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Introduction
Additional affiliations
July 2017 - June 2018
September 2014 - December 2014
Publications
Publications (50)
Environmental education aims to affect environmental knowledge and attitude to ultimately induce pro-environmental behavior. Based on 247 upper elementary school students, we tested the impact of an outdoor-based earth education program on environmental knowledge and attitude with a pre-post design. Both outcome measures were Rasch scales. Environm...
The study focuses on the relationship between selected characteristics of the outdoor environmental (earth) education program Earthkeepers and its impacts on students' environmental values and knowledge. It is rooted in the authors' previous research that is applied and reflected here. For providing empirical evidence, it uses data collected by the...
Outdoor environmental education programs frequently aim to influence participants’ environmental values and behaviors. Published studies have frequently documented their success in doing so. However, few studies have examined the characteristics of programs in relation to accomplishing those goals. Using characteristics identified as important in t...
Educational outreach facilities provide unique opportunities to learn sciences at the forefront of research. An example is Biosphere 2, a site of environmental and ecological research, which is coupled to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Research facilities can evoke the relevance of sciences in everyday life. This is important in secon...
The ways in which residential outdoor environmental education programs are perceived by the teachers accompanying their elementary school students have rarely been investigated. In this study, interviews were conducted with 17 elementary school teachers who had participated in one of five selected residential programs in the Czech Republic in 2018...
This book analyzes the theoretical frameworks shaping the practice of outdoor environmental education programs. For the analyses, the authors applied the Real World Learning Model that defines the quality criteria for this kind of practice. They also further examined the Model from the perspectives of relevant theory and research, as well as from t...
Given the multitude of attitude scales, we examined the relationship between the 2-Major Environmental Values model (2-MEV) and the New Environmental Paradigm scale (NEP) based on a 6585 child sample over a 9-year period. The students participated in a three-day outdoor earth education program at field centers in three different US states (Arizona,...
Empowerment is often considered to be a central goal in outdoor education and environmental education. To develop student empowerment, a frequent recommendation is for the leaders of outdoor environmental education programs to provide students with a high level of autonomy through an emancipatory approach, by involving them in the decision-making p...
Teachers' practice is based on their beliefs about how student learning should be developed. In the practice of programme leaders in outdoor environmental education centres, experiential learning is considered to be one of the prominent learning theories. This study analyses the ways in which experiential learning is interpreted and transferred int...
Shaping environmental values is considered one of the goals of environmental education. At the same time, this creates questions about the line between indoctrination and education. While values education has been widely discussed from various theoretical perspectives, few studies have analyzed how it is being practiced. This article investigates f...
This paper discusses the application of frame analysis as a method of designing and evaluating outdoor environmental education programs. In particular, it investigates what frames are communicated in these programs, why and how program leaders focus on communicating particular frames, and how students interact with these frames. Five outdoor enviro...
The goal of the present research was to assess the environmental worldviews and concerns of students from the fourth to the seventh grade in Slovenia. The New Ecological Paradigm Scale for Children was translated and validated for use with Slovenian primary school students (N = 310). The students were also asked about their environmental concerns (...
The Two-dimensional Model of Ecological Values (2-MEV), developed and verified in Western Europe, successfully explores the environmental values and attitudes of the children (11−16 years old) using questionnaires/items. However, the reliability of the 2-MEV Scale and its bi-dimensionality in a non-industrialised country, such as Nepal, is unexplor...
This paper focuses on the development of understandings of the ecological concepts of energy flow and materials cycling of middle school students. It is based on a qualitative analysis of individual interviews with 6 students in an urban area of the southern US conducted every year over a 5-year period in 2004-2008, starting in grade 4 and finishin...
Our study examined the two-dimensional nature of the Two Major Environmental Values model (2-MEV) in comparison with the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale’s unidimensional construct. The latter places respondents on a continuum from a bio-centric to anthropocentric worldview, where an individual can either have a pro-environmental (bio-centric) o...
Trophic relationships, and the related concepts of a food-chain and a food-web, are among the most important topics in the field of ecology and consequently important for students to learn. The present study investigated the impact of an innovative inquiry-based educational intervention on the Cyprus Mouflon (Ovis gmelini ophion) targeting seventh...
Changing attitudes toward the environment has long been a goal of education programmes focused on helping students change their environmental behaviour. The relationship between environmental attitudes and personal behaviour changes, however, is complex. The purpose of the present study was to explore these relationships in two groups of children w...
Changing attitudes toward the environment has long been a goal of education programmes focused on helping students change their environmental behaviour. The relationship between environmental attitudes and personal behaviour changes, however, is complex. The purpose of the present study was to explore these relationships in two groups of children w...
The present study investigated the use of an existing environmental attitude scale, the 2-MEV, to examine the environmental attitudes of young adolescents in Cyprus. The purpose was twofold, first to translate the 2-MEV to Greek and validate that version, and second to use the scale to document the environmental attitudes of almost all 7th grade st...
The 2-MEV model is a widely used tool to monitor children's environmental perception by scoring individual values. Although the scale's validity has been confirmed repeatedly and independently as well as the scale is in usage within more than two dozen language units all over the world, longitudinal properties still need clarification. The purpose...
The article introduces a Czech environmental education middle school program focused on helping students develop place attachment to their community and on increasing their interest in natural area in their region. The evaluation applied a mixed approach combining pretesting/posttesting of the students (N = 158), two group interviews with selected...
Background/Question/Methods
Sunship III is an earth education program for young adolescents designed to help them understand the flow of energy beginning in natural systems and into our daily lives. Participants spend three days and two nights at a residential environmental learning center. To better understand the hidden ways we use energy, part...
