Fostering Environmental Identity with High School Students

Abstract

SBiC is a sustainability focused biodiversity curriculum developed for high school chemistry students. The curriculum was designed based on students learning chemistry concepts in class along with lessons and activities to gear them toward a sustainable attitude with the local environment. From that, students designed and carried out scientific investigations using real data they collected around their school. This qualitative case study explored the impacts of students with SBiC, as well as their interactions with the environment. Data were collected through various surveys, participant reflections, observations, focus group interviews and student artifacts including the physical garden they built from empty milk cartons and a final video to summarize the process of how to build the garden. To track the environmental identity development of 30 students as a whole case and three students as an embedded case study, a hierarchical scale was developed and utilized. The scale included three vertical stages and eight sub stages that ran horizontally. The scale was built on the analysis of students’ expressions and thoughts. Three stages were documented and arranged from the common themes listed from their expressions. Starting from the first stage, which contained ideas most students commonly mentioned, more complex thoughts and ideas were introduced as students moved up the scale. Findings indicated that after exposure to the SBiC curriculum, 21 students had ascended across the sub-stages of the first stage, eight students had completed the curriculum ending at the start of the second stage, and only one student had reached the third stage at the end of the study. Keywords: environmental identity development, sustainability