Why the study was done
The authors argue that climate change education should begin in the early years, and that educators often underestimate young children by assuming they lack the knowledge to engage with the topic or should be shielded from it. They note that reviews of climate education research have tended to examine awareness, knowledge and attitudes while rarely reaching what the field calls the top of the "environmental literacy ladder" (a model in which awareness leads progressively to knowledge, attitudes, skills and finally action). This study set out to examine pro-environmental behaviour at a younger age than most prior work.
What they did
The intervention was a week-long "Climate Superheroes" camp, part of a larger 10-week STEAM summer camp, targeting 10 climate-friendly actions across five daily themes: energy, water, materials, food and collective action. Children wore fleece capes and earned a daily badge; each morning opened with a discussion and a picture book, followed by free-choice activity tables staffed by the researchers.
The sample was 27 children aged 3–6 (14 older, 13 younger class) with parental consent, plus 11 parents/guardians who completed a post-camp survey. The setting was a university-affiliated child development centre in the United States. The authors describe the design as a mixed methods case study: a 10-item pre/post-test asking children to choose which of two pictured activities was better for the Earth, researcher field notes across all five days, children's recorded responses at activity tables, and the parent survey. Because activities were free choice, participant numbers varied by task (6 to 16 children). Analysis used a non-parametric Wilcoxon signed rank test on pre/post scores and descriptive and pattern coding for the qualitative data.
What they found
1. Pre/post scores increased significantly (Z = –2.347, p < 0.05) for the children with complete data. The largest item gains were reusable water bottles (+0.33), turning lights off (+0.30) and growing garden vegetables (+0.28).
2. Several items showed little or no gain, but the authors caution this is partly a ceiling effect — most children already answered correctly at pre-test.
3. Scores for collective action decreased. The authors suggest this may reflect the ceiling effect, the fact that collective action was only covered on Day 5, or that the superhero framing over-emphasised individual action.
4. The most frequent correct ideas concerned helping animals appropriately (22.4%), water (21.2%) and energy (18.2%). The most common reasons children gave for acting were conserving resources (35.9%) and helping people and animals (26.8%). Only one child referenced climate change itself as a reason.
5. Misconceptions included conflating human health with planetary health, and believing wild animals should be fed — the authors suggest the bird feeder activity may itself have contributed to this.
6. Children's stated feelings about a warming Earth were mostly sadness and anger; by Day 5 fewer said "I don't know" and two expressed a desire to act.
Limitations
The authors are explicit that the pre/post instrument was author-designed with no validity or reliability data, that the intervention was short, and that the centre primarily serves children of faculty and graduate students — so the sample is likely biased towards higher-income, more formally educated families and gains may be larger than in preschools more broadly. The sample is small and single-site.
What this means for practice
• Prioritise actions children can genuinely do alone — turning off a bedroom light, turning off the tap — since the authors note young children often lack autonomy over recycling or composting at home.
• Build in repetition: energy was introduced on Day 1 and revisited daily, and showed the strongest results.
• Send something home. The take-home "lights out" sign was reported by parents as actually used.
• Add collective action deliberately and early, not as a final-day topic. The authors suggest a class letter about school improvements or a climate walk on school grounds.
• Reconsider animal-feeding activities; the authors recommend teaching care for whole ecosystems and habitats rather than helping individual species.
• Ground climate change in place — local phenological shifts, flooding, pests — rather than treating it abstractly, and use tangible heat analogies (a warm car on a sunny day) rather than relying on a verbal blanket metaphor alone.
The Bottom Line
This mixed methods study looked at 27 children aged 3 to 6 attending a week-long "Climate Superheroes" camp in the United States, using a 10-item picture-based pre/post-test, researcher field notes, children's recorded talk during activities, and a survey of 11 parents. The authors found statistically significant overall gains, with the largest item-level improvements for using reusable water bottles, turning lights off, and growing garden vegetables. Children expressed many ideas consistent with instruction — conserving water and energy, reusing materials, protecting animal habitats — alongside misconceptions, notably that anything healthy for people is good for the Earth, and that feeding wild animals helps them. Scores for collective action slightly declined. The study suggests concrete, child-doable actions are learnable at this age, but that individual-hero framing may crowd out collective action.