Effects of Forest Education Program in Urban Natural Park on Elementary School Students’ Academic Stress and Ego-Resilience

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of forest education program on elementary school students’ academic stress and ego&#8211;resilience. The subjects of this study were 20 elementary school boys and girls who applied for a youth group forest experience program in OO-dong, Incheon. The duration of the experiment was 12 weeks from September 2 to November 18, 2017 and each session was held once a week and the run time of a session was 90 minutes. Before and after the implementation of the forest education program utilizing the forest environment of the urban nature park, the test for the academic stress and ego-resilience was conducted and analyzed by the SPSS 22.0 program. As a result, the mean total score of academic stress of elementary school students participating in forest education program was significantly lower than that of the not participating students (p <.05). The effect of increasing ego-resilience was also significant in the sub-factors “interpersonal relationship and optimism” and “emotion control and curiosity” (p <.05). The data shows the forest education program is not only effective on relieving academic stress of elementary school students that cause school maladjustment and anxiety due to excessive academic burden, but is also positively affecting ego-resilience that is the ability to cope with stress. Therefore, it proves that forest education programs are suitable for elementary school students.