The development of knowledge and awareness of environmental laws and participation in environmental conservation of probationers

This research aimed to develop knowledge and awareness about environmental laws and participation in environmental conservation of probationers in MahaSarakham Province, Thailand. This study was divided into 3 stages. State 1 was the development of a training manual and construction of training evaluation instruments which consisted of a questionnaire on environmental laws, a questionnaire on awareness about environmental laws, and questionnaire about participation in environmental conservation. Stage 2 was the try-out of the training manual and the determination of the instrument qualities with 30 probationers. Stage 3 was the evaluation of the implementation of the developed training manual with 55 purposive and voluntary probationers for 3 days. The findings revealed that the training manual had an effectiveness index of 0.2889. The experimental group showed gains in knowledge and awareness about environmental laws and participation in environmental conservation from before participating in the training session (p <.001). Also, they indicated more knowledge of environmental laws and participation in environmental conservation than the control group probationers (p<.001). However, the two groups did not indicate different awareness about environmental laws (p=.146). In addition, the probationers with different did not show different knowledge, awareness and participation (p=.789). The statistical interaction of age and training experience were not found to be significant (p=.850).


INTRODUCTION
At present, environmental problems are considered as destructive problems both quantitative and qualitative, in terms of biological and economic and social environments (Veeravatnanond, 2012;ONEP, 2015).The main cause of the problems is human action (Singseewo, 2011;Veeravatnanond, 2012) or operation such as deforestation (ONEP, 2015).Lack of forest will lead to drought and irregular raining season which can change the community life.Environmental problems are mainly caused by overconsumption, poor environmental *Corresponding author.E-mail: Som.wanlu@gmail.com.
Authors agree that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License behaviors, lack of knowledge and skills, lack of environmental ethics (Thathong, 2005;Wongchantra, 2008), inefficient environmental management (Chaisa et al., 2010 ;Sriharuksa et al., 2011) and imbalance of nature itself (Veeravatnanond, 2003;Pleampongsarn, 2006).With the belief that education could help solve environmental problems, environmetal education refers to organized efforts to harmonize the learning process with human-environment interactions.It could also refer to propagation methodology for education students and people about environment, wlth an attempt to develop the quality of environment that human can get benefits from (Pleampongsarn, 2006, Singseewo, 2011, Veeravatnanond, 2012).Environmental education aims at producing a citizenry that has knowledge concerning biological environment and its associated problems, aware of how to help people solve those problems, and be motivated to work toward their solution (Stapp, 1969).To get effective reduction of impacts on environments at the beginning, the usage of environmental laws is a social measure for solving than for prevention (Chaihan, 2003).The measures used for punishment of those offenders are merely ineffective because a small number of those offenders sentenced in the prison are convinced not to behave against the environmental laws.The prison sentence for a majority of offenders does not make them convinced and needed to be self-adjusted and make oneself to be social advantages.The concept of aprobation of the offender is recommended by some authorities.This concept is based on a new rationale or reason that the strong punishment of the offender is not a positive effectiveness and is not a means to help the offender convince his/her action or make him/her afraid of the laws.The probation, therefore, is a method of conditioned law extension for the offender in which the offender still normally lives in the community under the investigating and monitoring by probation officials appointed by the court.The probation is not a type of mercy but it has an objective of making the offender correcting one -self by community influence rather than imprisonment.The probationer must know and understand what to conduct according to conditions of good behavior or to a premise to behave well in the future as the court's instruction.If the court orders the offender to work for social benefits such as tree planting, he of she have to know and understand how to plant the tree and take care of environment conservation.
Since the offenders must show themselves to the probation officials on the day, as assigned by the count, for receiving advice or suggestions for adjusting their behaviors appropriate for living as good citizens of the society, they should have a good chance to participating in protection of environments as other normal people do.These offenders should learn about environmental conservation by attending a training session at the time of Wanlu et al. 1647 reporting to the probation officials.As a judge, therefore, the author is interested in holding a training session about environmental laws for the probationers in order to develop their knowledge and awareness of environmental laws and participation in an environmental conservation.

Objectives
To develop a training manual for building knowledge of environmental laws, awareness of environmental laws, and participation in an environmental conservation of probationers and to compare the results of using the developed training manual with the probationers as a whole and as classified according to age.

METHODOLOGY
This research was an Quasi-Experimental Pretest-Posttest with Control Group Design which was divided into 3 stages.

Stage 1:
The development of a training manual and evaluation instruments.
1.The researcher developed a training manual by studying of various laws related to environments from government documents and interviewing judges, public prosecutors attorneys and probation officials.This information was used for developing activities of a lecture on environmental laws and environmental conservation, small group discussion for brain storming in solving environmental problems, and activity forest planting and garbage disposal.
2. The researcher developed three instruments for assessing the outcomes of the training session which included (1) a questionnaire on knowledge of environmental laws in the form of yes-no type with 24 items; a 5-rating-scale questionnaire about awareness of environmental laws with 23 items; and (3) a 4 -rating scale questionnaire about participation in environmental, conservation with 21 items These instruments were rated as appropriateness by s experts.

