In this master thesis we examined high school student's attitudes on arthropods. We focused primarily on the emotions of fear and disgust, as well as knowledge about arthropods, the students' interest in them and their desire to support conservation efforts of arthropods. For this task, we designed a survey questionnare, in which, we asked the students to evaluate these four factor (grade from 1 to 5), the fear of arthropods of their close relatives. Further, we tested their knowledege about arthropods by asking the students to determine which of the given statements about arthropods are correct and which are incorrect. In our study, we had 174 participants from two of Ljubljana's high schools. The results showed, that these high school students showed more fear and disgust towards arachnids and centipedes compared to insects. We also found out, that female participants in the study expressed more fear and disgust towards arthropods compared to the male participants. Knowledge about arthropods was shown to be statistically insignificant in having an effect on students' interest towards arthropods. Moreover, students, that had relatives, who fear arthropods, showed no significant difference in their expressed fear and digust and no difference in their interest towards arthropods and their desire to support arthropod conservation efforts. Lastly we found, that students' desire for arthropod conservation efforts did not significantly differ by the students' gender, grade and knowledge about arthropods. Based on our findings, we suggest, that future teachers should try to incorporate as much direct experience with arthropods in combination with classical teaching methods. We also suggest more attention be given to their importance in nature.
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