worldview of upou earth ambassadors

26 Pages·2014·2.51 MB·English

UNDERSTANDING CLIMATE
CHANGE AND DISASTER:
WORLDVIEW OF UPOU EARTH
AMBASSADORS
Joane V. Serrano, PhD
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Management and Development Studies
UP Open University
[email protected]
Background of the Study
There are myriad of studies about how
people view climate change and disaster

Children are people too.. but they are rarely
asked about their views on the environment i.e.
climate change and disaster risks

 As a result of this lack of participation and
involvement, many children grow up with
distorted views of the environment ….
including climate change and disaster risks
Why do we need to be concerned
about children’s worldview?
Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on
the Rights of the Child – the most widely ratified
of all international conventions – states that
children have a right to have a say in decisions
http://www.pacer.org/bullying/images/homepage-slider/kab/Bg-kabKids.jpg
that will affect them
 As climate change is affecting children’s lives now and will undoubtedly
continue to do so far into the future, it is only right that children’s views
are heard and taken onboard by those making the decisions today
[UNICEF].
A worldview that conserves and protects the environment is developed through
time. Children’s sense of right and wrong is critical during their developmental
stage. Thus, their view and eventually their actions in the future will be best
influenced today.
Climate Change and Disasters
Natural hazards by themselves do not cause
disasters – it is the combination of an exposed,
vulnerable and ill prepared population or
community with a hazard event that results in
disaster.
[ISDR, UN]
 Climate change will therefore affect disaster risks in two ways:
1) through the likely increase in weather and climate hazards
2) through increases in the vulnerability of communities to natural hazards,
particularly through ecosystem degradation, reductions in water and food
availability, and changes to livelihoods.
Meet the
UPOU
To capacitate
elementary school
E A
children on
a m Sto.Domingo Elementary
environmentalism
School
r b
t a
h s
s
a
d Dayap Elementary School The Learning Place
o
r
s
Objectives of the Study
The overall aim of this paper is to draw out the environmental
worldview of the children by exploring their concept of climate
change and disaster.

Specifically, it aims to:
1) Determine how children view climate change and disasters;

2) Determine how they view their role as earth ambassadors;

3)Gain insight into how they view their elders and leaders‟
preparedness to climate change effects and disaster.
Theoretical Framework
This study is framed by phenomenography.

Phenomenography or constitutional framework as Marton
(1981) terms this theoretical frame is primarily interested in
how various aspects of the world are seen by different
individuals.

Its aim is to discover the qualitatively different ways in which
people experience, conceptualize, realize and understand
various aspects of phenomena in the world around them
(Martin et al., 1992).
Phenomenography is neither solely concerned with human perceptions
of the world nor only with the object itself. Rather, it focuses on finding
the relationship between humans and the world around them. It takes a
non-dualistic ontological perspective; meaning that object and subject
are not separate and independent of each other.

There are various ways in which people experience or understand a
given phenomenon, because different people experience a
phenomenon in different ways. Phenomenographers seek to identify
the multiple conceptions that people have for a particular phenomenon.
The conception of researchers about a given phenomenon is not the
focus of the study, because the focus of phenomenographical study is
about the conceptions that people have on certain phenomenon.
Methods
Qualitative research/Phenomenographic Study

- Focus group interview to facilitate the participants‟
reflection on their experience of a phenomenon. Interview
is centered around following up and exploring different
aspects of the interviewee‟s experience as thoroughly as
possible.

- Focus on three UPOU Earth Ambassadors Schools

- In phenomenographic study, bracketing is important
Data analysis

- Analysis was guided by the Phenomenographic approach which
qualitatively separate categories that describe the ways in which
different people experience a different concept.
- Studied both the “what aspect of disaster and the “how aspect” of
it.

Steps:
1) Tr anscription of interviews;
5) Group the descriptions into categories, based
2) Reading and familiarizing the text;
on similarities and differences
3) Identify the most significant elements in
6) Look for non-dominant way of understanding
answers given by participants
7) Assign a metaphor to each category of
4) Look for the “what” and how the children
description
describe their experience of disaster. Make a

preliminary description of each child‟s
understanding of climate change & disaster