Educating children about the environment in school is one way to promote behavior change. Although EE has been integrated into some school curricula, EE programs in schools are viewed as supplementary rather than a primary approach to public education. Previous research highlights the importance of educating children about the environment to encourage them to become future stewards and promote sustainable practices in their communities. EE benefits children by instilling a sense of importance that they can make a difference in this world by protecting the environment. Similarly, research indicates that EE bolsters intellectual, personal, and social growth. This study focused on energy conservation because consumer behavior represents a significant portion of energy expenditure and carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. For this study, the researchers evaluated energy conservation knowledge and behaviors among children to gauge the efficacy of energy conservation curriculum in schools.
The Alliance to Save Energy created The PowerSave Schools Program (PSP) to use school-based activities to educate children about energy conservation behaviors they can implement in their daily lives. Although the Alliance established topic recommendations for school curriculum, teachers are not required to follow a specific manual. As a result, schools that implement PSP allow educators the freedom to choose the topics they want to highlight. Without set lesson plans, the students who participate in the program learn about different topics in different ways. Although PSP research indicates that schools with energy-conservation education see a 5-15% change in energy savings, there is little research demonstrating the efficacy of the program. Therefore, the researchers evaluated energy-conservation knowledge and behavior in school children before and after PSP education.
The researchers selected two schools in different districts from the northeastern United States that previously implemented the PSP from 2004 to 2012. Elementary school children from grades 3-5 participated in this study. With the consent of parents, the researchers administered surveys with 29 multiple choice questions to students before and after the energy conservation program. The survey measured changes in students' energy-conservation knowledge and behavior by providing scales (1 = never to 5 = always) for different scenarios. For example, a question may be “how likely are you to turn off the lights when exiting the room?” and prompted the respondents to answer between 1 and 5. The researchers used statistics to analyze the results from 336 students who took the pre- and post-survey. The average age of participants was 10 years old, and the gender distribution was relatively equal (51% female).
Results indicated that knowledge of energy conservation behaviors increased significantly from pre-PSP to post-PSP education in district 1. Although district 2 also saw an overall increase in knowledge, it was not statistically significant. The findings did not demonstrate significant overall change in energy-conservation behavior in either district. However, in district 1 students were more likely to engage in two behaviors: turning off the lights when exiting a room and suggesting energy-saving lightbulbs for their household. In contrast, results from district 2 demonstrated that students' energy conservation behaviors worsened overall. The authors concluded that although this study did not find significant results in PSP to improve energy conservation behaviors in school children, it did significantly increase knowledge for a sample of students.
The authors identified many limitations associated with this study. First, because PSP uses guidelines for energy-conservation education rather than a set manual, the curricula across grades and schools can differ drastically. Therefore, it is difficult to compare the results across grades and districts because this study did not review the content, quality, or frequency of lessons. For instance, the authors highlighted that in district 1, only four teachers taught the curriculum while in district 2, forty teachers participated. The researchers reasoned that the program was more controlled and had better supervision in district 1, which may have led to better results. Second, the schools applied PSP over a three-month period. The researchers projected that had the time frame been longer, it may have been more effective in altering students' environmental behaviors. Third, this study did not evaluate energy-expenditure costs within the schools, which is also an important factor in understanding energy-conservation behaviors. By evaluating changes in spending on energy in schools, one can better understand if the children adopted conservation behaviors because the spending would decrease from pre-PSP to post-PSP.
The authors recommend improving the PSP curriculum to a more rigorous and consistent approach across all grades and schools. Without addressing this issue, it is unknown whether the PSP is an effective energy-conservation education program.
The Bottom Line
<p>Researchers and educators suggest that teaching children about environmental issues will promote future stewards who will promote environmentally friendly practices within their communities. This study evaluated energy-conservation knowledge and behaviors among elementary school children to understand the efficacy of the PowerSave Schools program (PSP). The findings indicated that PSP did not significantly improve environmental behaviors among elementary children, but it did improve energy conservation knowledge in a sample of students. The researchers suggested that these findings may be due to the lack of concrete curriculum associated with PSP and the ability for educators to pick and choose topics to teach. Therefore, the authors recommend that PSP establish standardized curriculum for schools to implement before conducting further research to evaluate the effectiveness.</p>
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