Effects of Participation in Class Activities on Children's Environmental Attitudes and Knowledge

Abstract The Caretaker Classroom Program was initiated by the major newspaper of a large, southern city to encourage elementary school classes to engage in proenvironmental activities. Participating classes agreed to engage in a minimum of eight environmentally relevant activities during the course of an academic year. This study was designed to assess, first, whether environmental attitudes and knowledge of participants changed relative to nonparticipants, and second, whether Caretaker children influenced their parents' environmental attitudes and knowledge. Sixteen participating classes and 19 nonparticipating control classes were chosen from 11 schools; pretest and posttest environmental attitudes and knowledge were assessed. The program had a significant positive effect on attitude toward the environment but did not influence knowledge of environmental issues. Additionally, children rated by their teachers as most interested in the activities showed greater increases in proenvironmental attitudes than those rated least interested. The parents of the participants also displayed significantly more proenvironmental behaviors after their children's activities than did parents of the control group.