Does education have the impact we hope for? A recent study published in PLoS ONE addresses the potential effect that education about climate change had on the actions of the individuals who took a course at San Jose State University. The course was designed to be an environmentally geared curriculum to teach students about climate change and how making small changes by using, for example, ideas from project drawdown, can have an impact on their carbon footprint. Their conclusion was that those who did take the course seemed to be more aware of their actions regarding climate change, and reduced their impact. However, they believed that their results may have some bias included due to the nature of the course and the participants selecting it already potentially being conscious of their actions in relation to climate change. Review the study here and see what you think! I think that it offers a good amount of validation for the work that we do as environmental educators, and gives us hope that our work is even more important and impactful than we think!

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0206266