A Study on the Effectiveness of a Climate and Ecosystem Program Reflecting a Play-Based Early Childhood Education Curriculum: Focusing on Early Childhood Development (Nature) and Environmental Conservation Attitudes, Ecological Literacy, Preschoolers' Playfulness

Abstract

Objectives The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of a climate-ecosystem program reflect-ing an early childhood play-based curriculum on early childhood development (nature), environmental con-servation attitudes, ecological literacy, and early childhood playfulness. Methods The study participants are 5-year-old children from a kindergarten in Gyeonggi Province, with 13 in-dividuals in the experimental group and 15 individuals in the control group. SPSS 23.0 was used to determine the mean, standard deviation, and reliability coefficient of the study variables. The homogeneity test was conducted using the pre-test mean scores between groups, and the difference between the experimental and control groups was analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test based on post-test mean scores. Pre-post differences between the experimental and comparison groups were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results The main research results are as follows: First, the simple difference between the pre-test and post-test mean scores of the study variables revealed improvement in the experimental group(from 0.13 to 1.02 points), while the comparison group showed both an increase(from 0.01 to 0.36 points) and a decrease(from -0.26 to -0.03 points). There was no statistically significant difference in pretest mean scores between the experimental and comparison groups, confirming homogeneity. The pre-post difference test of the experimental group showed statistically significant differences in early childhood development (nature) and environmental conservation atti-tudes and subscales (conservation attitude, recycling attitude, environmental pollution prevention attitude), eco-logical literacy and subscales (nature's rights, intention to support, resource protection, ecological sensitivity, eco-logical social environment, ecological development_reverse, nature governance_reverse, ecological crisis indif-ference), and early childhood playfulness and some subscales (physical spontaneity, social spontaneity, sense of humor). On the other hand, there were no statistically significant differences in the cognitive spontaneity and ex-pression of pleasure sub-domains of preschoolers' playfulness. The pre-post difference test for the comparison group found statistical significance only for ecological sensitivity, a sub-scale of ecological literacy, and physical spontaneity, a sub-scale of preschoolers' playfulness. Second, the factors that resulted in statistically significant differences in post-hoc mean scores between the experimental and comparison groups were environmental con-servation attitudes and their sub-scales, recycling attitudes, ecological literacy and its sub-scales, supportive in-tention, ecological sensitivity, nature dominance(reverse), and ecological crisis indifference. Conclusions The results of this study confirm the effectiveness of climate and ecosystem programs through play. As an extension of this study, we aim to propose collaborative activities with the local community through a living lab approach.