The Literacy of Environmental Education Assessment Framework (LEEAF)

The Literacy of Environmental Education Assessment Framework (LEEAF) is a pre and post-assessment survey to evaluate the current Environmental Education (EE) curriculum and learn how it supports the Science / Environmental Education Curricular Standards (Connell, 2019). LEEAF provides a systematic approach to aligning the existing and self-adopted EE science standards based on NAAEE (2010), GCDEE (1980), and Tbilisi (1978). The three categories: Fully Aligned - EE curricula and science professional development questions (100% - 70%); Partially Aligned - science curricula and professional development questions that also discuss the possible implementation of the EE curriculum (69% - 30%); Not Aligned - questions, discussing the current science curricula and which areas are successful and the other regions in which improvement requires an implementation of an EE curriculum (29% - 0%). LEEAF is a two-year assessment comprising four assessments submitted to school educators, administrators, students, and community stakeholders to determine EE alignment. LEEAF works per Tscion Research Environmental Education, Enrichment & Stewardship (TREEES). TREEES is an environmental education framework that provides activities that improve EE literacy for students, teachers, and community efforts. The LEEAF assessment allows TREEES to determine EE alignment and apply the appropriate percentage of activities based on science curricular deficiencies and strengths. During the evaluation, public and private school data are analyzed through qualitative and content analysis to assess the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK, Schulman, 1987) of the school or institution, to check for curricular’ understanding or misunderstandings, and teachers’ reflection on their teaching( Tan, Yap & Wan, 2002).