HOTSCC-Ichsan: HOTS of Climate Change with Ichsan’s Taxonomy for Elementary Teacher Candidates

It is a necessity to develop environmental learning to solve climate change problems, in particular. One of the focuses is climate change learning at the elementary school level that requires elementary teacher candidates to understand various climate change issues. Skills needed are Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) measurable using Ichsan’s taxonomy as an innovation. Ichsan’s taxonomy consists of six thinking levels, namely identify, compare, implement, criticize problems, solve problems, and develop innovation. The study describes the HOTS of elementary teacher candidates using the HOTS of Climate Change with Ichsan’s taxonomy (HOTSCC-Ichsan). The study uses a descriptive method with a survey as the data collection technique. The study finds that the HOTS scores of the elementary teacher candidates measured using the HOTSCC-Ichsan are in a very low category (28.03). The finding indicates the need to enhance the HOTS-based learning intensively for the elementary teacher candidates. It requires learning media development to address the low HOTS. The research conclusion is that the HOTS of the elementary teacher candidates is low and needs an improvement

Environmental Learning in Mangunan Experimental Primary School in Responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Indonesia

This article is a result of qualitative research. The investigation was conducted in the Experimental Elementary School of Mangunan, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, before and during the covid-19 pandemic by literature study, observation, and interview methods. The research focuses on exploring Y. B. Mangunwijaya's educational perspective concerning John Dewey's thought on environmental learning. Furthermore, observations and interviews focused on tracing how the environmental learning process was carried out before and during the pandemic. Three main findings could be identified. First, the School conducted environment learning before the covid-19 pandemic twice a week. During the pandemic, environmental learning activities were carried out in each student's home. Second, ecological learning becomes a project that brings together faith communication, language, natural sciences, social sciences, and mathematics. Third, learning becomes an effective means of intensive communication between teachers, students, and parents during the covid-19 pandemic. This research provides alternative ideas and its implementation of learning with an ecological vision in Indonesian society during the pandemic.

Analysis of Disaster Mitigation in Carita with Environmental Learning in Elementary School

This study analyzes the profile of Carita people in the efforts of tsunami disaster mitigation and the role of environmental learning in coping with the disaster, then analyzes the use of environmental learning. The method used is a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative methods. The quantitative method measures various community readiness levels in performing disaster mitigation, whereas the qualitative method is utilized to obtain various further information from the communities using interview technique. There were 88 randomly selected respondents participating in this research. The study results indicate a low land utilization density (below 33%). Indicators suggest a good category, namely: people evacuate when a disaster occurs (86%), rescue during a disaster (96.59%), and try to find new livelihoods (82.95%). In addition, public knowledge of disaster evacuation route is at a good level (87.50%) and there is an increase of 39.77% respondents with improved knowledge after the tsunami disaster occurred. Environmental learning, in this case, plays an important role to provide information to the public relating the efforts in disaster mitigation. The conclusion is that community’s disaster mitigation readiness still requires some improvement through various efforts, one of them is environmental learning with learning media in elementary school.

High-yielding seeds in unyielding environments: Examining the learning process of maize and bean producers in eastern and midwestern Uganda

This paper examines the learning process by which farmers come to a decision to use newly introduced seeds which were promoted through demonstration plots in midwestern and eastern regions of Uganda. Framed as social and material interactions, we investigated the learning process of the demonstration plots using data from focus group discussions, interviews and a survey amongst 983 individuals. The results reveal several constraints that impede learning, resulting in an overall low awareness and adoption of the introduced seeds. Some of the most prominent constraints resulted from the selection of location and demonstration plot host, the distance of agro-dealers, at district headquarters, limited interactions amongst farmers and irregular involvement of farmers in the demonstrations. Moreover, the prominent role of agro-dealers at field days suggests that informing farmers about where to buy seeds was considered more important than explaining farmers how to grow these seeds profitably. This commercial focus of field days and demonstrations plots had negative consequences for the social learning. This paper contributes to the learning and adoption literature by showing that interactions amongst actors can improve or reduce the balance between didactic, social and environmental learning.

Spatial Learning in a Virtual Environment: The Role of Self-Efficacy Feedback and Individual Visuospatial Factors

We examined the roles self-efficacy plays in environmental learning in terms of self-efficacy feedback and task-specific (navigation-based) self-efficacy. We manipulated self-efficacy using positive and neutral feedback to investigate the relationship between receiving positive feedback and environmental learning performance and subsequent recall. A total of 231 participants were administered visuospatial tasks, where 117 received positive feedback, and 114 received neutral feedback. Then, we tested environmental learning using route retracing, pointing, and map-completion tasks. Before each environmental task, participants evaluated their task-specific self-efficacy. A series of spatial self-reported preferences were gathered as well. Mediation models showed that receiving positive feedback after a visuospatial task influences environmental recall performance through the mediation of task-specific self-efficacy. Moreover, after accounting for experimental manipulation and gender, we found that task-specific self-efficacy, sense of direction, and visuospatial abilities influence spatial-recall task performance, even with some differences as a function of the specific recall tasks considered. Overall, our findings suggest that among individual characteristics, task-specific self-efficacy can sustain environmental learning. Furthermore, giving positive feedback can improve spatial self-efficacy before conducting spatial-recall tasks.