Environmental education

Environmental education
The school exchange programs under the support of the scenic area authority of the Matsu Geopark is one of the most successful practices of environmental education within a geopark. The Matsu National Scenic Area authority annually funds at leas 60 primary school students to participate in the geopark exchange activities. Even with a limit budget, the students of the Matsu islets are able to visit the geopark of Taiwan Main Island and to welcome other geopark student to their islet home town as well. This exchange program has shaped the education of the involved schools in exciting way. As the school teachers and students experience the peak experience of learning by sharing and doing, they tend to become motivated to design locally appropriate teaching materials. It was found out that pedagogical materials, tailored for the local context, can easily provide students with a peak learning experience, because they reinforce complex feedback mechanisms. With such practice, students become more confident on guiding their cohort guests from other geoparks. They are proud to act as geopark ambassadors to visitors [1]. 

Students from various schools discussing issues at Matsu Geopark

A student explaining a light house heritage site to visitors at Matsu Geopark

Students holding a pamphlet explaining landforms to exchange visitors at Matsu Geopark

Face with contemporary unpredictable environmental change, the students are also being prepared to improve their observational and analytical skills to understand the changing environment. This can partly be taught in the classroom, but skills that are taught in the outdoor, natural environment itself are more likely to be effective. Therefore, it is believed that the exchange program for geopark students will produce more and more benefits as it proceeds. Because of that structural environment educational policy, support has to be continued and sustained by local communities, school teachers and government agencies (Ley et al., 2017) [2]. It is fair to say that geopark promotion and implementation in Taiwan has achieved a level where both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms meet with great sucess.