Environmental Issues Investigating the claim: “The schools environment is polluted because nobody cares about it”

Aims: To carry out fieldwork in the school environment. To investigate amounts of pollution using an environmental index. To develop survey and graphical techniques. To understand the importance of using both qualitative and quantitative techniques in your work.

What is qualitative research? The qualitative method investigates the why and how not just what, where, when. Qualitative research asks broad questions and collects word data from participants. The researcher looks for themes and describes the information in case studies.

What is Quantitative research? Quantitative methods can be used to support the qualitative research. It provides the link between quantitative observation and mathematical expression. the quantitative researcher asks a specific, narrow question and collects a sample of numerical data from participants to answer the question.

So what? It is important to use and develop both techniques to support your independent research projects in the future. Words and numerical data work together to strengthen and support your arguments. Today we are going to practice using these skills and investigate the hypothesis: “The schools environment is polluted because nobody cares about it.”

Environmental Investigation into Our School To investigate if this statement is true or not first of all we need to assess if the environment is polluted. Equipment: Environmental index chart Map of school local area Pencil

The environmental indicators for our environmental survey are these: An Environmental index means an aggregate of environmental indicators. The Environmental Performance Index, for example, is used to measure a countries final "performance score“ comprised of 10 individual indicators (e.g., water quality, air quality, etc.) How Are Indicators Useful? There are a number of ways in which indicators can help policy makers, and society more broadly, improve governance. Indicators can help: Describe issues By reducing complexity in policy-relevant ways By answering the question "What's happening?" Diagnose problems By depicting trends and enabling comparisons between diverse phenomena Discover patterns By identifying leaders and laggards By helping to identify best and worst practices By targeting resources Deliberate about solutions By helping societies and decision-makers engage in dialogue about what kind of future they want to have By helping ground discussion in empirical reality By setting goal posts whose desired positions can be debated Drive action By helping to navigate to a desired future By holding decisionmakers and managers accountable By rewarding progress and punishing inaction The environmental indicators for our environmental survey are these: 1. Pollution indicator: Is the area clear of rubbish? On a scale of 1-5 (1 being clean 5 being dirty.) 2. Pollution indicator: Does the air feel clean to breath? On a scale of 1-5 (1 being clean 5 being dirty.) 3. Pollution indicator: How many waste bins are in the area ? (1 being many 5 being few) 4. Pollution indicator: How many vehicles drive around the area (1 being none 5 being very busy) 5. Pollution indicator: How many recycling bins are in the area (1 being many 5 being none)

Sites to visit School grounds outside.

Collecting information Map of your sites On the map you need to record where any bins are located, do this by drawing on symbol to represents each bin you see. This could help to explain the problem of pollution. Give your map a title and a key. Environmental index At the site you need to score according to the environmental index chart. Is it clean or dirty? Write down a score out of 5. You need to total the scores when you return to the classroom.

Guidelines Remember when collecting doing fieldwork you need to be: Focused on the task Walk sensibly Talk quietly Work in a small group Be back on time This study is known as local fieldwork. Other types of fieldwork could take you all round the world.

Data presentation Total the scores for each area. Produce a bar graph to show the results for each area.

So now you have some numerical data what about some word data? To prove the second part of our statement we need to determine if people in the local area care about the environment. Lets survey each other

Environmental Awareness Survey (ask each other) Question 1: What do you think Global Environment is? Question 2: Do you think our environment is in danger? Question 3: On a scale of 1-10, how important is our environment to you? (1=not important at all, 10=extremely important) Question 4: What do you think, specifically, is causing the most harm to our environment? Question 5: Are you doing anything to help our environment? Question 6: Do you believe in Global Warming/Climate Change? Question 7: Do you think there should be more laws regarding our environment in order to protect it? Question 8: Do you think the environment is affecting you personally? Question 9: What is ONE word that comes to mind when you think about the environment? Question 10: Do you think it is possible for our environment to be significantly improved in the next 20 years?

You can still display your word data in a numerical way. Choose a question you think is most relevant to support your research claim. Produce a bar graph to show the results for this question. This will help us to easily see how many people said yes, how many said no and how many you asked.

Writing up your fieldwork Introduction – you describe what you are going to investigate, set hypothesis to test. Methodology – you describe how you are going to collect the data. Data presentation – show your results using tables, graphs, maps. Data interpretation – you describe your results shown in the tables, graphs, maps e.g. where was visual pollution the worst, how did it compare to other areas. Describe the results of your environmental survey. Do people in the area know/care about environmental issues? Evaluation / Conclusions – how successful was your investigation, how might you improve the investigation, where else could you have collected data.

Plenary Make some suggestions for how we can improve the schools environment.