Measuring your Environmental Education Effort
It may be statistically
meaningful to talk about the number of students exposed to Environmental
Education, but it is educationally meaningless.
The real unit is NOT the number
of students but the total number of contact hours for the total number of
students. That is the total number of students multiplied by the number of
hours each student has been exposed to this class. This index can help to
evaluate the program.
The main objective of this paper
is to provide you with a measuring tool regarding exposure to the subject and
length of program.
A conscientious Environmental
Education Program should include, pre-classes, field trips, data collection,
post- classes and the production of a final project report.
One of the most important issues
discussed by environmental educators these days is the question of doing
short-term vs. long-term programming. Is it really worth our effort doing
one-time programs that last only one hour?
Now, and for the last twenty
years, I have refused to do “one-shot” deals. By this I mean small programs
that last no more that 60 or maybe 90 minute in a classroom or in the field,
for no more that 30 students. All my programs are designed to provide students
with multiple exposures. I really do not think that the goals and objectives
that I pursue in environmental education can be reached in a short time.
In order to explore this
question, we need to question ourselves about the goals and objectives of
Environmental Education. The EPA states the following in their website:
Environmental
education (EE) increases public awareness and knowledge of environmental issues
and challenges. Through EE, people gain an understanding of how their
individual actions affect the environment, acquire skills that they can use to
weigh various sides of issues, and become better equipped to make informed
decisions. EE also gives people a deeper understanding of the environment,
inspiring them to take personal responsibility for its preservation and
restoration. UNESCO/UNEP (1978)
The definition of Environmental Education according to the
United Nations Environmental,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 1975 states:
The goal of environmental education is
to develop a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the
environment and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, skills,
attitudes, motivations, and commitment to work individually and collectively
toward solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones. United Nations Environmental, Scientific, and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 1975
Can we accomplish these objectives in one hour? It is
possible that our cumulative effort may prove to be successful in carrying out
these objectives. It is clear that today’s school children are influenced by a
number of inputs and sources (some good and some bad) that may affect their
actions in the environmental area. Television for one has done a great job of
educating students with a large number of very well produced programs on
natural history and exploring environmental issues such as Science Explorer,
The Animal Channel and National Geographic. Most textbooks these days have been
designed to teach many subjects from an environmental point of view. In
addition environmental issues are included in our everyday life in politics, in
the newspaper and TV news and in many of our daily discussions. But on the
other hand, television news provides less than desirable short bursts of
environmental news that lack depth and accuracy in many cases.
In addition to the issues stated
above, we also need to explore the realistic economic reasons why most nature
centers can only provide student groups with a one or maybe two-hour programs.
Schools often could not pay for several programs and afford the bussing
required to bring the students to the environmental centers. There is a cost of
the program for each child and the cost of substitute teachers and teacher
aids.
In
December 1996, the National Environmental Education Advisory Council submitted
its first report to Congress on environmental education. The report made a
number of policy recommendations. One of these recommendations was to develop
measuring tools to evaluate the effectiveness of environmental education.
Develop a framework and tools for measuring the
effectiveness of environmental education.
Quality environmental education
initiatives are well understood to have catalyzed changes in individuals’
environmental knowledge, skills,
attitudes, and behaviors. Assessment is needed to document these outcomes.
These outcomes, in turn, point to which programs, products, and services are
working – and why.
The long-term goals of environmental education are to raise
the level of environmental literacy among Americans today and to ensure the
environmental literacy of each successive generation in order to improve
environmental and health protection and economic prosperity. Although it is
unrealistic to expect any single environmental education program to achieve these
long-term goals, it is possible to measure the short-term outcomes of a program
(such as skill development, knowledge gains, attitude changes, and the intent
to change behavior) as well as the intermediate outcomes (such as actual
changes in behavior related to practices, decisions, policies, and social
actions).
Evaluation guidelines must be developed and tools must be
disseminated to ensure that measurement takes place and is conducted
consistently. In this way, outcomes of individual initiatives can be
appropriately measured and can contribute to a cumulative body of results that
point to the long-term goals of environmental education – environmental
literacy and quality of life.
Comprehensive,
long-term evaluation should include both quantitative and qualitative
assessment strategies to provide an in-depth understanding of the effectiveness
of environmental education programs for adults as well as
for youth.
Measuring knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors may not be
an easy task. Knowledge and skills can be measured by providing the students
with a pre and a post- test. Attitudes and behavior are much more difficult to
test as these characteristics are a reflex ion of the student’s day-to-day
actions.
I
have often used pre-tests to assess the knowledge and skills of students. In
most cases I am able to assess how much they do not know but that is often a
waste of time. Post-test are essential if we want to know how successful we
were in our class. On most cases hand-on and task oriented environmental
education classes where students produce a product can be interchanged with the
pos-test. As a matter of fact, if one works with students on a long-term
project, the production of the product will always be much more intensive and a
better indicator than any post-test we can give the students.
The quality of our programs is
dependent on a number of things. Apart from the quality of the teacher doing
the job, which can not be easily measured, there are number of facts that
influence each program:
Ø The
number of students in the class.
