We provide an overview of research in sustainability education. We argue that the interconnectedness of environmental sustainability programs at K-12 schools is one metric by which sustainability education can be conceptualized. We present a new measure of whole-school sustainability, or "interconnectedness," and then use it to compare…

Effectively communicating environmental issues to motivate visitors' behavior is critical for zoos to accomplish their missions. We examined the relationship between zoo visitors' environmental concern and agreement with messages framed by environmental concern. Findings from two zoos (N = 298; N = 400), using two message formats,…

A draw-and-explain task and questionnaire were used to explore Taiwanese undergraduate students' mental models of the environment and whether and how they relate to their environmental affect and behavioral commitment. We found that students generally held incomplete mental models of the environment, focusing on objects rather than on…

Little is known about the evaluation practices of environmental educators. Questionnaires and discussion groups with a convenience sample of UK-based practitioners were used to uncover their evaluation methods. Although many report that they are evaluating regularly, this is mainly monitoring numbers of participants or an assessment of enjoyment.…

This article uses sociocultural identity theory to explore how practice, action, and recognition can facilitate environmental identity development. Recognition, a construct not previously explored in environmental identity literature, is particularly examined. The study is based on a group of diverse teens who traveled to South Asia to participate…

Taiwan's government enacted the Environmental Education Act in June 2011. In the beginning of the implementation of the Act, a national assessment of schoolteachers' environmental literacy was performed in order to establish the baseline for evaluating the effectiveness of environmental education policy. This large-scale assessment…

Urban environmental education helps students to recognize ecological features and practices of cities. To understand the value and practice of developing such ecological place meaning, we conducted narrative research with educators and students in urban environmental education programs in the Bronx, New York City. Narratives showed that educators…

This study used Witte's extended parallel process model to examine the relationships between the use of fear appeals and college students' attitudes and behavioral intentions toward global warming. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was adopted. Three hundred forty-one college students from six communication courses at two…

This article explores a number of questions about visions of the future and their implications for environmental education (EE). If the future were known, what kind of actions would be needed to maintain the positive aspects and reverse the negative ones? How could these actions be translated into the aims of EE? Three future scenarios are…

The school textbooks have been a useful site for inquiry into ways environmentalism is communicated. Rooted in the dominant social value of exploiting nature to satisfy human desire, shallow environmentalism treats environmental and ecological destruction by addressing immediate physical symptoms but refuses to reflect critically on the underlying…

Recent thinking in multicultural education can contribute to environmental education (EE) in culturally diverse societies. This article uses case studies of two minorities in Israel to illustrate the potential for bringing together these two areas of educational research that have developed significantly in recent years. After introducing the…

Significant life experience research suggests that the presence of role models, time outdoors, and nature-related media foster pro-environmental behavior, but most research is qualitative. Based on a random sample of middle school students in North Carolina, USA, we found limited positive associations between presence of a role model and time…

Residential outdoor environmental education (ROEE) programs for youth have been shown to yield lasting autobiographical episodic memories. This article explores how past program participants have used such memories, and draws on the memory psychology literature to offer a new perspective on the long-term impacts of environmental education.…

This study at a public high school in the Northeastern United States explores how students' environmental identities are affected by various activities in an Environmental Science course. Data was collected as part of an ethnographic study involving an Environmental Science teacher and her tenth-twelfth grade students. The results focus on…

This article reports on the intergenerational transmission of environmental concern and the explanatory power of communication patterns within the family. Using representative data from the Parent-Child Socialization Study in Belgium (PCSS, 2012), this article focuses on the relative influence of the mother and the father, and gender-specific…