Examining how the eco-animation WALL-E impacts children's environmental conceptualization

Korfiatis, K. ., Photiou, M. ., & Petrou, S. . (2020). Effects of eco-animations on nine and twelve year old children’s environmental conceptions: How WALL-E changed young spectators’ views of earth and environmental protection. The Journal of Environmental Education, 51, 381-394.

Environmental animations (eco-animations) can play an integral part in a child's environmental knowledge, beliefs, perceptions, and concerns. Children today spend a large portion of their time consuming media, often through television shows and movies. Media is one of the main ways that children learn about the world, especially if they are not yet old enough to be in school. All these factors mean that eco-animations have a large impact on the way that children see the world and can be used as a tool to teach them about the environment and environmental issues. This study specifically looked at environmental conceptions—how a person understands the environment and the beliefs/values that come with that understanding. The researchers aimed to see the effects that the movie WALL-E had on children's environmental conceptualization and perception of human-nature relationships, as well as the relationships between these conceptions and age.

WALL-E, released in 2008, is known by many experts and viewers as an extremely powerful environmental film. It was extremely popular when released and continues to be so. The film brings up environmental issues such as garbage, pollution, and toxic waste, as well as broader issues such as obesity and consumerism, while following a lone robot named WALL-E through a post-apocalyptic world. In this imagined future, humankind has abandoned the earth because it has been so polluted that it became uninhabitable. Later in the film, WALL-E travels to space to find the humans living on a spaceship, and he eventually brings the humans back to earth to clean it up.

The study took place at an urban elementary school in Cyprus. The participants consisted of 35 nine-year-old students and 49 twelve-years-old students. The participants remained anonymous and volunteered to participate in a viewing of the movie at a local movie theatre. Both before and after viewing the film, researchers gave participants two stimulus terms ('Earth' and 'Environmental Protection') and asked them to record the first five words that each term recalled. To analyze the data, the researchers used the Social Representation Theory (SRT) framework, which allows researchers to study conceptions in how they are formulated, communicated, and can change over time and depending on the setting.

The researchers found that with both age groups, the word 'Earth' stimulated responses within the categories of 'Natural Elements,' 'Humans,' 'Pollution,' 'Geographical Terms,' and 'Functions.' They also found in both groups that there were differences in the words named before and after the screening. For example, geographical terms reduced in frequency after the screening, while the term 'garbage' appeared after the screening. The twelve-year-old students were able to connect the terms 'human' and 'garbage' with each other after the screening. With the term 'Environmental Protection,' the researchers found that after the screening, the nine-year-old students were able to connect humans with pro-environmental actions, such as “recycling” and “no garbage.” Overall, the researchers concluded that there was a larger impact on the nine-year-old participants as they saw the most change in terms after the screening and concluded that this may be due to the twelve-year-old participants already having more exposure to environmental issues.

This study had limitations. The sample size was relatively small, only included two ages, and was only done in one geographical location, which limits its generalizability. Additionally, it only assessed short-term impacts of the film as well as only looked at the data through word association without other forms of data collection.

The researchers recommend that this data be used to look more into how children's environmental conceptions are formed and can further develop. Overall, they acknowledge that eco-animations are a great tool to teach children about environmental issues and shape their worldviews. They recommend that educators continue to use this tool.

The Bottom Line

<p>Eco-animation films can have an impact on how children perceive the world and environmental issues. This study explored how the film WALL-E impacted children's environmental conceptualization and perception of human-nature relationships, and explored if age had an impact on conceptions. The study took place at an urban elementary school in Cyprus with 35 nine-year-old students and 49 twelve-years-old students. Both before and after viewing the film, researchers gave participants two stimulus terms ('Earth' and 'Environmental Protection') and asked them to record the first five words that each term recalled. The researchers concluded that there was a larger impact on the nine-year-old participants as there was a larger change in terms after the screening. This may be due to the twelve-year-old participants already having more exposure to environmental issues. The researchers recommend that educators use eco-animations at any age to increase exposure to environmental issues and shape students' worldviews.</p>

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