Ø The
aid provided by the schoolteacher.
Ø The
location where the program is conducted.
Ø The
resources used to teach.
Ø The
ability of providing a hands-on program.
Ø The
children’s behavior.
Ø The
time used to explore the subject or length of the program.
Ø The
pre- and post- class materials used, including tests teaching aids and more.
You can fill an auditorium with
one thousand people, stand in front of the microphone and spend the next ten
minutes talking about the great importance of a sustainable environment, but
you can be sure that a few hours later these people will not even remember who
you were or what you were talking about. Only a few exceptional people such as
Jane Godley or E. Wilson can in ten minutes make an impression on a thousand.
A regular teacher needs to use a
very different approach, one that will provide the students with lesson that
will nurture the students’ interest and comprehension of issues, and encourage
a sense of ownership and stewardship of the environment.
Here in Connecticut, and for a
number of years, we have provided high schools with a water quality program
called the SEARCH program. Teachers are trained once, during the summer, to
participate in the program. In many cases we have provided teachers with
equipment and other resources so that they will be able to complete the
program.
Students are introduced to
mapping, water chemistry, aquatic entomology, mathematic matrices, and other
analytical methods, data analyses, use of computers to write papers and use of
spread sheets, and we also provide them with a forum at the end of the year to
present their conclusions. Teachers can provide the data to our agency and we
also have set up quality control protocols to evaluate the quality of the data.
Students enrolled in the program spend more than two weeks working on the
project. In some cases, some of the schools complete several field visits, and
collect a considerable amount of data.
In January 1999, Dr. Todd W.
Rofuth and Dr. Sue Holloway submitted a five year final evaluation report were
they found significant behavioral changes in students due to their
participation in the SEARCH program.
Several summers ago I completed a
new program with the SOUND SCHOOL in Hew Haven, Connecticut. During the two-week
program fifteen 9th grade students completed lectures and classes on
primary and secondary productivity. They took a boat and collected five sets of
samples in the sound at three different locations within the New Haven Harbor
and tested the samples for chlorophyll a and a vast array of parameters
such as Dissolved Oxygen, nitrates, phosphates, pH and much more. Two
Environmental Science college students helped the students in their tasks and
completed a similar study at the university, so that we could compare results.
The high school students learned
about their town, and evaluated historical changes and the environmental issues
of New Haven and its harbor. In addition they became experts in water quality
testing and water quality issues. They had a great experience a great time and
ended their job with a nice tan.
These days I have been involved
with two new programs, Project CLEAR and Project Periphyton. Both programs take
the students to the field, provide lectures to the teachers and to the students
and the information and data collected by the students is provided to several
state and federal agencies.
Educating students is not a fast
and easy job. It requires structure, patience, individualized attention and
experiential exposure. Nothing that you or anyone can do in a short time!
We can evaluate our programs in
total number of contact hours and we can also evaluate the impact of each
program to each student in number of contact hours per student.
Here is a sample for three
different programs:
|
Program
|
# Students
|
# Hours
|
Program evaluation (# students * Hours)
|
Student impact in contact hours.
|
|
New Haven
|
15
|
98
|
1470
|
6.5
|
|
SEARCH
|
20
|
35
|
700
|
1.75
|
|
Nature Center Program *
|
20
|
2
|
40
|
0.1
|
|
Program with field trip Pre and
Post Class **
|
20
|
9
|
180
|
0.45
|
*This would be
the classic school field trip to a nature center.
**This would be
the same as the Nature Center Program but with added written pre- and post-lessons for the teacher to use.
It is our job to provide
education to as many students as possible and funders are always interested in
extending the value of the dollar invested on each program, but some times we
may be wasting our time. We need to concentrate on our goals and objectives and
not in our ability to reach a large number of students. Quality is not the
quantity of students; it is what the students learn and how that learning
affects their approach to life.
The future of the earth and the
future of mankind are at stakes here. The importance of quality education
should not be a question. Education is not cheap and the thread of such things
as “Global Warming” or the disappearance of one species is more expensive.
Bibliography
1975. Definition of Environmental Education. United Nations Environmental, Scientific, and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) The world's first intergovernmental conference
on environmental education was organized by the United Nations Education,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in cooperation with the U.N.
Environment Programme (UNEP) and was convened in Tbilisi, Georgia (USSR) from
October 14-26, 1977. UNESCO/UNEP 1978. ‘The Tbilisi Declaration’ , Connect, Vol
3, No. 1, pp 1-8.
Hollowway, S., T. W. Rofuth, H.
Gruner, and A. Mimo. 1998. Can applied science in environmental monitoring
transform science education? The Education Forum. (62)4: 354-362.
Mimo, A. 2000. History and
Phylosophy of the SEARCH Program. New England Journal of Environmental
Education. v. 13, Number 1. 18 – 27.
Coyle, K. 2005. What Ten Years of
NEETF/ Roper Research and Related Studies Say About Environmental Literacy in
the U.S. Environmental Literacy in America. The National Environmental
Education & Training Foundation, Washigton, D.C.
