Korean elementary school students' perceptions of relationship with marine organisms

Previous Experiences

With the reference to Table 2, the students’ experiences are dominantly vicarious as seen by the total number of responses compared to direct and indirect experiences. This suggests that most of their experiences with marine organisms are derived through experiences like TV programs, films, and books rather than direct or indirect encounters. However, the majority of students had direct experiences with ‘gull’, ‘fish’, and ‘crab’ in these organisms’ natural habitats. Nearly half of the students encountered ‘dolphin’ in non-natural settings such as a zoo and/or aquarium. Approximately three in ten students had indirect experiences with ‘sea turtle’ in these non-natural settings. However, very few students reported they had encounters with ‘sea worm’, ‘sea anemone’, ‘sea lettuce’, and ‘plankton’ directly or indirectly. More than half of the students did not have vicarious experiences with ‘sea worm’, ‘plankton’, and ‘sea lettuce’.

Table 2. Students’ Experiences with Marine Organisms

Direct		Indirect		Vicarious			None
Crab	59	Crab	47		Dolphin	62		Sea lettuce	50
Sea gull	58	Fish	41		Sea turtle	61		Plankton	42
Fish	51	Dolphin	39		Sea gull	55		Sea worm	42
Sea star	38	Sea turtle	26		Fish	55		Sea anemone	30
Jellyfish	37	Sea lettuce	17		Jellyfish	55		Sea star	11
Sea worm	24	Sea star	12		Sea star	54		Sea turtle	8
Sea anemone	8	Jellyfish	6		Sea anemone	50		Dolphin	5
Dolphin	7	Plankton	3		Crab	49		Jellyfish	5
Sea lettuce	7	Sea anemone	1		Plankton	38		Sea gull	2
Sea turtle	2	Sea worm	1		Sea worm	25		Crab	0
Plankton	1	Sea gull	1		Sea lettuce	15		Fish	0
Total (n)	292	Total	194		Total	519		Total	195

Note. Frequency was generated from the students’ multiple responses on each category

Given that children’s experiences of nature are essential and critical for their maturation and development (Kellert, 2002), and those experiences are associated with nature-friendly behaviors in adulthood (Van den Born et al., 2001), the participants’ self-reporting could justify that more direct and indirect experiences with various marine organisms should be provided to facilitate a balanced and in-depth understanding of marine plants and animals. Burgess and Mayer-Smith (2011) discuss this view in their study that found students’ direct experiences in a wilderness program increased their aesthetic, humanistic, moralistic, symbolic, naturalistic, and ecological-scientific valuing of nature. Also Yore and Boyer’s (1997) study reported similar results as they found that students’ direct experiences influence their ecologistic, scientific, humanistic, moralistic, and naturalistic valuing of animals.

Connectedness to Marine Organisms

The students showed a wide range of connectedness scores depending on the marine organism (Figure 2). The students’ responses indicated that they have a strong affiliation with ‘fish’, ‘crab’ and ‘sea lettuce’, a moderate affiliation with ‘gull’, ‘dolphin’, ‘jellyfish’, ‘plankton’, and ‘sea star’, and a weak affiliation with ‘sea turtle’, ‘sea worm’, and ‘sea anemone’.

Figure 2. Students’ connectedness with each marine organism.

A high score of connectedness with ‘fish’, ‘crab’ and ‘sea lettuce’ might originate from the students’ frequent encounters with the organisms and/or their utilitarian value of each. Moderate connectedness scores emerged from the students who had frequent encounters with the organisms but did not indicate a specific relationship with the organisms (e.g., sea star and gull), or those who did not frequently observe the organism but knew how they were related to the organisms either taxonomically or functionally (e.g., dolphin, jellyfish, and sea star). Weak connectedness scores with ‘sea turtle’, ‘sea worm’, and ‘sea anemone’ might be related to the students’ lack of direct experience with these organisms as well as their inability to find commonalities. The following excerpts are representative of the students’ strong, moderate, and weak affiliations with the marine organisms.

Strong: “I am closely connected to fish because I can see and eat it very frequently.”
Moderate: “I saw and fed sea gulls many times, but I don’t know how it is directly related to me.”
Weak: “I haven’t seen sea anemone directly, and it has nothing to do with our life.”

