This study aims to verify the impact of a metaverse-based safety education program on the fire safety awareness of elementary school students. Utilizing the National Fire Agency's 119 metaverse program, an educational program was implemented for two months, and the experimental group was examined using paired-sample t-tests, while comparisons with the control group were made using independent-sample t-tests. The results revealed statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups in the area of fire prevention. Although no statistically significant differences were observed over time within each group, the overall average scores for the entire class improved across all areas. Based on these findings, the effectiveness of metaverse-based safety education is suggested; however, a significant difference compared to traditional education was not detected. The study concludes by exploring implications for considerations in the implementation of metaverse safety education in the future.

This study attempted to explore how the perception of the necessity of safety education for adolescents affects fire safety consciousness and whether personality factors control the relationship. To this end, a survey was conducted at a high school in region C, and data of 1,049 people who agreed to the survey and responded faithfully were used for analysis. Hayes’ macro was used to analyze the moderating effect, and as a result of the analysis, adolescents’ awareness of the need for safety education increased, and their relationship was significantly regulated by extroversion, openness, and conscientiousness among the five personality factors. A simple regression line analysis was conducted to find out the specific direction, and it was found that the higher the need for safety education in both the group with high extroversion, openness, and conscientiousness, the higher the awareness of safety education. These results suggest that changes in educational methods and contents are needed to raise awareness of the necessity of education in fire safety education and to improve educational motivation, and that it may be helpful to actively utilize students’ personality strengths in education.

Preschoolers are the most effective age to start fire safety education. But, if the education contents are inappropriate, they may form the wrong habit to preschoolers. Many educational contents of fire safety in Korea are not so obvious in the principle and order of priority about what to do during fire and they often contain unnecessary contents to preschoolers such as how to use fire extinguisher. This paper has analyzed fire safety awareness of preschoolers and teachers and, based on the results, has claimed unsuitability of training on how to use fire extinguisher and has suggested the improvement of fire safety education.