Ocean literacy in youth from the prairies

Ocean literacy is an important component of environmental literacy because ecological services performed by the world’s oceans affect the distribution of heat and water, which directly or indirectly influences virtually every aspect of life on planet Earth. The importance of oceans on human physical health and economic prosperity, and the effects of human activity on ocean health, are not fully appreciated by the general public. This is especially the case for inland populations that rarely, if ever, visit the ocean. Here, we report ocean literacy of youth aged 9–14 located in the center of the North American continent, before and after a 4-day program on ocean literacy hosted at an oceanarium. Of the 31 participants in this sample, six had never been to the ocean, another nine had been to an ocean only once in their lives, and seven had been to the ocean fewer than 5 times. The pre-test administered at the onset of the workshop showed an average pre-knowledge across the seven principles of ocean literacy of 32.1%, which increased to 45.1% by the end of the workshop. The principles of ocean literacy (One big ocean, Ocean influences climate and Ocean is largely unexplored) had the highest rates of pre-knowledge and also the highest rates of learning gains suggesting either that (1) the workshop covered these areas particularly well, (2) these are easy concepts for youth to grasp, and/or (3) there was youth-to-youth transfer of knowledge during the workshop. Grade level (age) predicted prior knowledge, with older participants scoring higher than younger ones. Similarly, sex was a significant predictor of pre-knowledge, with female participants out-scoring males. Neither age nor sex affected learning gain during the workshop. By the end of the workshop, there was a significant shift toward an increasingly positive attitude about oceans, but no change in interest in ocean-related jobs.

Methods
We collected demographic data for age, sex, grade level, and the type of school they attend (public, private, or home-schooled). Because we were interested in knowing exposure of inland populations to oceans, we asked participants if they had even been to the ocean, with response options (a) Never, (b) Once, (c) More than once, (d) more than five times.

Development of the Ocean Literacy assessment tool

Knowledge questions (Table 1) were taken from a much longer list provided by Chen et al. (2020). We chose this resource because the questions have been pre-vetted and validated using psychoanalytic tools to ensure reliability. We selected 14 questions from Chen et al. (2020), with two questions assessing each of the seven ocean literacy principles. Thus, the survey assessed pecan literacy across all seven areas while keeping the survey short to be easily implemented during the workshop.

Description of Ocean Literacy activities in the JACK workshop

The Junior Aquarist Camp for Kids (JACK) workshop activities were adapted from activities described by the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (http://www.cosee.net/best_activities/principle/index.html). Each session of JACK ran for four days. The day-by-day programming is described in Table 2.

Data analysis

Post-pre changes in responses to interest questions and overall scores on knowledge questions were compared using paired t-tests. We noticed a systematic difference in responses to the two questions, which we compared using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) using pre-workshop score as the covariate, post-workshop score as the dependent variable, and question as the categorical predictor. Responses to pre- and post-workshop knowledge questions were organized into four categories:

Already knew: Answered the question correctly in the pre-test, and again on the post-test

Learned: Answered incorrectly on the pre-test but correctly on the post-test

Did not learn: Answered incorrectly on both the pre-test and post-test

Got confused: Answered correctly on the pre-test but incorrectly on the post-test

We compared the seven ocean literacy principles using contingency table analyses (based on the chi-square null distribution). Similarly, the effects of categorical predictors of sex, grade level, and previous experience with oceans were all compared using contingency table analyses. An unexpected correlation appeared between pre-knowledge of learning gain, which we assessed using linear regression. Analyses were conducted using SPSS v 28.