Theory-based assessment in environmental education: a tool for formative evaluation

Abstract

This article reports on the development of a theory-informed assessment instrument for use in evaluating environmental education programs. The instrument involves coding learners’ brief reflective writing on five established educational and social psychological constructs that correspond to five important goals of environmental education: promoting learners’ perceived relevance of environmental content, sense of personal and collective responsibility for sustainability, knowledge of environmental content, readiness for environmental action, and identity exploration around environmental questions. The article describes the development of the instrument and its use for coding the reflective writing of 242 early adolescents who participated in a large-scale environmental education program.

Keywords:

• evaluation
• assessment
• theory
• adolescence
• identity exploration

Notes

1. An analysis that compared the indicators of the program’s goals in the three waves of data as part of program evaluation is presented elsewhere.

2. The current approach can be complemented by a qualitative content analysis of students’ writing as to the content and characteristics of the self-categorized groups, knowledge, actions, and identity exploration they expressed. Such findings can be combined in mixed-methods analyses with the coding in the current codebook to provide a more comprehensive insight into the participants’ engagement with the environmental content.

3. Importantly, our approach to program evaluation considers the reflective writing assignment to be an authentic and integrated curricular task that, in and of itself, can promote relevance, cognitive processing, and identity exploration. Thus, the type of question and its associated quality of response is, at one and the same time, a data generating device as well as a pedagogical strategy to be evaluated and employed strategically to promote the program’s goals.