The Effectiveness of the Parent–Child VOC-Focused Environmental Education Program

Abstract

Environmental education for children is a critical strategy that addresses current environmental threats by encouraging individuals to make positive changes in their daily behaviors. However, existing programs aimed at children often fall short of achieving effective learning outcomes because they do not consider the children’s developmental characteristics and the impact of facilitators, fragmented content, ineffective delivery methods, and the lack of actionable knowledge. To resolve these problems, this study’s authors created a 5-week online environmental education program with a focus on a socially important topic—volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The program positioned children as primary learners and parents as facilitators, such that the parents’ involvement was based on their children’s developmental characteristics and the need to make environmental changes within the family unit. Furthermore, the study emphasized the importantce of concrete, actionable knowledge, which has been overlooked in existing programs. For this study, a pretest-posttest design was employed and 55 parent-child pairs were recruited to participate in the online program. Among the response data, eight pairs that did not meet the criteria were excluded from final analysis, so data from 47 parent-child pairs were analyzed. The results indicated that the VOC-focused environmental education program significantly contributed to the increase of both VOC-related knowledge and pro-environmental attitudes in children and parents. Additionally, parents showed improved environmental efficacy after participating in the program. Although this study was limited by the absence of a control group, the findings suggested that for environmental education to be effective, education program should consider the children’s developmental characteristics, engage parents as the facilitators of the educational program, provide concrete environmental content, and employ effective delivery methods.