Abstract

CHINCHILLA PICADO, Marcos; BARRIENTOS, Zaidett  and  CALDERON, Katya. The environmental education workshop as a teaching strategy for sustainability of natural resources in rural Costa Rican elementary schools. Cuadernos de Investigación UNED [online]. 2016, vol.8, n.2, pp.157-161. ISSN 1659-4266.  http://dx.doi.org/10.22458/urj.v8i2.1555.

Environmental Education is an important approach for achieving sustainable development. Its main purpose is to improve individuals’ values because they are precursors of actions that favor the environment. Our objective was to determine the impact of an Environmental Education Workshop on the declared attitudes and on the environmental behavior among students of Costa Rican rural primary schools, and to assess if there is agreement between attitude and behavior. We conducted a 3-month workshop with an experimental group of 45 students. We also had a control group of 25 students who did not participate in the workshop. We evaluated them both before and after the workshop. Participants in both groups were Costa Rican students between 8 and 13 years old. To evaluate attitude we used a Likert questionnaire with 30 items related to their daily activities. For measuring children’s behavior we counted objects correctly classified on recycling stations. The students of the experimental group improved their environmental behavior, but not their attitude. Attitude decrease is probably due to the workshop making students more critical when answering. Positive attitude and environmental behavior do not always match, mainly because attitude is only one element that predicts actions; social context and knowledge also influence them. We conclude that educational processes based on real problems and “learning by doing” are effective in changing attitude and behavior patterns, but each one in a different way.

Keywords : environmental education; environmental education workshop; sustainable development.

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