The Effectiveness of Teaching Aids for Elementary Students’ Renewable Energy Learning and an Analysis of Their Energy Attitude Formation

As an examination of the influences of a renewable energy teaching activity employing teaching aids on elementary students‟ knowledge of, attitude toward, and behavior of energy saving and carbon reduction, this study designed a teaching experiment in which experimental group was subjected to the teaching with four teaching aids for students to practice whereas the control group was not. Results revealed that the teaching activity significantly improved the attitude and increased some knowledge items but did not affect the behavior. The behavior was more connected to attitude and knowledge for experimental group than for control group. The formation of the positive attitude could be related to the sensory stimulation generated by the teaching aids and associated affective responses when it was analyzed from a product-trial perspective. The analysis should inspire the understanding of the possible mechanisms of how learning experiences affect attitude.