State of knowledge on emergency response and crisis management

Abstract

In the era of late modernity, individual vulnerability is affected by various threats and risks. Consequently, people need to be aware of these and fit in more than ever before. To help people become competent in this changing world and to prepare for future threats, academic institutions play a vital role. To understand such an academic role, a part of the literature has highlighted how a student can better learn emergency responses (ER) and crisis management (CM). Nevertheless, very little literature has focused on how a developing country’s students, particularly teenagers, learn and understand ER and CM. Focusing on such gaps in the literature, this study aims to understand a sample of Bangladeshi secondary students’ state of knowledge related to ER and CM. With the help of cluster sampling, the researcher distributed a survey among a sample of 360 students between 9th and 12th standard from two southern districts respectively Khulna and Noakhali, which are also disaster-prone areas of Bangladesh. Adopting Krathwohl’s model of knowledge typology, such as factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge, the researcher collected and evaluated the data with descriptive statistics. The findings of this study show that even though most of the students are familiar with different ER- and CM-related keywords, they have limited deeper knowledge. Furthermore, there was a significant knowledge difference between the genders. Similarly, the lack of training in the academic environment also makes these young students vulnerable to any kind of threat from their surroundings that could affect the districts’ weak institutional and legislative structure. The scholarship of this study, which has policymakers and young academics as its possible audience, could assist them in raising the knowledge levels of students by adding new information to textbooks with illustrations and by setting up drills.