This paper brings up for discussion the issue of developing high-school students’ ecological and climate change attitudes and behaviors, from the perspective of raising their awareness concerning the effects upon the environment. Teaching modules on Environmental Protection aims at educating the younger generations in the spirit of care for our natural environment, through direct and responsible involvement in actions that have the effect of promoting a sustainable and healthy life style. The objectives of education for environmental protection may be accomplished through the usage of modern didactic strategies, centered on student and their involvement in building his or her own knowledge. Our longitudinal study was elaborated along two school years, from 2018 to 2020, and involved one high-school having the environmental protection profile from the district of Arad. A number of 48 students attending 10th and 11th grades were included in this study. The methods of research employed there were the psycho-pedagogical experiment and the questionnaire-based inquiry. The research instrument we used was a questionnaire to measure the students’ learning satisfaction and motivation. The experimental intervention included an educational program based on active and interactive strategies, preponderantly modern, which included case studies, projects, and didactic experiments, methods based on investigation, documentation visits and a large scale of complementary evaluation methods. The results of this study highlighted significant differences between pre and post-experimental results: the students’ results at school have consistently improved after their involvement in the experimental program. Also, there was great progress in the area of their learning motivation, as students mentioned having a higher level of satisfaction when studying the modules on Environmental Protection. The study comes to reinforce the modern theories regarding the importance of using quality didactic strategies in order to successfully accomplish the educational objectives and empower the students’ intrinsic motivation.

environmental protection, teaching-learning modern strategies, learning motivation

social sciences

Presentation: poster