In the Eco-Schools program, administered by the Foundation for Environmental education, any school can work toward the goal of becoming a certified Eco-School. Over 30,000 schools in 47 countries are now participating, reaching over 9 million students annually. Nearly 10,000 schools have been certified. According to this paper's authors, “The main principle of the programme is that eco-thinking should become a way of life.” The program promotes interdisciplinary teaching that connects real, local environmental issues to global issues and concepts, and advocates a democratic decision-making approach.
The authors explain that it's been well documented that these schools have improved their environmental performance with respect to waste management, water use, and energy conservation, “but the extent to which eco-schools also achieve an educational gain (i.e., an increase in knowledge, attitudes, affect) in their students remains a topic that has not received the necessary attention.” So the authors, who are in Belgium, selected 90 Flemish primary schools to study this question. Half the schools were eco-schools, half were not. In the end, 39 eco-schools and 21 non-eco-schools participated in the study, with a total of 1,287 students at the schools. The eco-schools were selected based on the amount of time they held their eco-school certification: only schools that had been certified for at least six years were included, so that the students in these schools would have experienced the eco-school education for their entire primary education. The non-eco-schools were located in the same vicinity as the eco-schools.
The authors administered surveys that measured students' environmental knowledge (using the Children's Environmental Attitudes and Knowledge Scale, or CHEAKS), attitudes (using the 2-MEV scale which measures preservation and utilization attitudes), and affect (using a modification of CHEAKS). The results indicate that students attending eco-schools know more about the environment than students in non-eco-schools. The students in eco-schools, however, did not show more biophilic tendencies or hold more preservation attitudes than students in non-eco-schools.
But the researchers also included other variables in their study. They also looked at the effects of gender and socio-economic status on students' knowledge and attitudes. They found that boys outperformed girls on knowledge about the environment, and so did students with a more advantaged socio-economic background. Specifically, students with more educational resources available at home scored better on the exam. Students from more advantaged backgrounds also scored higher on biophilic tendencies (and girls scored higher on this measure than boys). Children who spoke a different language at home than the official instructional language (Dutch) scored lower on the knowledge test and held different attitudes about utilization of the natural world (they're less in favor of utilization).
When researchers analyzed all the variables together, they concluded that the students were not randomly distributed among the two types of schools, and the characteristics of the students in the two types of schools were more likely the cause of the differences between the two school types. After controlling for these other characteristics, the authors conclude, “the results of our analyses show that eco-schools have no influence on students' environmental affect but that they do have an influence on their knowledge about the environment.”
The authors explain that in this region, parents can choose which school their children attend, and that this choice might have contributed to the study's result. They also note that further research could help uncover whether different instructional approaches in the schools lead to different results. By comparing instructional approaches within the eco-schools, researchers might be able to point to educational approaches that can do a better job at affecting students' environmental affect.
The Bottom Line
This research investigated Flemish eco-schools that are certified in an international environmental education program that's used in 47 countries. The researchers compared the environmental knowledge and affect of students in the eco-schools and in non-eco-schools in the same area. Interestingly, the researchers found that students in the eco-schools and non-eco-schools were not randomly distributed in terms of their socio-economic backgrounds and language spoken at home, and concluded that their findings these other characteristics explained many of the differences between the two types of schools. But, when controlling for these other variables, the findings did demonstrate an increase in environmental knowledge among eco-school students; however, there was no significant difference in affect among eco-school and non-eco-school students. More research is needed to see whether some of the eco-schools are better at influencing students' attitudes and values.