The environmental education through filmmaking project

Abstract

The environmental education through filmmaking project, a case study at an alternative US public high school, investigates environmental literacies of ‘at-risk’ students who produced two short documentary films, one on recycling and one on water conservation. The filmmaking project sought to promote students’ awareness of environmental issues and increase their environmental literacy by exploring the conservation topics on multiple levels: carrying out research for their films, conducting interviews, and operating camera equipment. After completing the projects, we conducted focus group interviews with two control groups and two filmmaking groups and analyzed students’ responses using coded qualitative methodology to develop three theoretical constructs: (1) students’ construct knowledge about the environment through social processes that include interrelated influences from school, family, and the media; (2) apathy about the environment is common among ‘at-risk’ high school students who perceive their school culture does not focus on environmental education; and (3) students more readily adopt environmentally responsible behaviors when provided with opportunities to develop their own understanding of connections between personal actions and associated environmental consequences. Qualitative analysis of the focus group interview responses suggests filmmaking projects provided such opportunities and were successful in introducing strategies that encourage environmentally responsible behaviors amongst students.

Keywords:

• constructivism
• new media
• qualitative analysis
• environmentally responsible behavior
• at-risk students

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge Robert Fowler and Julie Francis for supporting the student service learning projects that made this work feasible as well as Barbara Whitten’s helpful comments on this manuscript. This work has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Multi-Scale Modeling of Atmospheric Processes, managed by Colorado State University under cooperative agreement No. ATM-0425247.

Notes

aA positive comment indicates perceptions of internal locus of control for acting on environmental issues.

bA difference between Filmmaking1 vs. Control1 and Filmmaking2 vs. Control2.

cA positive comment relating to knowledge is one that is correct in fact.

1. The YouTube Fact Sheet (www.youtube.com/t/fact_sheet?gl=ES&hl=es) has been removed and archived, but was widely quoted with the statement provided. A search for the total number of videos catalogued on YouTube.com led to many answers, but we believe a reasonable estimate, based on several online sources, was ∼200 million videos at the time of submission. The number of posted videos grows significantly each day. Based on a total of ∼200 million videos, a cursory YouTube search provided us with an estimated ∼1% of posted videos on the topic of nature or environment and ∼3% of videos related to education. There were 12,500 videos when the search topic was limited to ‘environmental education.’ However, not every search result is unique.

2. We use cognitive constructivism to describe a learning theory, based largely on the work of Piaget, that posits the primacy of the individual’s role in construction of knowledge. We use social constructivism to describe learning theories that honor the social construction of knowledge, based largely on theories developed by Dewey and Vygotsky. We refer to pedagogies based on these learning theories as constructivist-motivated pedagogies.

3. While we found many published works on the use of filmmaking as pedagogy in college and secondary classes in subjects such as technology and media education, English, rhetoric, history, teacher education, and dance, we found no peer-reviewed literature on the intersection of environmental education and filmmaking. Reid (2010) states: ‘Repeating this search [for publications that explicitly addressed the nexus of environmental education and video-making] dozens of times from 2006–2009, I found a great deal of interesting work, but again, none directly addressing the issues video-making in a post-secondary environmental education context.’ We have similarly found a lack of published literature at primary and secondary levels on the relation of filmmaking to environmental education.

4. We did not fully explore the impacts on the mostly white and privileged undergraduate students who were enrolled in the environmental education class at a private liberal arts college. Each group of 2–3 undergraduate students prepared and taught their own lessons relating broadly to global climate change. The AHS sponsor observed all classes and assisted the college students as needed, but did not participate in any lessons directly. The undergraduate students, who were only a few years older than the AHS students, were likely impacted even more than the AHS students. This service-learning activity, which was required for all students enrolled in the environmental education class, was the only one scoring a perfect (5/5) evaluation score for its ability to promote the undergraduate students’ lasting learning as future environmental educators.

5. Filmmaking2 students were the only participants who participated in two sets of lessons. In December 2009, they participated in undergraduate student-led lessons not led by Hallie Harness. In February 2010, a sub-set of students (Note 5) from this class participated in the water conservation filmmaking lessons.

6. Students and their parents in the filmmaking group were required to sign two consent and assent forms, one for participating in the project and one for appearing in the documentary film. In total, nine students returned their permission slips in order to participate in the second filmmaking project. However, due to problems with attendance and consistency, the core group creating the second film was five students and an additional three who participated sporadically. All focus group participants were from the core group of five students. Because the first filmmaking group was a scheduled part of normal classes, no waiver was required to participate in the first filmmaking project.

7. For example, as identified in Table 1, F1 is the first female and M1 is the first male interviewed.

8. Twenty-four undergraduate students re-coded the transcripts grouping AHS student responses under the 38 established repeating ideas. The codebook was found to be complete and the themes consistent. Howard Drossman then re-coded all data independently to ensure consistency.

9. The ERB factors used for the typological analysis included: environmental sensitivity, environmental attitude, knowledge of environmental issues, knowledge of action strategies, skill in using action strategies, locus of control, consequences of environmental actions, and intention to act (Hungerford and Volk 1990). Paired t-tests were used to assess statistically significant differences in the number of per-person responses from each group using responses from all eight ERB categories as testing variables. Paired groups included total film-making (Film-making 1–2) vs. non-film-making (Control 1–2), Film-making1 vs. Contol1 and Film-making2 vs. Control2 (Note 9). Paired t-tests for total answers between groups showed no significant difference for total film-making vs. non-film-making (p = 0.576), Film-making1 vs. Contol1 (p = 0.666) and Film-making2 vs. Control2 (p = 0.805) indicating that differences are for positive and negative answers and not just more answers. Numerical data are provided in Appendix 2.

10. Although focus group participants were not chosen by levels of prior environmental awareness, it became clear through coding that Film-making1 and Control1 groups had demonstrated and self-reported greater environmental awareness (50 and 67%, respectively), compared with Film-making2 (0%) and Control2 (0%). We considered those students who stated ‘yes’ to have prior environmental awareness. Those who said ‘somewhat’ or ‘no’ prior awareness were not considered to have prior environmental awareness.

11. The visiting undergraduate students provided six class periods of environmental education lessons to four different science classes in this study as well as six additional film-making lessons with Film-making 2. However, the commitment by AHS teachers and administrators went beyond these four science classes discussed in this study. In all, the 24 undergraduate environmental education students taught 11 sections of math and science classes with three different AHS faculty sponsors in six 80-min lessons over two weeks, but only four of these science classes are relevant to this study.

12. The topics listed for each set of questions in Table 3 are not exclusive, but rather representative of the majority of responses we categorized from each question.