Investigating the relationships among students basic psychological needs, engagement, and environmental literacy at a residential environmental education center

Abstract

We explored the relationship between the fulfillment of students’ psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness; student engagement; and student outcomes related to environmental literacy at a residential environmental education (EE) center. We surveyed diverse groups of middle school students (N = 1,278) following the completion of 80 EE lessons delivered at the NorthBay Adventure Center to assess their self-reported levels of these basic psychological needs, engagement, and environmental literacy outcomes. A structural equation model supported our hypothesis that there is a positive relationship between the fulfillment of these psychological needs and student engagement, and that more engaged students report enhanced outcomes of environmental literacy. We also discovered that autonomy has a direct positive effect on student levels of environmental literacy, suggesting an important role for student autonomy. We discuss implications of these findings and the practicality of trying to fulfill student’s psychological needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness.

Keywords:

• Environmental literacy
• student engagement
• self-determination
• environmental education
• pedagogy

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the support of the NorthBay educators and staff and the schoolteachers, chaperones, and students who participated in this study.

Declaration of interest statement

The authors have no potential conflict of interest to report. This study was reviewed and approved by the Virginia Tech Institutional Review Board (#15-915).

Notes

1 Model 1 fit statistics: normed Chi-square statistic of 0.04; S-B CFI = .958; S-B RMSEA = 0.130; S-B TLI = .903; SRMR .040. The S-B RMSEA and S-B TLI values are not within acceptable tolerances suggesting a poor model fit.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Advancing Informal Science Learning Exploratory Pathways Grant DRL 1612416 and by the NorthBay Environmental Education Foundation.