The Wadden Sea as a National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site: Students’ Word Associations with These Two Conservation Designations

Till Schmäing and Norbert Grotjohann
Additional contact information
Till Schmäing: Faculty of Biology, Didactics of Biology (Botany/Cell Biology), University of Bielefeld, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany
Norbert Grotjohann: Faculty of Biology, Didactics of Biology (Botany/Cell Biology), University of Bielefeld, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 14, 1-17

Abstract: The Wadden Sea ecosystem is unique in many respects from a biological perspective. This is one reason why it is protected by national parks in Germany and by its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In biology didactics, there are only a few studies that focus on the Wadden Sea. This work investigates students’ word associations with the two stimulus words “national park” and “UNESCO World Heritage Site”. The survey was conducted among students living directly at the Wadden Sea and among students from the inland. The analysis of the identified associations ( n = 8345) was carried out within the framework of a quantitative content analysis to be able to present and discuss the results on a group level. A statistically significant difference was found between the two groups. Overall, results showed that the students made subject-related associations as well as a large number of associations to both stimulus words that could be judged as non-subject-related. In some cases, a connection with the region of residence could be found, but this was not generally the case. Even students’ immediate residential proximity to the Wadden Sea is no guarantee that they have knowledge of the two considered protection terms.

Keywords: biology education; didactics of biology; education for sustainable development; environmental education; word associations; quantitative content analysis; Wadden Sea; national park; UNESCO World Heritage Site (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/14/8006/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/14/8006/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:14:p:8006-:d:596299

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().