Martha C. Monroe

Connection to Nature: Children’s Affective Attitude Toward Nature

A connection to nature index was developed and tested to measure children’s affective attitude toward the natural environment. The index was employed through a survey that investigates students’ attitude toward Lagoon Quest, a mandatory environmental education program for all fourth-grade, public school students in Brevard County, Florida. Factor analyses were conducted to explore and confirm different factors in the connection to nature index. A path analysis was conducted to examine the association among variables. The results suggest four dimensions in the children’s connection to nature index: (a) enjoyment of nature, (b) empathy for creatures, (c) sense of oneness, and (d) sense of responsibility. Children’s connection to nature influences their intention to participate in nature-based activities in the future. Children’s connection to nature, their previous experience in nature, their perceived family value toward nature, and their perceived control positively influenced their interest in performing environmentally friendly behaviors.

A Framework for Environmental Education Strategies

Environmental education (EE) includes a broad range of teaching methods, topics, audiences, and educators. EE professionals have worked over the last 30 years to provide distinct definitions, guides, objectives, and standards that will help educators know how to differentiate environmental education from other educational efforts and how to deliver it effectively. This article incorporates several recent frameworks of educational strategies into one that has usefulness to formal and nonformal educators as well as communicators. Our purpose is not to redefine EE, but to provide a framework that can help practitioners consider a suite of possible purposes and interventions that can belong under the umbrella of EE. We define four categories of EE according to their purpose: Convey Information, Build Understanding, Improve Skills, and Enable Sustainable Actions.

The Value of Assessing Public Perceptions: Wildland Fire and Defensible Space.

Fire is a challenge in the wildland-urban interface. Although resource managers encourage residents to create defensible space, many do not. This study illustrates the value of using a needs assessment to better understand perceptions of an audience in order to develop meaningful messages and materials. In this case, our audience is residents of forested areas of Florida and Minnesota at risk of wildland fire. By using in-depth interviews, we explore their perceptions of their landscape, their perception of risk, and their willingness to reduce that risk. Their perceptions can be used to evaluate current wildfire communication tools and suggest ways to modify them to inform and change the behavior of residents. Printed materials emphasis the threat of fire and what to do. Interview data suggest that emphasizing relevant values: privacy, wildlife, and recreation opportunities, as well as acknowledging neighborhood norms, could be helpful to motivate residents when the threat of fire is not sufficient.

The Importance of Teaching Ethics of Sustainability.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the importance of a focus on ethics in sustainability education and present results from a pilot graduate‐level course titled the Ethics of Sustainability.Design/methodology/approach – This is a case study presenting a qualitative evaluation from a pilot 14‐week Ethics of Sustainability course. Data are based on observations, surveys and interviews with students.Findings – Students from diverse fields found the ethical concepts new, stimulating and crucial for their careers. Ethical concepts provide a framework for thinking about sustainable practices in their personal and professional lives.Research limitations/implications – Findings are based on a single pilot course and post‐participation responses. Future research could explore different teaching strategies and different institutions, and use pre/post studies.Practical implications – This study suggests that a course on ethical principles related to sustainability is a useful and potentially critical...

Some fundamentals of engaging stories

Summary This paper discusses a form of information transfer referred to as story. It is suggested that stories serve as a singularly effective replacement for direct experience, a useful but sometimes difficult environmental education technique. The effectiveness of stories is argued to derive from their ability to engage the attention of the reader. The paper concludes with a list of elements that can be used to create cognitively engaging stories.

Challenges for environmental education evaluation.

The articles in this special issue cover a range of practices in environmental education evaluation, from program evaluations to training and organizational impact. This article reflects on this collection and offers six recommendations on three broad themes that the issues authors identify as shortcomings or opportunities for change: capacity building, program theory, and learning organizations.

Intermediate Collaborative Adaptive Management Strategies Build Stakeholder Capacity

Efforts to implement collaborative adaptive management (CAM) often suffer from challenges, such as an unwillingness of managers to share power, unresolved conflicts between stakeholders, and lack of capacity among stakeholders. Some aspects considered essential to CAM, e.g., trust and stakeholder capacity, may be more usefully viewed as goals for intermediate strategies rather than a set of initial conditions. From this perspective, intermediate steps that focus on social learning and building experience could overcome commonly cited barriers to CAM. An exploration of Springs Basin Working Groups, organized around major clusters of freshwater springs in north Florida, provides a case study of how these intermediate steps enable participants to become more reasonable and engaged. This strategy may be easily implemented by agencies beginning a CAM process.

Predicting Cattle Rancher Wildlife Management Activities: An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior

Integrating wildlife management into routine livestock operations has become a priority of many wildlife conservation agencies and nongovernmental organizations because grazing lands occupy more than one-third of the United States. We surveyed 1,093 beef cattle ranchers by mail to predict cattle rancher intentions to consider wildlife management in routine cattle management activities. We framed our survey using the theory of planned behavior, whereby attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral controls explain behavioral intent. Our results indicated that attitudes and subjective norms best explained rancher intentions. Wildlife agency personnel and program planners can apply these results to design new or increase participation in existing cattle rancher wildlife conservation assistance programs by fostering positive attitudes regarding the integration of wildlife management in routine cattle operations and targeting key social groups of the ranching and conservation communities.

Teaching and Evaluating Critical Thinking in an Environmental Context.

As environmental education strives to create an informed citizenry capable of addressing complex problems, critical thinking is an integral part of this effort. This research guides environmental educators in defining, teaching, and evaluating critical thinking by summarizing a pilot study with an undergraduate forest issues course designed to increase critical thinking skills in students and move them toward responsible environmental citizenship. The course taught critical thinking skills explicitly, correlating each discussion and assignment to the specific critical thinking skills addressed. An essay-based assessment of critical thinking skill, a Likert-scale assessment of critical thinking disposition and qualitative interviews measured critical thinking in students. After the 15-week course, students significantly improved in critical thinking skills (n = 16, p < .05) and skills were correlated with critical thinking dispositions (n = 13, p < .05). Phenomenological analysis of interviews revealed that students engaged in critical thinking in a variety of situations, some with citizenship implications, and struggled with the role of emotion in critical thinking. These experiences informed recommendations for instruction and evaluation strategies.

The effects of environment‐based education on students’ critical thinking skills and disposition toward critical thinking: Reprinted from Environmental Education Research (2004) 10(4), pp. 507–522

This study examined the relationship between environment‐based education and high school students’ critical thinking skills and disposition toward critical thinking. Four hundred four 9th and 12th grade students from 11 Florida high schools participated in the study. A Pretest‐Posttest Nonequivalent Comparison Group Design (9th grade) and a Posttest Only Nonequivalent Comparison Group Design (12th grade) were used. Interviews of students and teachers were used in the classic sense of triangulation. Data collection took place over the 2001–2002 school year. When controlling for pretest score, grade point average (GPA), gender, and ethnicity, environment‐based programs had a positive effect on 9th grade students’ critical thinking skills (p=.002). When controlling for GPA, gender, and ethnicity, environment‐based programs had a positive effect on 12th grade students’ critical thinking skills (p < .001) and disposition toward critical thinking (p < .001). The results of this study support the use of environment‐based education for improving critical thinking and can be used to guide future implementation.