Ohio Students' Knowledge and Attitudes about the Oceans and Great Lakes

Author Institution: School of Natural Resources, The Ohio State University ; Science and Mathematics Education, The Ohio State UniversityA program to develop instructional materials for implementing marine and aquatic education in Ohio middle schools was begun by Ohio Sea Grant in 1977. This was followed 3 years later by a grant to disseminate the materials to schools in Ohio. To determine the effectiveness of the dissemination process a baseline study was conducted in the autumn of 1980. The survey obtained information on attitudes and knowledge of the Great Lakes and oceans from fifth and ninth grade students in randomly selected schools within 3 arbitrarily determined zones: the lake region, the central region and the Ohio River region. In addition, students responded to items to determine their perceptions of the sources of their knowledge