Evaluating an Educational Intervention Designed to Foster Environmental Citizenship among Undergraduate University Students

Audronė Telešienė, Jelle Boeve- de Pauw, Daphne Goldman and Ralph Hansmann
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Audronė Telešienė: Civil Society and Sustainability Research Group, Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Kaunas University of Technology, 44249 Kaunas, Lithuania
Jelle Boeve- de Pauw: Belgium & Expertise Centre Urban Education, Research Unit Edubron, Department of Training and Education Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium
Daphne Goldman: Department of Environmental Science and Agriculture, Faculty of Education, Beit Berl College, Kfar Saba 44905, Israel
Ralph Hansmann: Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 15, 1-19

Abstract: Taking its primary interest in active environmental citizenship, this paper aims at evaluating a case of an educational intervention designed to foster environmental citizenship among undergraduate students at a technological university. The study employs a survey methodology implementing a recently validated environmental citizenship questionnaire. A randomized pre-group –post-group quasi-experimental survey design explores students’ environmental citizenship attributes before and after the intervention course, ‘Sustainable Development’, in comparison to students who participated in a general elective course, ‘Media Philosophy’. The results show that the participation in the intervention course induced positive change in students’ environmental citizenship in comparison to the control group. Additional analysis indicates that environmental citizenship is significantly related to environmental attitudes, nature experiences during childhood and adolescence, and gender. The article provides a timely contribution shedding light on how specific pedagogical approaches in higher education can foster environmental citizenship.

Keywords: environmental citizenship; education for environmental citizenship; pedagogical approaches in environmental education; sustainable development; promoting sustainability in higher education; connectedness to nature; nature experience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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