Tripartite Collaborative Model for Children's Water Environment Science Education: Construction and Practice

Abstract

To address the problems of fragmented curricula, one-off activities, and an emphasis on knowledge over behavior in current water environment science education for children, this study constructed and implemented a “school-community-enterprise” tripartite collaborative model for children’s water environment science education. Targeting children aged 6-12, the model integrates university research expertise, community organizational networks, and enterprise practice scenarios through four mechanisms: joint curriculum development, shared teaching resources, shared practice bases, and joint evaluation of outcomes. A theme-based science curriculum, the journey of a drop of water, was developed, adopting the experience-action-reflection cyclical instructional design. Through an implementation pathway combining on-campus classes, enterprise site visits, and household water-saving actions, the model promotes the translation of children’s water environment knowledge into water-saving behavior. Preliminary evidence from classroom observations, parent feedback, and interviews in a pilot study indicates that, beyond knowledge acquisition, children began to spontaneously remind family members to save water and to reuse water for multiple purposes at home. Family and community participation improved simultaneously, and the spillover effect of “educating one child, influencing one family, and engaging one community” began to emerge. The study suggests that in-depth multi-stakeholder collaboration is a feasible pathway to bridging the knowledge-action gap in environmental education, and the resulting curriculum resources and operational framework can serve as a reference for similar science education programs.