Framing the Teaching Green Building: environmental education through multiple channels in the school environment

Teaching Green Buildings (TGBs) are designed to engage building users with the sustainable features of the building and offer unique opportunities to deliver environmental education (EE) through multiple channels. This study examines three case study TGBs across the United States. We present results from a mixed-methods study involving a youth survey (n = 311), youth Photovoice project (n = 29), and focus groups and interviews with adult key informants. We sought to understand how school facility design, school culture, curriculum, and teachers as role models provide multiple channels for EE, with a particular interest in the physical built environment of these three unique schools. Basic green building knowledge and environmentally responsible behaviours were detected at all three schools. We found, however, that two of the case study schools, despite the access to TGBs, were not communicating sustainability through diverse channels, and the EE outcomes for students were disjointed and tepid. The third and most established TGB offered sustainability messaging through numerous channels and the result for students was a more holistic and connected understanding of green buildings within the larger ecological context.