grade at M elementary school located in U Metropolitan City. This study suggested the environmental problems by re-edifying the already suggested environmental problems from an animistic viewpoint to 62 students for two classes which were classified as an experimental group after sampling 10 cases of the representative environmental problems that might derive from the earth system, and conducted the class on 10 main topics relevant to the problematic situation of environment with an animistic viewpoint excluded targeting the remaining 64 students forming a comparison group. The results of this study were as follows: First, there appeared an ex-ante ex-post statistically significant difference in the awareness of environmental problems from the experimental group which received an environmental class from an animistic viewpoint. However, there didn't appear a statistically significant difference from the comparison group. This study interprets this result to mean that elementary students' awareness of environmental problems increase because they think about the environmental problems by associating them with a problem of life when the students receive the environmental class from an animistic viewpoint. Second, there appeared an ex-ante ex-post statistically significant difference in the awareness of environmental problems from the experimental group which received an environmental class from an animistic viewpoint. However, there didn't appear a statistically significant difference from the comparison group. Regarding this aspect, this study believes that the experimental group shows much higher willingness to environmental act in comparison with the comparison group because elementary school students think of inanimate objects as living things.