Abstract
This study analyses the Active Citizens program conducted in seven Czech elementary schools in 2017/2018. The data were obtained in a mixed-design research study containing pre/post experimental/control groups (N = 114), eight focus groups with selected students (N = 56), and group interviews with teachers (N = 14). The mean age of the students was 13.8 years. The study focuses on the students’ and the teachers’ perception of the process, the program’s barriers and benefits, and on the impact of the program on the students’ self-efficacy and on perceived democratic school culture. The analysis revealed that while the participants felt empowered because of their experience, they started to perceive their school environment as less democratic than before the program. The program also likely influenced girls more than boys as the latter seem to have been unaffected. Finally, the implications of the findings for the practice are discussed.
Highlights
Education for Environmental Citizenship (EEC) has become one of the newly emerging approaches in the field of education [1,2,3,4]
While the distinctive features of the EEC approach, which clearly blends aspects of environmental education and education for sustainable development, are still in their inception phase, it is evident that the approach highlights the idea of active civic participation of students in decision-making processes on the community level with the aim to promote both their action competences and change in the real world
According to Schild [6], environmental citizenship has never been at the heart of our education system and there is a need for explicit focus on environmental citizenship
Summary
Education for Environmental Citizenship (EEC) has become one of the newly emerging approaches in the field of education [1,2,3,4]. According to the above definition, there are eight intended outcomes of EEC: preventing new environmental problems, contributing to solving current environmental problems, practicing environmental rights and duties, identifying structural causes of environmental degradation and problems, achieving critical and active engagement and civic participation, promoting inter- and intra-generational justice, developing a healthy relationship with nature, and achieving sustainability. These outcomes can be achieved through individual and collective actions to be applied in different spheres (private and public) and on different scales (local, national, and global). The pedagogical landscape of EEC is based on some already existing pedagogical approaches
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