The Wadden Sea as a National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site: Students’ Word Associations with These Two Conservation Designations

Till Schmäing,Norbert Grotjohann

doi:10.3390/su13148006

Abstract

The Wadden Sea ecosystem is unique in many respects from a biological perspective. This is one reason why it is protected by national parks in Germany and by its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In biology didactics, there are only a few studies that focus on the Wadden Sea. This work investigates students’ word associations with the two stimulus words “national park” and “UNESCO World Heritage Site”. The survey was conducted among students living directly at the Wadden Sea and among students from the inland. The analysis of the identified associations (n = 8345) was carried out within the framework of a quantitative content analysis to be able to present and discuss the results on a group level. A statistically significant difference was found between the two groups. Overall, results showed that the students made subject-related associations as well as a large number of associations to both stimulus words that could be judged as non-subject-related. In some cases, a connection with the region of residence could be found, but this was not generally the case. Even students’ immediate residential proximity to the Wadden Sea is no guarantee that they have knowledge of the two considered protection terms.

Highlights

The Wadden Sea of northeastern Europe is an important ecosystem
A word association method was selected for the two terms “national park” and “UNESCO World Heritage Site”
Corresponding methodological approaches have been used in science for many decades. They are mainly used in psychology, but they are present in the field of biology didactics [69]

Summary

Introduction

It provides food for up to 12 million water birds that rest, molt, or winter there [1] This mudflat is the habitat for a total of about 10,000 different species [2] that have managed to adapt to the difficult living conditions influenced by the tides. The Wadden Sea extends from the Danish coast to the entire German coast to the Dutch North Sea coast [3]. It is the longest continuous mudflat area in the entire world. The Wadden Sea in Germany was protected when the corresponding areas were declared as national parks. There are three areas protected in this way, namely, the national parks “Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea” (founded in 1985 [7]), “Lower Saxony

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion