Environmental Education in Côte d'Ivoire/West Africa: Extra-Curricular Primary School Teaching Shows Positive Impact on Environmental Knowledge and Attitudes

Abstract

This paper surveys the consequences of pupils' participation in the extra-curricular environmental education (EE) programme Club P.A.N. (Peoples, Animals and Nature) by monitoring changes in their respective knowledge as well as in their environmental attitudes. The programme was conducted in Côte d'Ivoire in West Africa with the help of the local teacher's organization Cellule des Projets Environnementaux (CPE). We used multivariate analysis of data collected during two years of the programme (n = 1,244 participants), in nine villages around the Taï National Park, to test if this EE programme could lead to (1) knowledge gain and (2) attitude change, and the influences of (3) grade, sex and prior knowledge. Participation significantly increased environmental knowledge and positively influenced attitudes towards nature. Boys gained more knowledge and changed attitudes more than girls and pupils of the sixth grade profited more from the programme on both measures than the younger pupils of the fifth grade. We discuss how these results influence the programme and how further research should be emphasized.

Keywords:

• Environmental education
• Knowledge
• Attitudes
• Evaluation
• West Africa
• Adolescents

Acknowledgements

We thank the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation for the long-term support of the Club P.A.N. programme. We thank the Cellule des Projets Environnementaux (CPE) for their indispensable help and their never-ending enthusiasm about Club P.A.N. and the promotion of EE. Our sincere thanks go also to the participating teachers who contributed so much to make this programme a success. We thank the Ivorian Ministry for Education and (Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale), the Ministry for Environment (Ministère de l'Environnementet du Développement Durable) for permission to work around the Taï National Park. Our special thanks to the Fazit Foundation and the Max Planck Society for financial support of the first author. We particularly thank all the donors who made Club P.A.N. possible.: The Brevard Zoo, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Dierenpark Amersfort Wildlife Fund, Keindanren Nature Conservation Fund, Minnesota Zoo's Ulysses S. Seal Conservation Grant Programme, Oregon Zoo Foundation's Future for Wildlife Conservation Fund, Sweden Chimpanzee Trust, The Rufford Small Grants Foundation, US Fish & Wildlife Service, WWF, Yves Rocher Foundation, Zoo Bremerhaven, and the Zoo Leipzig and we also thank WCS/Club Ebobo and Thomas Breuer for inspiration and all the people who contributed to the development of Club P.A.N.

We thank Roger Mundry for statistical advice and his never-ending energy in teaching statistics, nevertheless, all responsibility for statistical analysis is by the authors of the paper. Finally, we thank Róisín Murtagh and Dervla Dowd for their careful corrections of the language.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Content may be viewed online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2013.803632