Pro-Environmental Dispositions among Secondary School Students: A Study on the Role of Schools

• In Event: Prepared for a Sustainable Future? Environmental Knowledge and Pro-Environmental Dispositions Among Secondary School Students

Proposal

Recently, various sustainable development initiatives have utilized international large-scale assessment studies to look into young people’s environmental knowledge and their pro-environmental dispositions (e.g., OECD, 2022; Author, 2020; Yin et al., 2020). The present work aims to contribute to the latter topic.
Schools, as significant socialization agents, have a privileged role in promoting pro-environmental dispositions. Secondary education students spend a considerable amount of their time in school, where curricular subjects such as earth and life sciences help them increase their understanding of issues such as climate change, water shortages, and pollution. However, this knowledge does not necessarily directly translate into action. Schools and learning environments providing opportunities to learn and to participate in pro-environmental activities seem to be key for student engagement in these pro-environmental actions (OECD, 2022). However, most of the studies comparing school differences on learning outcomes (i.e., cognitive measures) find considerable variance attributed to schools (Snijder et al., 2012). Yet, when the same exercise is done with non-cognitive measures, the variance attributed to schools is much lower (Author, 2022). The present work aims to determine the potential role schools have in promoting students’ pro-environmental dispositions. We estimate how much variance is observed between schools with regard to students’ participation in environmental groups and organizations (current behavior) and to students’ intended future action (i.e., “making personal efforts to help the environment”, when they are adults).
Using ICCS 2016, we fit a series of generalized mixed models to estimate differences between schools (i.e., school variance) regarding students’ self-reported current and future participation in pro-environmental actions. Informed by the action competence model (Author, 2020) and applications of the planned behavior model to pro-environmental dispositions (de Leeuw, et al., 2015), we estimate how much of the school variance is accounted for by school level attributes, such as pro-environmental opportunities to learn. Additionally, we investigate the role of other relevant student level characteristics (e.g., socioeconomic status, students’ gender), the endorsement of injunctive norms to protect the environment, and students’ perceptions of threats to the future (e.g., pollution, climate change, energy shortages).
Our results reveal that a substantial portion of the variance in students' dispositions can be attributed to their respective schools. Furthermore, students demonstrate a greater willingness to protect the environment in the future when attending schools that undertake pro-environmental actions (e.g., differential waste handling), provide education on environmental protection, and employ a teaching staff prepared to instruct on subjects such as the environment and environmental sustainability. The discussion will address the opportunities and limitations of international large-scale assessment data to shed light on young people’s pro-environmental dispositions and their correlates within the school environment.

Authors

• Diego Carrasco, Centro de Medición MIDE UC, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

• Daniel Miranda, P. Universidad Católica de Chile

• Cristobal Villalobos, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

• Ernesto Treviño, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile