Beyond Praying for Earthquakes: What Works in Environmental Education - Abstract

There's a scene in Edward Abbey's novel The Monkey Wrench Gang in which Seldom Seen Smith, an eccentric river guide, gets down on his knees at Utah's Glen Canyon Dam to pray for an earthquake. "Dear old God," Smith says, "you know and I know what it was like here, before them [expletives deleted] from Washington moved in and ruined it all. You remember the river, how fat and golden it was in June when the big runoff came down from the Rockies? Remember the deer on the sand bars and the blue herons in the willows, and the catfish so big and tasty ..." (Abbey, 1991, p. 38).

The scene ends with Smith asking for "a little old precision type earthquake right under this dam." His reverie is interrupted, however, by a park service "rangerette" who informs him that it's illegal to pray in a public place.

In the parlance of environmental educators, it would be said that Smith possesses "environmental sensitivity." His actions, however -- which include not only praying for earthquakes but sabotaging certain projects that he deems unsuitable for the Western environment -- would not be considered "responsible behavior." In a widely used model of environmental education, those two variables -- environmental sensitivity and environmentally responsible behavior -- play key roles in both practice and research. Responsible behavior is the key outcome of environmental education and, as we shall see in more detail, environmental sensitivity has been found to be one of the key precursors to such behavior. In other words, the field is looking at how we might develop in more people the sensitivity of Smith, yet take him a couple of steps further so his sensitivity can be channeled into a more effective form of activism.

Below is a sample of some recent studies that indicates how this may be done in a variety of settings, as well as what specific opportunities are available to park and recreation agencies.

Setting the Stage

As Weilbacher (1993) observes, "environmental education was born in nature study," which can be traced back about as far as one would wish to go in Western civilization. By the mid-1970s, however, it was widely recognized that something more was needed. An intense period of discussion resulted in a U.N.-supported statement of worldwide EE objectives in 1978 (Tblisi Intergovernmental Conference, 1978), which emphasized "environmentally responsible behavior" as the universal goal of the field.

The objectives triggered a number of studies examining how such behavior comes about. Peterson and Hungerford (1981) conducted in-depth interviews with 22 North American environmental educators and found several things that should be of direct interest to recreators. For instance, "frequent contact with natural areas or open spaces seemed to be necessary for Environmental Sensitivity (ES) development. Interaction with natural areas often results in greater understanding of nature and an emotional bond with those specific areas" (p. 113). Indeed, it was found that some 91 percent of the study group had participated in a major outdoor experience; 41 percent had been involved in youth organizational camping; and 82 percent had spent time in their youth in the outdoors. Then, in 1987, Hines, Hungerford, and Tomera conducted a "meta-analysis" of empirically based research on what motivates people "to take responsible environmental action" (p. 1). Data from 128 different studies was analyzed, and the following conclusion was reached: there are four key individual characteristics that cause a person to act on behalf of the environment. First was having the "action skills" or the ability to write letters, make presentations, and organize information. Second was a knowledge of action strategies. The third characteristic was a knowledge of specific issues. And fourth was a cluster of personality factors including attitudes toward the environment (sensitivity), locus of control (the belief that you can make a difference), and a sense of personal responsibility.

A year later, in a literature review paper, Hungerford identified several "key elements that must be attended to if students are to become responsible citizens" (1988, p. 8). His list included, among other items, skill in the use of citizen action strategies, locus of control, and a degree of environmental sensitivity. Hungerford further observed that sensitivity "needs to be initiated at an early age" (p. 9). He recognized also that "this is a difficult variable for the formal classroom situation to accommodate" (p. 9). He basically called upon leisure service agencies of all types to fill this niche:

Because classroom teachers can't turn learners into family campers, trappers, hunters, fishermen/women, hikers and people associated with other sensitivity-building applications, we must look elsewhere ... Remember, the out-of-door activities reported by sensitive individuals focus largely on long-term experiences with relatively pristine environment ... And, there must be a lot of those experiences (p. 9).

A Model for the `90s

In 1990, Hungerford and Trudi Volk proposed the model that is widely used today, which says that citizens will show responsible behavior regarding the environment when they have acquired skills or attitudes on three levels. The levels, each with a recreation-related example, are described below.

1. Entry level: Here, the major factor is the previously mentioned environmental sensitivity. It is defined as "an empathetic perspective toward the environment," and recognized as "the one entry-level variable that has shown a dramatic relationship to behavior in the research" (p. 11). As an example, let's say John has trout-fished a picturesque river near his home since he was about five years old. By the time he is 40, he's developed an affection for the river and its surroundings that goes beyond catching fish.

2. Ownership level: The key factors here "are those that make environmental issues very personal" (p. 12). They include an in-depth knowledge -- a genuine understanding -- of issues and personal investment, a feeling of almost proprietary interest in the issue. If John knew, for example, that his favorite trout-fishing stream was being polluted by heavy metals leaking from an abandoned copper mine, and he understood how this could disrupt the stream's ecology, he might feel a personal investment in solving the problem.

3. Empowerment level: The key factors here are believing that you can make a difference on an issue and possessing the specific skills to do so. In general, education will provide you with some of this. Specific training in citizenship action, group problem-solving, the workings of government, letter-writing, and speechmaking will help even more. If John has some of these skills, he may be able to help save the trout stream he came to love.

The model was reinforced in the early and mid-1990s when Joy Palmer (1993), a researcher at the University of Durham in England, undertook a long-term study to investigate "the acquisition and development of environmental subject knowledge and concern during a child's first three years of school" (p. 26). She gathered information from 232 members of the National Association of Environmental Education in the United Kingdom. She asked for autobiographical statements identifying experiences that led to environmental concern. She put the responses into 13 final categories. The leading category, the one in which the most respondents reported a significant experience, was "outdoors." It included three subcategories: childhood outdoors, with 97 respondents; outdoor activities, with 90 respondents; and wilderness/solitude, with 24 respondents. (The second-most important category was "education courses.") Among Palmer's conclusions was that her study confirmed "that childhood experience of the outdoors is the single-most important factor in developing personal concern for the environment" (pp. 29-30).

Other Related Values

More recently, the "ownership" component of the previously mentioned model has been examined. Shean and Shei, for example, reported in 1995 on a study of the values of college-student environmentalists. They administered several value and attitudinal measures to 62 volunteers from four environmental groups at the College of William and Mary. Each student was also interviewed. The results reported included the following:

The members of environmental organizations ... placed significantly more importance on the values of responsibility and concern for the welfare of others, and they de-emphasized the importance of personal affluence and political accomplishments (paragraph 20).

These researchers also found a rather weak connection between students having the information about environmental problems and their commitment to action. The effects of factual knowledge on actual behavior may be weak because ... the effects of information on behavior are moderated by underlying attitudes and values" (p. 3). In other words, knowledge about environmental problems is not enough. People may never take action if their underlying values are not consistent with such action. Thus, environmental education, these researchers believe, must be structured "to increase a sense of identification with and responsibility for Others." And what they say next has obvious implications for the role that might be played by park and recreation agencies:

Moreover, a sense of appreciation for and pleasure in nature and the connectedness of all life forms are most likely to be effective in increasing environmental concern and action" (paragraph 22).

The Role of the Media

The broadcast and print media have become very influential in our culture. Thus, a new research area has emerged. It is called cultivation analysis or "the study of how exposure to the world and worldview of television contribute to viewers' conceptions about the real world" (Shanahan et al., 1997). Every year, the National Opinion Research Center conducts its General Social Survey through personal interviews to a "national probability sample" of Americans 18 and older. For two years, in the mid-'90s, the survey included questions dealing with the environment. The researchers reached and interviewed some 4,600 people, "one of the most complete and certainly recent accounts of environmental opinion in the U.S." (p. 6). They correlated answers to questions about environmental attitudes with television viewing patterns. Among their results was that "television viewing is associated with a general apprehension about the state of the environment, but it is not consistently related to viewers' perceptions of threats from specific sources" (p. 1). Their data also suggested that heavy television users tend to be less willing to make sacrifices for environmental reasons and are less knowledgeable about environmental issues. In other words, lots of television watching is associated with a general vague feeling that the environment is in trouble, but heavy viewers tend to be relatively uninformed about specific environmental problems and are less motivated to do anything about them.

Those results tend to support some earlier work done by Ostman and Parker (1986-87, `87). They conducted a telephone survey of 336 residents of Ithaca, New York, questioning their environmental knowledge, concerns, and behaviors in relation to their newspaper and television use. They found a correlation between newspaper use for environmental information and action toward solving environmental problems, but no such correlation between television use for environmental information and those positive environmental behaviors. "In fact, there was slight evidence that increased television use for environmental information leads to fewer subsequent behaviors that are environmentally positive" (1986-87, p. 8).

Knowledge

Knowledge alone is not enough to stir action. But a public with solid knowledge of ecological constructs, environmental problems, and environmental issues is still badly needed. The question of how we are doing in that area has been addressed by several researchers in the `90s.

A study in Orense, Spain, of 15-year-old students' knowledge about environmental problems in cities, particularly urban disposable waste, found discouraging results. "The majority of students in this study did not understand the complex problem of solid wastes and were generally unaware of the pollution that these produce; nor did they grasp either the close relationship that exists between consumption and refuse or the fact that the most realistic solutions are to reduce consumption and increase the recycling/reuse of solid wastes" (Membiela et al., 1993, p. 33).

Somewhat less discouraging was a study of some 3,200 11th-grade students in New York State in the early `90s. Students in this study scored "rather low on knowledge questions." However, "they displayed higher scores on awareness and concern, and 56% of the students reported that they would like additional environmental education to be offered in school" (p. 27).

And finally, a study in Thessaloniki, Greece, of some 686 fifth and sixth graders was reported in 1998. The results suggested, at least for the population studied, "that children's knowledge about plants and animals is limited" (p. 58). The children tended to be aware of certain characteristics of plants and generally appreciated their value. But when asked about animals, they tended mostly to identify and relate to mammals and pets. A paragraph from the researchers' discussion has implications for parks and recreation similar to ones we have already seen:

The "distorted" knowledge mostly originates in textbooks and teaching as well as in the way urban children use their senses when they are involved with plants and animals in their immediate surroundings. This is important because people remember 10% of what they hear, 30% Of what they read, 50% of what they see, and 90% of what they do (Gittins, 1988).

Therefore, the significance of children's education within or about nature and their comprehension of the differences between the artificial and the natural environments becomes evident (p. 59).

Interpretation

Another related question might be this: What is the role of interpretation in environmental education, and how well is it working? In 1997, Knapp, Volk, and Hungerford constructed a model for environmental interpretation based on the 1990 model mentioned earlier. They began testing it by surveying 18 leaders in interpretation. The leaders were simply asked whether they agreed or disagreed with each item on a list of goal statements. The goal statements were written to correspond with the three levels identified in the 1990 model: entry level, ownership level, and empowerment level.

In general, the leaders supported the goals. The entry-level goals were the most supported, receiving virtually unanimous approval. "The panel members apparently viewed interpretation as a medium to inform resource-site visitors of topics such as ecology, natural history, cultural history, and site information. They also supported the idea that interpretation should help promote an empathetic perspective toward the resource site" (p. 31).

Several statements at the ownership level received slightly less approval (generally around 67 percent). These were the goals that related to the investigation and evaluation of issues. The main concern was that "providers of interpretive programs lack the time to investigate resource-site issues" (p. 31). Similarly, the empowerment goals were approved at a lower rate than entry-level goals but at the same rate as the issue-investigation goals. The empowerment goals relate to "action outcomes." That is, they call for students to become more skilled at influencing environmental policies, to feel that they can influence policies, and to actually take action. Concerns included that these goals would often be unrealistic for interpretive programs, and that the "political nature" of promoting action among site visitors might be inappropriate.

Around the same time, two researchers, Negra and Manning, examined how visitors to Vermont state parks were educated at those parks, and how this related to the environmental attitudes they brought with them. In the summer of 1993 they distributed 100 questionnaires to visitors at 45 different Vermont state parks. Some 3,500 surveys were eventually completed. They also adopted Hungerford and Volk's 1990 model, which uses the three levels -- entry, ownership, and empowerment -- of variables. They found that, in general, their park visitors reported fairly advanced development at all levels. The least developed factor was knowledge of environmental issues, "signaling a potential area of emphasis for park-based environmental educators" (p. 13). Their park visitors also reported greater knowledge of environmental action strategies than skill in using them. And this, they reported, provided another opportunity for park-based education: "to provide opportunities for participation in environmentally responsible behaviors and to increase park visitors' ability to use environmental action strategies" (p. 13-4).

The authors reported some subtle differences in park visitors' philosophies toward nature. They were more impressed, however, with what the visitors had in common. "Nearly all expressed agreement with the ideas that nature adds to the quality of our lives and will be important to future generations" (p. 18). Also, there was "nearly universal agreement with the ideas that humans depend on nature for survival and that the supply of goods and services from nature is limited" (p. 18).

The authors concluded that, at least in Vermont, a certain amount of concern for environmental protection may be assumed for state park visitors. Consequently, interpreters might feel freer to "explore ways [with visitors] that humans threaten the integrity of natural systems and emphasize mechanisms to diminish these threats" (p. 19). In other words, park interpreters could be more aggressive in addressing the empowerment and action goals of environmental education.

Implications for Action

Obviously, strong implications exist for park and recreation agencies. As a summary, here are six strategies stated in terms of what we can and should do:

1. Get young people into natural areas as often as possible for as long as possible. The evidence is very strong that this develops environmental sensitivity, perhaps the single-most important factor.

2. Get people away from their televisions.

3. Go beyond nature study. Don't just get children outdoors; get them to think about environmental issues close to home, and how collective actions relate to these issues.

4. Conduct workshops -- or support community groups that conduct them -- that help citizens develop the skills to act on behalf of their environment. And support programs that make people confident that they can make a difference.

5. Support or run programs that emphasize concern toward the welfare of others. This has been shown to correlate with positive environmental activity. And, as Arcury and Christianson observed, after finding that income and education were the best predictors of environmental knowledge and concern for residents in the Kentucky River basin, "the success of environmental education depends on its participation in promoting equity in the general population" (1993, p. 19).

6. In interpretive programs, don't neglect the "ownership" and "empowerment" levels. Literature shows this is critical if we want to make a real difference. Negra and Manning's study of Vermont park visitors suggests that such visitors are ready for some serious talk about issues and citizen action.

References

Abbey, E. 1991. The Monkey Wrench Gang (3rd ed.) Salt Lake City, Utah: Roaming the West.

Arcury, T.A. and Christianson, E.H. 1993. "Rural-urban differences in environmental knowledge and actions." Journal of Environmental Education 25 (1): 19-25.

Fortner, R.W. and Lyon, A.E. 1985. "Effects of a Cousteau television special on viewer knowledge and attitudes." Journal of Environmental Education 16 (3): 12-20.

Gittens, J. 1998. "It's better than McDonald's: Exploring Greenspace." Paper, Second Conference on Heritage Presentation and Interpretation, University of Warwick, Coventry, England.

Hines, J.M., Hungerford, H.R., and Tomera, A.N. 1986-87. "Analysis and synthesis of research on responsible environmental behavior: A meta-analysis." Journal of Environmental Education 18 (2): 1-8.

Hungerford, H.R. 1988. "What we `know' about citizenship behavior in environmental education: A discussion of selected environmental behavior research and implications for the non-researcher." (Unpublished) December.

Hungerford, H.R. and Volk, T.L. 1990. "Changing learner behavior through environmental education." Journal of Environmental Education 21 (3): 8-21.

Knapp, D., Volk, T.L., and Hungerford, H.R. 1997. "The identification of empirically derived goals for program development in environmental interpretation." Journal of Environmental Education 28 (3): 24-34.

Membiela, P., Nogrieiras, E., and Svarez, M. 1993. "Students preconceptions about urban environmental problems and solid waste." Journal of Environmental Education 24 (2): 30-4.

Negra, C., and Manning, R.E. 1997. "Incorporating environmental behavior, ethics, and values into nonformal environmental education programs." Journal of Environmental Education 28 (2): 10-21.

Oestman, R.E. and Parker, J.L. 1987. "Impact of education, age, newspapers, and television on environmental knowledge, concerns, and behaviors." Journal of Environmental Education 19 (1): 3-9.

Palmer, J.A. 1993. "Development of concern for the environment and formative experiences of educators." Journal of Environmental Education 24 (3): 26-30.

Paraskevopolous, S., Padeliadu, S., and Zafiropoulos, K. 1998. "Environmental knowledge of elementary school students in Greece." Journal of Environmental Education 29 (3): 55-60.

Peterson, N.J. and Hungerford, H.R. 1981. "Developmental variables affecting environmental sensitivity in professional environmental educators: A research abstract." Current Issues in Environmental Education and Environmental Studies, Volume III. Selected papers from the 10th annual conference of the National Association for Environmental Education (pp. 111-13). Troy, Ohio: National Association for Environmental Education.

Shanahan, J., Morgan, M., and Mads, S. 1997 "Green or brown? Television and the cultivation of environmental concern." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media (online): www.umi.com/pqdweb

Shran, G.D. and Shei, T. 1995. "The values of student environmentalists." Journal of Psychology (online): www.umi.com/pqdweb

Tblisi Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education. 1978. "Toward an Action Plan: A Report on the Tblisi Conference on Environmental Education." (Developed by the FICE Subcommittee on Environmental Education [Stock No. 017-080-01838-1]). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Governmental Printing Office.

Weilbacher, M. 1993. "The renaissance of the naturalist." Journal of Environmental Education 25 (1): 4-7.

James M. Glover is an associate professor, and Lulu Deckert is a master's student, both with the recreation program at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Research Update is edited by Dr. Irma O'Dell of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

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