Only three connectedness scores with fish, crab, and sea lettuce revealed higher than the median, which indicates that the participating students are not well aware of their connectedness to other categories of marine organisms. Phytoplankton for example, has an extremely integral relationship with human beings; benefits to humans include providing half the oxygen we breathe, playing a basic producer role in marine food chain, contributing to climate regulation by carbon dioxide absorption. However, forty-two percent of the students checked “I do not know” about their connectedness to plankton and the connectedness score with plankton revealed lower than the median.

Values of Marine Organisms

The results depicted in Figure 3 represent an analysis of the 446 coded reasons for valuing marine organisms from the 81 student participants and illustrate the proportion of the coded reasons by different Biophilic Typology of valuing marine organisms as a percentage. For example, 107 coded reasons out of 466 cases (23 %) were related to the students’ utilitarian perspectives (UTL), while only 12 descriptions out of 466 cases (2.6 %) were related to aesthetic perspectives (AES). On the whole, this analysis demonstrates that the students’ overall perceptions of valuing marine organisms were highly utilitarian, negativistic, and scientific and lacking in aesthetic, humanistic, and moralistic values.

Figure 3. Overall valuing of marine organisms.

A utilitarian value is typical in the students’ relationships with fish, crab, and sea lettuce; negativisitic value emerges from the students’ awareness of a relationship with jellyfish and sea worm; scientific and ecologistic values are closely linked to the relationship with sea anemone and plankton; naturalistic value is generally related to the relationship with sea turtle; and dominionistic value mainly comes from the relationship with dolphin and sea gull (Figure 4).

Students held various perspectives on values of marine organisms. For example, diverse values of crab were described by the students. In the instance of this marine organism (crab), of the 66 students who gave a reason for their levels of connectedness, 37 of the descriptions (56%) demonstrated utilitarian perspectives, while the remaining descriptions were distributed as follows: scientific (10); negativistic (8); moralistic (5); humanistic (3); naturalistic (1); ecologistic (1); and dominionistic (1) perspectives. Hence, students dominantly hold utilitarian perspectives of crab. Figure 4 illustrates the overall most dominantly held values of the 81 students for each marine organism.

Figure 4. The most prominent value of each marine organism.

The following excerpts are representative of the students’ Biophilic Typology toward marine organisms.

Humanistic: “Dolphin is very smart and friendly to human.”
Moralistic: “I heard that sea turtle sometimes eat a plastic bag and die because of it.”
Scientific: “…if one arm of a sea star is removed, it can grow again. It is very different from humans”
Ecologistic: “Planktons are very important in marine ecosystem, because they feed small fish which feed bigger fish that feed human beings.”
Naturalistic: “I haven’t seen tiny plankton and I want to observe it using a microscope.”
Aesthetic: “Sea star has beautiful shapes and colors. I saw a blue one with red dots on it”
Utilitarian: “My family eats cod, mackerel, and other fishes quite often and we like it.”
Dominionistic: “I really enjoyed a dolphin show at the zoo. It was fantastic”
Negativistic: “I am afraid of jellyfish because they have poisonous sting.”

The students’ highly utilitarian values of ‘fish’, ‘crab’ and ‘sea lettuce’ are possibly related to Korean food culture. For example, ‘sea lettuce’ could be closely related to the students’ ecologistic value because it is a basic producer in the marine ecosystems. Yet 96% of the students indicated a utilitarian value and noted their experiences with sea lettuce as food. In addition, 62% and 56% students demonstrated their utilitarian values of fish and crab respectively mentioning their personal seafood experiences. This result shows that food culture possibly affects and reflects the students’ perspectives of the value of nature, and that values are socioculturally mediated (Kahn, 2002; Kellert, 1996; Ulrich, 1993).

Regarding negativistic values of marine organisms, ‘jellyfish’ was perceived as a dangerous animal by 84% of students. Although sea worms do not inflict serious harm upon humans (some species do have jaws and can deliver a painful nip), more than fifty percent of the students showed negativistic value toward ‘sea worm’, possibly due to the animal’s body shape and negative aesthetic appeal (Kellert, 1996). Since values are crucial and functional in attitude formation and behavior development (Milfont, Duckitt, & Wagner, 2010; Vaske & Donnelly, 1999), the students’ negativistic and utilitarian value of marine organisms may not provide a substantive foundation for related responsible environmental action.