Introduction

The most talented environmental educators we know are in the field, conducting place-based programs, collaborating with communities, and using hands-on strategies to make the critical link between environmental awareness, skills building, and informed action. Rarely do these committed professionals have time to keep up on the latest research, whose beneficial findings may enhance the effectiveness of environmental education (EE) programming.

To bridge the gap between research and practice, NatureBridge is partnering with Stanford University researchers to create a semiannual EE Research Bulletin. Our goal is to synthesize and summarize recently reported research that may help NatureBridge and environmental educators in other organizations and agencies critically reflect upon and improve their practice.

EERB Issue 2

This second volume includes summaries of articles in the Journal of Environmental Education, Environmental Education Research, Applied Environmental Education and Communications, Journal of Experiential Education, International Journal of Science Education, Visitor Studies, Journal of Interpretation Research, and the Journal of Environmental Psychology. We reviewed all of the articles published in these journals since we produced the Summer 2011 Research Bulletin, and pulled out the articles we thought would be most relevant to NatureBridge educators. Each entry includes a synopsis of the article, a “Bottom Line” summary, and full citations for those who wish to read the article in its entirety.

In this issue, you’ll find articles related to effective teaching methods, trends in teacher training, evaluation research, and more. In particular, this issue highlights more research on influencing environmental behavior, as this has been a hot topic in the literature published from June–December 2011. It also appears that new uses of technology and the Internet—including online ranger talks, online communities for people who care about climate change, smartphones for zoo and aquarium visitors, and video diaries as evaluation tools—have caught the attention of environmental education researchers.

Feedback

Because we are creating this document for you, we’re eager to hear your feedback. Please let us know if there are additional topics or journals you’d like to see covered or if there’s an alternative format that may be helpful. You can send all suggestions to jmorris@ naturebridge.org with the header “EE Research Bulletin.” We’ll take these into account at the beginning of each cycle and try to adapt accordingly. And for another take on these kinds of articles, you may also want to check out the research blog available from the North American Association for Environmental Education (eelinked.naaee.net/n/eeresearch).

We wish you all the best in your important efforts to integrate high-quality research into inspiring practice!

Nicole M. Ardoin
Project Lead

Jason Morris
Executive Vice President, NatureBridge