Examining how environmental and sustainability factors influence civic and citizenship achievement in Bulgaria: A hierarchical linear model

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday III)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Regional and national perspectives on the processes and outcomes of citizenship education

Proposal

Introduction
Over the past decade, there has been increasing attention on how to integrate environmental and sustainability education (ESE) into schools. In Bulgaria, there is historical evidence of integrating ESE into schools within the civic and citizenship state curriculum. In this article, I investigate school level and student level factors and their influence on student civic and citizenship achievement by using a multi-level model (HLM) for Bulgaria. In other words, this paper aims to examine civic and citizenship achievement in relation to student and school level leadership characteristics, school relational activities with the community, and perception of ESE values and reported school practices. To understand student characteristics and how schools mediate environmental and sustainability practices for student civic achievement, I ask the following research questions:

1. To what extent does student civic and citizenship achievement vary across schools in Bulgaria?
2. To what extent are the effects of student background and perceptions (such as participation, learning, and importance of environment and sustainability) on student civic and citizenship achievement different among schools in Bulgaria?
3. To what extent do school leadership related perceptions (such as engagement of school community and student opportunities to participate in the community) and school-related factors (such as school size, urbanicity, and reports on environmentally friendly practices) influence student civic and citizenship achievement in Bulgaria, holding constant student background and perceptions?

Theoretical Framework
To begin to examine how ESE is understood, not only at the student level but how school leadership may influence student achievement in civic achievement, the use of neo-institutionalism can assist in explaining the influence of the organizational resources (Binder, 2000) such as leadership practices and community engagement. An institution such as public education or educational systems are not immovable or permanent. By identifying how schools’ leadership, teachers and students are capable of becoming empowered and confident in civic engagement such as environment and sustainability would be helpful to ensure future success for schools to become institutions that prepare students to undertake their roles as citizens. Fararo and Skvoretz (1986) state institutions are not rigid structures purposed for constraint but are simultaneously empowering and controlling. DiMaggio and Powell (1991) add that if those advocates of change within the institution draw on existing organized practices and “employ legitimate and stylized accounts” then institutional and systemic change is possible (p. 30).

Data
The ICCS 2016 dataset is particularly of interest for scholars who are seeking to investigate youth participation in new global developments such as growing concern of the anthropogenic impact on the environment, sustainability, and the acknowledgment of schools’ role in fostering peaceful interactions between people and individuals (Schulz et al., 2016). ICCS 2016 employs a stratified two-stage cluster sampling design, which renders researchers to be able to conduct nested or multilevel analysis (Schulz et al., 2016).

Sample
The original ICCS 2016 dataset for this study consists of more than 2,966 8th grade students in 147 schools within Bulgaria. The dataset for this study is a result of the merged student questionnaire and the school questionnaire for the Bulgarian context (Schulz et al., 2016). After careful consideration of the merged dataset and to determine the final sample, all omitted, invalid, and system-missing data were recoded. The statistical tool used for this study is SPSS 24 by IBM. After employing listwise deletion for all types of missing data, the final dataset for analysis consisted of 2,671 students, which is 9.95% of the original dataset.

Conceptual Framework and Methods
The employment of Multi-level regression modeling reduces the biases of the regression coefficient standard errors to the point they are considered unbiased when data is nested and allows researchers to be able to examine group level characteristics in the model with individual outcomes (O’Dwyer and Parker, 2014; Hox, Moerbeek, and Van de Schoot 2010; Hox, 2010; Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002). Because I am positing there may be a relationship between school level and student level practices, perceptions, and learning with student civic and citizenship achievement, the employment of a multi-level analysis Hierarchal Linear Modeling (HLM) is the most appropriate method for my analysis.
For this study I provide three models to answer the research questions. The variation in student civic and citizenship achievement is represented by ε_ij and the variation in school civic and citizenship achievement is represented by u_0j. The school-mean civic and citizenship achievement is represented as β_0j and Υ_ij is student achievement. The standardized coefficients are calculated, following Hox, Moerbeek and Van de Schoot (2010)’s formula. Below are the full equations for each model:

Model A: Null
Υ_ij= γ_00+u_0j+ε_ij

Model B: Level 1 (Student)
Υ_ij= β_0j+ β_1j 〖gm_SES〗_ij+β_2j 〖Gender_female〗_ij+β_3j learn_protectenviro+β_4j 〖part_sch_envirofriendly〗_ij+β_5j 〖imp_protect_natres〗_ij+β_6j 〖imp_part_protectEnv〗_ij+ε_ij

Model C: Level 2 (School)
β_0j= γ_00+ γ_01 〖urbanicity〗_j+ γ_02 〖sch_size_large〗_j+ γ_03 〖gm_ENGAGE〗_j+ γ_04 〖gm_ENPRAC〗_ij+γ_05 〖gm_STDCOMM〗_ij+u_0j+ε_ij


Discussion and Significance
In correspondence with extant literature discussing what environmental and sustainability education means for the new globalized, civically minded youth and the civic and citizenship curriculum broadly, students’ background, exposure to lessons on protecting the environment, and students’ pro-environmental attitudes influence student achievement in social studies and other related topics in civic and citizenship education (Baker, 2006; Baker, 2016, Bartosh, 2006; Lozano, 2014; Scott, 2013), when adjusting for school-level factors and students’ previous participation in environmental activities. In sum, the findings suggest as standards and curricular changes in civic and citizenship education include environmental and sustainability curricula, students are meeting the task to include environmental and sustainability themes as part of being a good citizen in Bulgaria.

At the school organizational level, the size of the school and the frequency of whole school community engagement are positively related to student achievement at the school level with an effect size of 32.7%. Increasing the frequency of engagement with the whole school community increases civic and citizenship achievement. This supports literature arguing for whole school integration of civic education subjects such as human rights, social justice and sustainability (Eco-Schools, 2017; Kirchoff, 2010; Jabereen, 2012; Reimer and Hickman, 2014). Further research is needed to understand how other school-level characteristics influence achievement in civics and citizenship.

Author

• Erika Kessler, Teachers College, Columbia University