Effects of a Teacher's Opinion Presentation on Students Decision-making in a Class Introducing Environmental Issues

환경쟁점을 도입하는 수업에서 교사의 의견 제시가 학생들의 의사결정에 미치는 영향

The importance of classes aiming at enhancing students ability in problem solving and decision making has been being recognized as chances of individual citizen for taking part in social decision making processes. This study was intended to find whether teachers' opinion presentation have effects on students' decision making in a class introducing environmental issues. Total of 6 classes, 202 middle school students have participated in a series of experiments including 4 different environmental issues. Only two issues had been addresses in classes as experimental issues and other two issues not addressed as control issues. For each of the two experimental issues, the teacher researcher applied three different approaches to his students that included positive, negative, or no opinion. The results of this study can be summarized as follows; First, the results showed that students changed their decisions on environmental issues more frequently when dealing with those issues in a class than when not dealing with them. Second, as examining the relationship between patterns in which students make decisions and whether a teacher proposed his opinions or not, it is shown that the rates of students whose opinions is not changed nearly have no difference, while when teachers propose their opinions, it is shown that students who haven't yet chosen their positions easily make their decisions into pros or cons, compared with the opposite case. Third, the results of this study partly supported the third hypothesis that teachers opinion presentation would effect on decision-making of students. It was found that there has been a significant effect in the case of car free day system issue, but no statistically meaningful result in the case of no pets in the national park issue. However, in the issue of car free day system, it seems pretty clear that the students followed the direction of teachers' opinion no matter what it was pros or cons.