The article presents experience with implementation of the international Earthkeepers earth education programme in the Czech Republic. The paper begins with an evaluation of the implementation process from the point of view of the staff of the Bohemian Paradise Ecological Education Centre (Středisko ekologické výchovy Český ráj) that prepared and c...
This paper describes the validation process of measuring children’s attitudes and
values toward the environment within a Mexican sample. We applied the Model
of Ecological Values (2-MEV), which has been shown to be valid and reliable in
20 countries, including one Spanish speaking culture. Items were initially
modified to fit the regional dialect,...
The recent educational reformation in Cyprus moved education about sustainability to the forefront of environmental education, aspiring young people to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and protect the environment. Considering that understanding ecological concepts and building positive environmental attitudes are basic ingredients in learning abou...
Little research exists describing what teachers do with new experiences and
knowledge after participating in environmental learning programs and the
students return back to the classroom This qualitative study aimed to fill this gap by
examining and describing the follow-through implemented by teachers after their
classes participated in the Earthk...
The recent educational reform in Cyprus moved education about sustainability to the forefront of environmental learning. The present study examines the impact of an earth education program, Earthkeepers, on children's ecological understandings, environmental values and attitudes, and behaviour. The program was implemented during two consecutive yea...
Concept inventories (CIs)—typically multiple-choice instruments that focus on a single or small subset of closely related topics—have been used in science education for more than a decade. This paper describes the development and validation of a new CI for astronomy, the Star Properties Concept Inventory (SPCI). Questions cover the areas of stellar...
The Environmental (2-MEV) Scale questionnaire was developed in Europe to measure adolescents’ attitudes and gauge the effectiveness of educational programs. It also formed the basis for the Theory of Ecological Attitudes. In the present four-year study, the 2-MEV Scale was modified for use with 9–12-year-old children in the United States. Initial r...
This study Note 1 investigated the beliefs about stars that students hold when they enter an undergraduate introductory astronomy course for nonscience majors. Students' preinstructional ideas were investigated through the use of several student-supplied-response SSR surveys, which asked students to describe their ideas about topics such as what is...
There has been a great deal of environmental education research based on the evaluation of the effects of particular educational programs. The overall quality of that body of research has been called to question, in part because of poor methodology. Specifically, there has been a lack of good theoretical grounding for much of this evaluative resear...
Investigating the effects of educational programmes on children's environmental perceptions has been hampered by the lack of good theoretical models and valid instruments. In the present study, Bogner and Wiseman's Model of Ecological Values provided a well-developed theoretical model. A validated instrument based on Bogner's Environmental Percepti...
The authors revised and validated the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) Scale for use with upper elementary students. Researchers use the NEP Scale extensively with adults, but it was not designed for children. Interviews with 5th grade students helped the authors revise the NEP Scale for use with children. The authors spent 2 years validating the modi...
Scores from a revised version of the School Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ) were validated using a sample of teachers from a large school district. An exploratory factor analysis was used with a randomly selected half of the sample. Five school environment factors emerged. A confirmatory factor analysis was run with the remaining half of the...
Teachers’ perceptions of school climate in 59 elementary schools were assessed using a modified version of the School-Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ). Using structural equation modelling, a statistically significant, positive relationship was found between school mean teachers’ perceptions of school climate and school mean student achievemen...
The purpose of the study was to investigate the use of an existing instrument, the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES)(Taylor, Dawson & Fraser, 1995; Taylor, Fraser & Fisher, 1993, 1997), for providing insights into the classroom learning environments of beginning science teachers. In the first year of the study, the CLES was used wit...
This research examines the initial stages of a larger process of change that is shifting an Australian primary school's focus toward a holistic learning community that incorporates conceptually based, programmatic environmental learning into its core curriculum. The following illustrates how a small primary school, led by a change agent who is cons...
The purpose of the present study was to validate an existing school environment instrument, the School Level Environment Questionnaire
(SLEQ). The SLEQ consists of 56 items, with seven items in each of eight scales. One thousand, one hundred and six (1106)
teachers in 59 elementary schools in a southwestern USA public school district completed the...
Efforts to infuse environmental messages into the school curriculum through isolated superficial activities have failed. Earth education takes a different approach through carefully crafted sequential programs for the ages 4-18--fun-filled experiential adventures that develop feelings, understandings, and harmonious lifestyles for the earth. (SV)
Teachers' understandings of the ecological concept of energy, including the flow of energy through natural systems, how people get and use energy, and the consequences of energy use, were examined in this exploratory study. Twenty classroom teachers in the United States, Germany, and Italy were interviewed. A wide range of levels of understanding w...
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of New Mexico, 1998. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [129]-134).
Projects
Project (1)
The Cyprus Center for Environmental Research and Education, has made an agreement with the Institute for Earth Education (IEE), and proceeded to the translation, edition and adaptation of the EarthKeepers Program in Greek.
The Earthkeepers program is addressed towards the students of the 4th, 5th and 6th grade of the primary school as well as towards the students of the 1st grade of the secondary school and is provided FREE OF CHARGE.
The Earthkeepers program could be described as an enchanting learning adventure. The program aims to help students:
- To understand four basic ecological concepts (energy flow, cycling of materials, inter dependencies, changing forms).
- To develop positive environmental attitudes
- To undertake personal action in order to reduce their impact on Earth.
- To increase their contact with the natural world.
The program is offered at the Cyprus Center for Environmental Research and Education (CYCERE) in collaboration with the Institute for Earth Education (IEE), the University of Arizona as well as the University of Cyprus. The Earthkeepers, currently implemented in twelve different countries, is a well-established program due to its effects and results, since several scientific studies have shown a positive effect on raising children’s environmental awareness as well as on the changing their environmental attitudes.
