The Beginning of Marine Sustainability: Preliminary Results of Measuring Students’ Marine Knowledge and Ocean Literacy

Abstract

Ocean sustainability and resource use are emphasized globally. The primary goal of ocean preservation is to enhance citizens’ ocean literacy. In this study, cluster sampling was conducted on students from seven public middle schools in Taiwan to investigate their use of ocean literacy concept words, propositional sentences, and knowledge sources. Qualitative analysis, descriptive statistics, and one-way analysis of variance were conducted on 496 valid questionnaires. The middle school students exhibited an accuracy rate of 63% for ocean literacy sentence-making, which indicated a basic level of performance. The students commonly used terms such as “ocean,” “Atlantic Ocean,” and “tsunami.” Students had common misconceptions when using the terms “sea level rising,” “Kuroshio current,” and “tsunami.” In addition, students who were female, in a higher grade, and who attended a coastal school had higher ocean literacy scores. The students’ primary sources of ocean literacy knowledge were museums and television. Through an analysis students’ use of ocean concept words and misconceptions, the aim of this study was to enhance the implementation efficiency of marine education to cultivate students’ ocean literacy.

Profile of students ocean literacy at senior high school in Mataram

“…In Latin America, students' ocean literacy in Nova-scotia, Canada, 50% of the total sample of 723 students from 11 schools were in the very feasible category [12]. The score in this study was far lower than in other Asian countries, where the Taiwanese students' ocean literacy score was taken from 496 samples from 7 schools got an average score of 63% [13]. Meanwhile, compared to the European countries, Indonesia has an ocean literacy score higher than Greece and below the UK and Mediterranean countries.…”

How to Increase Ocean Literacy for Future Ocean Sustainability? The Influence of Non-Formal Marine Science Education

“…Interest and positive attitudes towards the sea have been found in a number of studies among primary school pupils, together with a generally low knowledge level and, in some cases, the presence of ocean-related misconceptions [16,18,22,26,27,[33][34][35][36][37]. These findings are related, with few exceptions, to the scarcity of ocean-related topics in school curricula of many countries [26,28,32,38], which makes the teaching of ocean literacy optional and not granted to every student.…”

Ocean Literacy and Surfing: Understanding How Interactions in Coastal Ecosystems Inform Blue Space User’s Awareness of the Ocean

“…While Brennan et al’s tool is designed to improve ocean literacy through systems thinking, work by Fauvile et al to develop the International Ocean Literacy survey is a more extensive framework that could be adapted to assess surfer ocean literacy [ 60 ]. Incorporating a Rasch model for measurement could help quantify surfer ability to read ocean variables rather than the Likert scale methodology which tends to reflect personal attitude, and research continues to determine the most accurate, appropriate and specific methodology to reflect ocean literacy learning [ 61 ].…”