Planning on Environmental Education Tour Programme Based on The Perception and Preferences of School Aged Children at PT. Pusri Palembang.

Abstract

Environmental education is aimed to change someone’s attitude and behavior towards one’s interaction with the environment. Since the education is not a short term period, the education needs to start as early as possible. By applying an early environmental education, it is hoped to create a positive attitude and behavior towards the environment. The final outcome is to create a generation which become agent of change that are able to be the driving force in creating the balance of nature and environment. The education programme needs to be created with the attention to the needs and wants of the participants (in this case; school-aged children) combined with a concrete learning. One of the activities that the children love is a trip or tour. This activities can be combined with the environmental education so that it can become a fun and effective programme. The objective of this research is to develop a planning for an environmental education tour programme based on the needs of the school-aged children by paying attention to their perception and preferences towards the environment. The research used qualitative descriptive methods. Samples were the elementary school children located in the Ring I of PT. Pusri. Number of samples are 120 children which were purposively chosen using the random sampling method. Data were collected using questionnaire, interviews, observations and desk study. Data was analyzed using the qualitative descriptive method. The development of the tour planning programme then was created by synthetizing the perception, preferences, and the point of interests of PT. Pusri. The result of this research showed that PT. Pusri is potential as the destination of environmental education. There is no significant differences of the perception and preferences towards the environment between the boys and the girls, and between the grade 1-3 children and grade 4-6 children. Both the perception and preferences of the children were dominantly at the level of moderate so the program will be created to increase this level into good. The planning of the environmental education tour program were created by combining the classroom method (films and lecture), field trip, and fun games. This research showed that a factory with its activities can be a destination for an environmental education tour for elementary shool children.