The Comparative Effects of Constructivist Versus Traditional Teaching Methods on the Environmental Literacy of Postsecondary Nonscience Majors

Abstract

Using a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental control group design, a learning environment study was conducted to evaluate the environmental literacy of postsecondary, nonscience majors. Data were collected from 183 students taking an introductory environmental science class—a 41-question Environmental Literacy Instrument (ELI) prompted students for responses across four subscales of environmental literacy: Knowledge, Beliefs, Opinions, and Self-Perceptions. Differences between presurvey and postsurvey scores were compared to determine whether a constructivist-based or traditional learning environment improved students' environmental literacy more. Results showed that the constructivist-based curriculum was not a significant factor of influence, suggesting that regardless of which learning environment they were exposed to, participants experienced similar improvements to their environmental literacy across a 16-week semester. Given that the findings were contrary to expectations, and counterindicated by several other learning environment studies as well, a broader investigation as to why the two learning environments produced similar results is warranted.

Using Blogs to Improve Elementary School Students’ Environmental Literacy in Science Class

“…Environmental Literacy Scale (ELS) has been originally developed by Michigan State University (MSU-WATER, 2001-2006. ELS measures student's environmental literacy level in accordance with the four factors which are information, attitude, usage and interest.…”

“…Environmental literacy has been introduced into literature by Charles E. Roth for the first time. According to Roth, environmental literacy is defined as information about the environment and awareness level of it (Wright, 2006). Nowadays, there are many definitions of environmental literacy.…”

Metodika pro hodnocení environmentální výchovy pro dospělé účastníky

“…Pojmem "environmentální gramotnost" zde budeme myslet komplex znalosti, dovednosti, postojů, přesvědčení či hodnot souvisejících s odpovědným environmentálním chováním, včetně odpovědného chování samotného (Disinger & Roth, 1992, Disinger, 1997, Morrone, Mancl & Carr, 2001Moseley, 2000, Stables & Bishop, 2001,Wright, 2008, Goldman, Yavetz & Pe'er, 2006, Daudi, 2000, Hsu & Roth, 1998. V České republice tento komplex podrobněji charakterizuje dokument Cíle a indikátory EVVO (Broukalová a kol., 2012), zpracovaný pro potřeby Ministerstva životního prostředí širokou pracovní skupinou reprezentující domácí profesní komunitu.…”

Textbooks and Constructivist Pedagogy in Saudi Arabian School Classrooms

“…More recently, educators have incorporated other, more fundamental theories of learning into "constructivism", a theory that places relatively heavy emphasis on how learners learn, and therefore, how they can best be "taught". Developed as a theory of learning over the last two decades of the 20 th century, constructivism has received increasing acceptance among educators across grade levels (Fink, 2003;Fink, 1995;Wright, 2008;Su, 2007) and subject matter fields (Simon, 1995;Scott et al, 1992;Alharbi, 2004;Blyth, 1997;Chen, 2002). In contrast to the implied emphasis of more traditional learning theories which view learning mainly as a process of transferring knowledge to the learner and reinforcing that transfer, constructivism views learning as a process of active building and developing knowledge and meaning by the learner.…”

“…The constructivist view in modern cognitive psychology has emphasized the active role learners take in learning, and the social construction of knowledge has become not only an important principle in socio-cultural theory (Vygotsky 1978, Wertsch 1985, but it has also provided the rationale for educators intuitively to adopt an array of "constructivist" teaching theories (Brooks & Brooks, 2001;Bevevino et al,1999;Fosnot, 1996), practices (Wright, 2008;Hannafin et al, 1997), and individual lessons (Milner, 2008). In general, these constructivist learning activities have been designed to encourage learners to use their own experiences to actively construct meaning that makes sense to them rather than to acquire understanding through exposure to a format organized by the teacher (Gale & Steffe, 1995, cited in Borich, 2000.…”