Environmental education (EE) has often been touted as a tool for environmental conservation due to its potential to enhance environmentally related knowledge and attitudes and influence conservation-oriented behaviors among participants. Although many see value in EE, there have been active debates about the appropriate—and most effective—audience for EE programs. Should EE interventions address children, who are young and may have a longer influence on the environment, or their parents, who may be able to take action in the shorter term through currently impactful household behaviors, such as food purchases, or policy actions, such as voting? Such a choice may become obsolete in the face of new research that suggests that parents and children may actually mutually influence each other. While many people readily accept one half of this argument—that parents influence the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of their children—studies investigating the other half of this dynamic are rare. This study seeks to fill that gap by investigating whether children's participation in an environmental education program focused on wetlands influences the knowledge and water conservation behaviors of their parents.
The authors conducted their study in the Republic of Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean with pressing freshwater degradation issues. While environmental education is provided through schools in the country, the authors studied the influence of an in-depth program provided to schoolchildren by Wildlife Club Seychelles (a local nongovernmental organization). The researchers collected quantitative data from students and their parents using self-report questionnaires that involved questions about wetland knowledge, household behaviors, and demographics. In total, they surveyed 161 students and their parents, all of whom were associated with one of 15 selected Wildlife Club Seychelles groups. Of these 15 groups, 7 had studied wetlands within the last year, while the remaining 8 focused on other topics. Using data from the questionnaire, the authors conducted statistical analyses to better understand the associations between children's participation in wetland education, their wetland knowledge, their parents' wetland knowledge, and household freshwater conservation behaviors. For the purposes of this study, the authors used two “knowledge” variables—one based on the participants' ability to describe the river nearest their home and the other based on a composite score representing four questions covering topics such as wetland species and ecosystem services.
The authors present several findings of interest. First, children who participated in a Wildlife Club wetlands program, which involved hands-on learning opportunities, had higher wetlands knowledge scores than their peers who did not participate in similar wetlands experiences. The length of participation in Wildlife Club Seychelles programs also mattered with regard to student knowledge: students who participated for longer periods of time demonstrated higher wetlands knowledge. These results suggest that the environmental education offered by the Wildlife Clubs is effective at enhancing students' factual knowledge.
The authors found that the same relationship existed for parents. Parents of students who participated in wetlands education scored higher on the wetland knowledge questionnaire than parents of children without such an experience. The authors also found that parents whose children discussed their environmental education with them had higher wetlands knowledge scores. This suggests evidence of knowledge sharing between children and parents. Yet, even though the results indicate a high likelihood that children are sharing their new wetlands-related knowledge with their parents, the authors found that most parents denied gaining environmental knowledge from their children; this both underscores the risks of relying on self-report alone for such information and also suggests that perhaps the parents may not consciously be aware of the source of their information.
The authors found no significant differences among the student or parent groups on the study's second wetland knowledge variable—local river awareness. The authors categorize this variable as a type of folk knowledge and argue that the lack of association is logical because (a) most students gain some level of exposure to their local environment and (b) EE programs may be better suited to addressing other types of factual understanding. In other words, the authors argue that EE is better at conveying certain types of knowledge than others.
The authors' model for estimating the relationship between children's EE participation and household water behaviors was a poor fit, but they present preliminary hypotheses for future study based on the results. Their results suggest that child participation in wetlands education, increased knowledge of water systems, and past engagement in conservation activities are all associated with increased household freshwater conservation behavior. The authors interpret these findings as an indication that children may influence the behavior of individuals who are not themselves the targets of EE programs, especially behaviors related to the EE curriculum.
The study results are not able to prove causality in these relationships, but the findings suggest the value in further study to understand the factors and nuances in the relationship among EE, knowledge, and behavior for participants and their immediate family members.
The Bottom Line
<p>This study provides evidence that environmental education programs can effectively convey conservation knowledge to young participants, who, in turn, may influence the knowledge, attitudes, and perhaps even behaviors of their parents. Educators, program coordinators, and policymakers may find this information useful when considering who to target with key conservation messages.</p>
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