Estimating the scope and composition of environmental education in the U.S.

Environmental education (EE) is a broad field, and environmental educators can have a variety of roles, backgrounds, levels of professional training, goals, and so on. Efforts to professionalize and support the EE field have increased in recent years. Professionalizing the EE field requires an understanding of the field's scope (the number of professionals working as environmental educators and their type of work) and composition of the field (gender, race, age, level of education, and whether educators are paid or unpaid). The goal is to ensure that the resources devoted to professionalizing EE are distributed evenly and fairly. Past attempts to investigate the scope and composition of the EE field have used data from the membership of national organizations, such as NAAEE, which do not include all environmental educators in the U.S. This study used a different approach to estimate the scope and composition of the EE field in the U.S in an attempt identify a more representative sample of self-identified environmental educators.

A total of 11,378 adults in the US participated in the study. Data collection occurred from September to November 2015. Data were collected through a consumer panel survey, an approach in which a group of individuals who previously submitted profiles online were compensated to answer survey questions. The authors sought to balance the composition of participants in two ways. The first was they recruited participants across EPA's 10 regions in order to explore variations by region. The second was to ensure the ethnic/minority distribution of participants overall reflected distributions on the U.S. Census. The authors purposely did not provide a definition of “environmental educator” on the survey; rather, they asked participants to self-identify as environmental educator with the goal of being more inclusive. Participants were asked 3 questions: 1) Do you identify as an environmental educator? 2) If yes, are you paid to teach? (multiple choice, and options included formally, non-formally, and volunteer) and 3) Did you study environmental education in high school or college? Demographic information was already stored in the participant profiles. The authors used statistical methods to analyze the data.

The study found that the number of adults in the U.S. that self-identify as environmental educators was much larger and more diverse than indicated in past studies. A total of 20% (2,761) of respondents identified as environmental educators. The authors acknowledged that this percent was likely too high, so they used national statistics to conduct additional data analysis. Based on these adjusted analyses, they concluded that there are roughly 150,000 formal educators in the U.S. who consider themselves to be environmental educators. The authors suggested that the high number of participants who self-identified as environmental educators stemmed from not providing a definition of environmental educator in the survey and from oversampling (for example, the number of formal educators in the survey was disproportionally high).

In terms of compensation for working in the environmental education field, 11% of respondents who identified as environmental educators were paid to teach in formal settings, 4% were paid to teach in non-formal settings, and 85% were volunteers. EPA region 9 (California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii) was the only region where the number of paid environmental educators outnumbered unpaid environmental educators. Respondents who identified as Pacific Islander were more likely to be paid in either formal or non-formal education settings. About one fifth of the participants indicated they had studied environmental education in high school or college. The authors used data from the National Center for Education Statistics on environmental and sustainability program enrollment in the US to estimate that up to 29,000 trained environmental educators enter the field every year. However, there was limited data available from academic institutions with EE programs on enrollment, graduation rates, or alumni employment.

In terms of racial and ethnic diversity in the EE field, this research found that Pacific Islanders, American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Black/African Americans, were most likely to self-identify as environmental educators. Almost half of the individuals who self-identified as environmental educators in EPA region 2 (New York, New Jersey) and region 6 (Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arizona, Louisiana) also identified as Hispanic.

This research has some limitations. The number of respondents who self-identified as environmental educators seemed to be too high to represent the general US population. The authors recognized this and used national statistics to further manipulate and analyze the data to try and make the survey sample more representative. However, this additional data manipulation involved assumptions, which could have made the resulting estimates inaccurate. Additionally, there is a possibility that respondents had a different understanding of what “environmental educator” meant than what the authors intended. Although the intention of self-definition and self-identification is valuable, future efforts to measure scale and diversity of the EE field may benefit from providing a short-response component where participants elaborate on what they define as an environmental educator.

The authors emphasized that the contrast between high levels of diversity in the EE field demonstrated in this study and the low levels of diversity in national EE organizations and non-profits suggests a need for affirmative action and inclusive practices. The authors argued that EE organizations, conferences, events, and professional networks need to promote representation from a wider spectrum of environmental educators. They encouraged actively recruiting a diverse group of educators, embracing how different cultures relate to nature, highlighting shared goals across ethnic groups, building mutual respect, and improving inclusive communication. By increasing the visibility and professional connectivity of minority groups in EE, the U.S. perspective on EE may become more culturally rich and facilitate a fair distribution of funding and resources.

To continually measure the scale and demographics of the EE field, the authors recommend that schools and EE training programs track their alumni's career paths. Given the large proportion of unpaid environmental educators in the U.S., the authors suggest developing additional training and support programs for volunteers within the EE field. Finally, the authors reinforce their conviction that the term “environmental educator” cannot have a strict definition, which they believe would create challenges in developing resources for the entire spectrum of environmental educators. The authors affirm that a culturally rich, diverse, and nuanced perspective on EE in the U.S. is more valuable.