CHANGES IN FOREST AWARENESS OF ELEMENTARY STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES AFTER PARTICIPATION IN FOREST EDUCATION PROGRAM

The purpose of this study is to explore the changes in forest awareness of disabled students before and after participation in forest education program and to suggest a way of increasing the effectiveness of environmental awareness through the program. A pre and post questionnaire survey was conducted for students with intellectual disabilities of elementary school. The Wilcoxon signed rank test for paired data analysis was performed to compare before and after comparison, and the overall value of Cronbach's α of this research was 0.790. The result shows that the forest awareness of the respondents is mostly high both before and after the program. It is also found that the mean score of forest awareness slightly increases after program compared to before program, although there is no statistically significant difference (p=0.529). Some suggestions are provided for encouraging the students with disabilities to participate forest program to increase the environmental awareness. Firstly, the program content for inducing an interest is needed for male students with disabilities. Secondly, for the disabled students who have participated the program previously, it is necessary for the students to concentrate more on the program by providing various and new educational contents. Thirdly, more detailed, professional, and in-depth educational contents about forest are needed as a way of raising environmental awareness of the disabled students who understands the function of forest quite well