Considering Efficacy of an Outdoor Environmental Education Program: Facilitating Elementary Students’ Environmental Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviours

Various sources have sought to consider the educational interventions that foster changes in perception of and attitudes toward nature, with the ultimate intent of understanding how education can be used to encourage environmentally responsible behaviours. With these in mind, the current study identified an outdoor environmental education program incorporating these empirically supported interventions, and assessed its ability to influence environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours. Specifically, this study considered the following research questions: 1) To what degree can participation in this outdoor education program foster environmental knowledge and encourage pro-environmental attitudes and self-reported pro-environmental behaviours? 2) How is this effect different among students of different genders, and those who have different prior experiences in nature? Two motivational frameworks guided inquiry in the current study: the Value-Belief-Norm Model of Environmentalism (VBN) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). The study employed a quantitative survey methodology, combining contemporary data measuring knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours with archived data collected by program staff, reflecting frequency of environmentally responsible behaviour. Further, a single qualitative item was included for which students provided “the first three words that [came] to mind when [they] think of the word nature.” Terms provided before and after the program were compared for differences in theme to detect subtle or underlying changes. Quantitative results indicated no significant change in student knowledge or attitudes through the outdoor environmental education program. However, a significant change in self-reported behaviour was identified from both the contemporary and archived data. This agreement in positive findings across the two data sets, collected using different measures and different participants, lends evidence of the program’s ability to encourage self-reported pro-environmental behaviour. Further, qualitative results showed some change in students’ perceptions of nature through the program, providing direction for future research. These findings suggest that this particular outdoor education program was successful in encouraging students’ self-reported environmentally responsible behaviour. This change was achieved without significant change in knowledge or environmental attitudes, suggesting that external factors not measured in this study might have played a role in affecting behaviour.

The statement of Dr. W.F. Libby before Special Subcommittee on Radiation, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy public hearings on the biological and environmental effects of nuclear war.

"Health and Safety."

Environmental safety aspects of nuclear rocket flight operations : annual progress report : for Space Nuclear Propulsion Office, Atomic Energy Commission, National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

"Contract SNPC-6".

Executive branch review of environmental regulations [microform] : hearings before the Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session, February 26 and 27, 1979.

Reuse of record except for individual research requires license from Congressional Information Service, Inc.

Nomination of Robert H. Harris [microform] : hearing before the Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session, on the nomination of Robert H. Harris to be a member of the Council on Environmental Quality, November 13, 1979.

Reuse of record except for individual research requires license from Congressional Information Service, Inc.

Enforcement of environmental regulations [microform] : hearings before the Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session, May 23 and 24, 1979.

Reuse of record except for individual research requires license from Congressional Information Service, Inc.

Integrated environmental assistance act of 1979 [microform] : hearing before the Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, Ninety-sixth Congress, second session, on S. 1136 ... January 22, 1980.

Reuse of record except for individual research requires license from Congressional Information Service, Inc.

The need for a World Environmental Institute [microform].

Reuse of record except for individual research requires license from Congressional Information Service, Inc.

A compilation of Federal laws relating to conservation and development of our nation's fish and wildlife resources, environmental quality, and oceanography [microform].

Reuse of record except for individual research requires license from Congressional Information Service, Inc.

Modeling the environmental controls on tree water use at different temporal scales

Acknowledgements This study is part of the first author’s PhD projects in 2010–2014, co-funded by the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training in Australia and the China Scholarship Council. We give thanks to Zijuan Deng and Xiang Xu for their assistance in the field. Constructive comments and suggestion from the anonymous reviewers are appreciated for significant improvement of the manuscript.

Tackling wicked environmental problems : the discourse and its influence on praxis in Scotland

Peer reviewed

The Evolution of Male-Biased Dispersal under the Joint Selective Forces of Inbreeding Load and Demographic and Environmental Stochasticity

Peer reviewed

Environmental Impacts of the Deep-Water Oil and Gas Industry : A Review to Guide Management Strategies

The authors would like to thank the leadership of the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI), including Lisa Levin, Maria Baker, and Kristina Gjerde, for their support in developing this review. This work evolved from a meeting of the DOSI Oil and Gas working group supported by the J.M. Kaplan Fund, and associated with the Deep-Sea Biology Symposium in Aveiro, Portugal in September 2015. The members of the Oil and Gas working group that contributed to our discussions at that meeting or through the listserve are acknowledged for their contributions to this work. We would also like to thank the three reviewers and the editor who provided valuable comments and insight into the work presented here. DJ and AD were supported by funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the MERCES (Marine Ecosystem Restoration in Changing European Seas) project, grant agreement No 689518. AB was supported by CNPq grants 301412/2013-8 and 200504/2015-0. LH acknowledges funding provided by a Natural Environment Research Council grant (NE/L008181/1). This output reflects only the authors' views and the funders cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.

Selection of a network of large lakes and reservoirs suitable for global environmental change analysis using Earth Observation

The GloboLakes project, a global observatory of lake responses to environmental change, aims to exploit current satellite missions and long remote-sensing archives to synoptically study multiple lake ecosystems, assess their current condition, reconstruct past trends to system trajectories, and assess lake sensitivity to multiple drivers of change. Here we describe the selection protocol for including lakes in the global observatory based upon remote-sensing techniques and an initial pool of the largest 3721 lakes and reservoirs in the world, as listed in the Global Lakes and Wetlands Database. An 18-year-long archive of satellite data was used to create spatial and temporal filters for the identification of waterbodies that are appropriate for remote-sensing methods. Further criteria were applied and tested to ensure the candidate sites span a wide range of ecological settings and characteristics; a total 960 lakes, lagoons, and reservoirs were selected. The methodology proposed here is applicable to new generation satellites, such as the European Space Agency Sentinel-series.