Slovenian forestry institute at iceri2023 in seville with the Forest of experiments study

13.-15. 11. 2023, Seville, Spain

The 16th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (ICERI2023), "Transforming Education, Transforming Lives", took place in mid-November in Seville, Spain. The conference is one of the major international education conferences for researchers, lecturers, technologists and education professionals. This year, 750 people from 60 different countries attended, with the largest number from the USA and the longest distance travelled by participants from Australia. The conference was opened by keynote speakers Dr Pooja K. Agarwal (Cognitive Scientist, Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, USA) and Dr Cristobal Cobo (Senior Education Specialist, Chile).

The Forest of Experiments team from the Slovenian Forestry Institute (SFI) presented a paper on the attitudes of primary school children towards forests and climate change titled "Attitudes of Slovenian School Children Towards Forests and Climate Change: a Study by the Forest of Experiments". In the paper, we addressed the topical issue of climate change, which is also having a major impact on Slovenian forests. Educating and raising awareness among young people and other target groups about forests, forest management, climate change and related topics using methods and principles of forest pedagogy is one of the highlighted activities of the SFI, and for this purpose it is necessary to identify and monitor knowledge needs and awareness gaps. In this paper, we present the situation of the primary school children who visited our stand at the Enchanting Plants Day 2023, while highlighting the importance of an appropriate approach in raising awareness among young people about the complex challenges posed by climate change. The poster of the paper can be found in English in the next section of this page.