Stage 2: The try-out of the training manual and training evaluation instruments
The researcher tried out the developed training manual with 30 probationers who were voluntarily and purposively selected for 3 days.The three instruments were administered to the participants, 30 min each at the end of the training session.The knowledge questionnaires were scored as yes given a score of 1 and no given a score of 0. The awareness questionnaires were scored as strongly agreed given a score 5, agreed a score of 4, uncertain a score of 3, disagreed a score of 2, and strongly disagreed a score of 1.The participation questionnaires were scored as always practice given a score of 4, frequent practice a score of 3, sometime practice a score of 2, and never practice a score of 1.All scores of these instruments were calculated for the qualities in terms of item discrimination using the item-total correlation which was found between .70 and .89(significant at .05 : .05r38= .296); and internal using the Cronbach' s alpha coefficient found between .724-.983.

3: The evaluation of the training outcomes
The researcher voluntarily and purposively selected 109 probationers in MahaSarakham Province, Thailand, as participants of the study.They were randomly assigned to an experimental group of 54 probationers who participated in the 3-day training session using the developed training manual; and a control group of 55 probationers who did not participate in the training session.Before the training session, the two groups of probationers were tested using the knowledge questionnaire, the awareness questionnaire and the participation questionnaire.
In addition, the first two questionnaires were immediately administered to the two groups at the end of a 3 -day training session.Only the participation questionnaires were administered to the two groups after 1 month of the termination of the training sessioncalled delayed posttest.
All scores receiving from the awareness questionnaire and the participation questionnaire were calculated for finding means and standard deviation and the researcher set the mean intervals for interpretation as below.For testing hypotheses, the paired t-test and the F-test (Two-way MANCOVA and ANCOVA) were employed.In addition, the assumptions of MANCOVA and ANCOVA in terms of correlation between the dependent variables, homogeneity of variance, homogeneity of regression slope, and homogeneity of variancecovariance matrices were tested and found the data met the requirement of these assumptions.

Finding
The findings of the study were found as follows.
1  1 and 2), in favor of the former.However, the two groups did not indicate different awareness of environmental laws (p = .789).
3. The probationers with different ages did not evidence differences in knowledge of environmental laws, awareness of environmental laws and participation in environmental conservation (p=.798) (Table 1).4. The statistical interactions of age with training experience on the three mentioned dependent variables were not found to be significant (p = .850)(Table 1).

Discussion
The first finding of the study revealed that the probationers who participated in the training session had increased their knowledge and awareness of environmental laws and participation in environmental conservation before participating in the training session.It was supported by some related research findings which found that the people who participated in the training using the manual on waste disposal showed gains in their knowledge-understanding and participation in waste management before participation in the training session (Meaungprom, 2008) and the members of subdistrict organization had increased their awareness and practices of natural resources and environments before the training (Traithip, 2008;Salaibat, 2011).It might be due to this training session had some effective activities such as small group discussion and practical activities which could develop the probationers' knowledge and awareness of environmental laws and finally changed their participating behaviors in environmental conservation (Buphawal, 2012).This was relevant to the belief in the concepts of human behavior changes which stated that the knowledge and awareness and valuing may result in behavioral changes (Schwartz, 1974) and the perception of acquisition of environmental behavior as an ultimate goal of the educational process has maintained a strong hold in the environmental education community (Chawla, 1999;Marcinkowski, 2004).
The second finding found that the probationers who participated in the training session showed more knowledge of environmental laws and participating behaviors in environmental conservation than did those probationers who did not attend the training session.It was supported by the research finding which showed that the people who participated in training using the manual on waste disposal had more knowledge and understanding and participation in waste management than those people who did not attend the training (Meaungprom, 2008;Chaihan, 2003).This might be because the probationers who attended the training could have more understanding of detailed knowledge of forest planting and waste disposal resulting in a public mind and consciousness of having participating conservation behaviors in everyday life.
However, the probationers who attended and those who did not attend the training session did not indicate awareness of environmental laws differently.This might be due to some knowledge of environmental laws and who were captured by the policemen due to illegal behaviors against the environmental laws could be publicized via the social media such as television, news reports, and newspapers Both groups, therefore, could develop equal awareness of environmental laws.
The last finding showed that the probationers aged 20 years or below and those aged over 20 years did not show differences in knowledge and awareness of environmental laws and participating conservation behaviors was supported by the research findings that the members of subdistrict organization with different ages did no have different knowledge, awareness and practices of conservation of national resources and environments (Meaungprom, 2008 ;Hunchaisri, 2010 ;Sunthonchai, 2010 ;Jansamood. 2010 ;Sriharuksa. 2011).This might be due to both groups could receive knowledge and build awareness of environmental laws from daily news on violations of the environmental laws.Both knowledge and awareness may be inadequate for changes of participating conservation behaviors.

Recommendation
This research valued the probationers who could live normally in a society.They could have public mind as good citizens to cooperatively participate in conserving natural resources and environments.The methodology of this research may be applied or adapted to be implemented with other probationers across the country.Also, this methodology could be applied to children and youth probationers by providing activities appropriate to the abilities of the participants.

Table 1
Comparisons of knowledge, awareness and participation in environmental conservation of the experimental group and the control group with different ages (Two-way MANCOVA).Comparisons of knowledge, awareness and participation of the experimental group and the control group (Univariate Test One -way ANCOVA).