Environmental Education Strategies and the Adoption of Sustainable Attitudes and Behaviors in Students of an Educational Institution

Abstract

The objective of the study was to demonstrate the effect of environmental education strategies on the adoption of sustainable attitudes and behaviors in students of the "Juan Marino Meza Rosales" Educational Institution of Huánuco. An experimental, prospective and longitudinal design was used with two groups: experimental and control, consisting of 49 students in each group. The environmental education strategy received the experimental group and the usual control information. The instruments used were: an interview guide, scales and questionnaire previously validated. The inferential analysis was performed with  Student's t for paired samples; using SPSS V19. The results showed differences between the groups and moments of the study (before and after), observing sustainable behaviors with significantly higher averages in the experimental group (t = -2.67 and p-value = 0.010) with respect to the control (t = 0.52 and p-value = 0.606); they also significantly improved the averages in favorable attitudes towards the environment in this group, (t = -7.22 and p-value = 0.000) with respect to the control (t = 4.24 and p-value = 0.000).  The same thing happened in beliefs about the environment (t = -20.42 and p-value = 0.000 and t = -0.68 and p-value = 0.499, respectively). It is concluded that environmental education strategies have an effect on improving sustainable attitudes and behaviors; in the experimental group (t = -13.06 and p-value = 0.000), with respect to the control (t = 2.64 and p-value = 0.011), and between the moments studied (before/after).