Choice of objects by the individuals. N = 81 tales, every with one object alternative. Credit: Marine Pollution Bulletin (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114457
Researchers used story-writing to discover schoolchildren’s perceptions of marine plastic litter and the results on their behaviors to the issue.
The staff, together with the Universities of York, Plymouth, and Universidad Católica del Norte, Coquimbo (Chile), checked out faculty youngsters’s perceptions of marine plastic litter in Latin American international locations alongside the Pacific and examined the impression of the story-writing exercise on the kids’s perceptions and their behaviors.
The researchers inspired the kids to make use of their imaginations about frequent litter gadgets discovered on the seaside and within the marine surroundings, which included toys, a plastic bag, toothbrush, bottle, and straw and the way they got here to be within the ocean.
By imagining the journey these things had taken, they had been in a position to consider methods of stopping the litter from coming into the surroundings on the East Pacific Coast.
The exercise confirmed that by way of story writing, youngsters largely targeted on stopping the issue from worsening, slightly than cleansing up present litter, with the most well-liked answer being satisfactory disposal of litter and recycling. Other options included decreasing plastic use, reusing gadgets, schooling and convincing the neighborhood of the significance of the problem.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, schoolchildren from the East Pacific coast participated on this exercise, making a story, and answering a pre-post survey. The collaborating youngsters had been a part of the varsity citizen science program “Científicos de la Basura” (Litter Scientists), wherein schoolteachers along with their lessons examine the issue of marine litter alongside the coasts of Latin America.
The examine was designed and timed to provide schoolchildren on this area an exercise to interact with whereas the faculties had been closed, and so they had been experiencing isolation.
In whole, 89 youngsters aged between 10 and 18 years outdated took half within the examine from international locations alongside the Pacific coast, together with Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama and Peru.
Lead writer of the examine, Estelle Praet from the Department of Archaeology on the University of York, mentioned, “Stories supply a brand new and totally different method to discover what folks consider and the way they understand and make sense of their surroundings, together with on this examine, marine plastic litter. The outcomes had been really inspiring and confirmed the kids’s consciousness of plastic’s impression on marine life and the surroundings.”
The youngsters got a alternative of things and requested to create a fictional story, to mirror on the plastic air pollution drawback. More than half of the kids’s tales confirmed consciousness of the dangerous nature of plastics when interacting with marine life, together with when animals ingest plastic, get entangled or develop into intoxicated by the parts of the plastic.
Many of the tales described a number of penalties, together with accidents, loss of life, impression on the surroundings and the widespread results on seaside esthetics. Co-author Diamela de Veer from the Científicos de la Basura program at Universidad Católica del Norte in Chile highlighted the similarities with one other current examine (printed within the Journal of Environmental Psychology): “In a earlier exercise, the schoolchildren had visited the seashores and made drawings of their seashores earlier than and after the go to—many of those drawings additionally contained litter gadgets, together with a few of them confirmed interactions between litter and marine life, underscoring that they discover the environmental drawback attributable to litter.”
Professor John Schofield, from the Department of Archaeology, mentioned, “By viewing these plastic gadgets as artifacts, every with its personal story, we are able to carry this again to the human behaviors that associated to the objects’ use and their disposal. This venture has helped present how we are able to get that message throughout to youngsters and hopefully then make a distinction.”
By growing tales across the gadgets and recognizing that human behaviors are on the root of plastic air pollution, this train was additionally discovered to have an effect on the kids themselves.
Dr. Kayleigh Wyles, an environmental psychologist from the University of Plymouth who contributed to the paper, mentioned, “A key component of our venture was to look at the kids’s responses to questionnaires they accomplished earlier than and after writing these tales. We discovered that their data on the subject elevated and so they grew to become extra proactive, as they reported doing extra pro-environmental acts afterwards.”
The tales themselves additionally highlighted the significance of particular person motion, with 77% of the tales together with doable options that folks can do to assist handle this international situation.
The analysis is printed within the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.
More data:
Estelle Praet et al, Bottle with a message: The position of story writing as an engagement software to discover youngsters’s perceptions of marine plastic litter, Marine Pollution Bulletin (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114457
Diamela De Veer et al, How do schoolchildren understand litter? Overlooked in city however not in pure environments, Journal of Environmental Psychology (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101781
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Bottle with a message: Story writing connects youngsters to the surroundings (2022, December 20)
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