Different tracks, same greenness? Environmental literacy models integrated with teachers’ environmental education practices for academic vs. technical/vocational high school students

Abstract

Are we having high school students in different tracks be equally knowledgeable, concerned about, and active for the environment while they learn different curricula that suit their aptitudes? 798 students of academic high schools and 751 students of technical high schools in Taiwan participated in a survey of their environmental literacy and their teachers’ integrating environmental education into instruction. Results revealed that compared to technical students, academic students had better environmental knowledge, more approval for nature’s value, higher sensitivity to air quality, and conducted some environmental behaviours more often. With structural equation modelling, the environmental literacy models of the two school types of students were found to differ in the correlations between sub-dimensions as well as goodness-of-fit. The possible causes of differences were discussed from the perspectives of the intellectual development in academically-oriented curricula, the environmental education integration of teachers, and other factors such as compulsory subjects and socio-economic status.

Keywords:

• Environmental literacy
• high schools
• environmental education integration
• structural equation modelling

REVIEWING EDITOR:

• John Chiang, Communication and Media, State University of New York, Oneonta, New York, USA

SUBJECTS:

• Sustainability Education, Training & Leadership
• Curriculum Studies
• Secondary Education

Introduction

After graduating from junior high schools, students are diverted to either academic high schools or technical/vocational ones in accordance with their aptitude. In many countries including Taiwan, these two types of high schools represent two major educational systems, academic and technical/vocational education systems. As environmental protection is one of the universal values, students from both systems are expected to be equally knowledgeable, concerned about, and active for the environment. However, since academic high schools and technical/vocational high schools differ in curricula and educational goals some differences in environmental literacy between two school types of students might be discernible.

Technical/vocational high schools, in a broad sense including industrial, commercial, and agricultural high schools, were officially categorized as ‘technical high schools’¹ since the implementation of the Twelve-year Basic Education in 2014. At the time this study was conducted (academic year 2019), there were 370 academic high schools and 279 technical high schools in Taiwan. Academic high schools prepare students for general, academic universities while technical high schools equip students with practical, vocational skills and pave their way for entry into universities of science and technology. As a comparison on the curriculum guidelines of the two types of schools presents (Table 1), students of both types of schools learn common basic subjects such as Chinese, English, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, geography, and history as well as other subjects like art and physical education. Technical high schools, however, have fewer learning hours of basic subjects than academic high schools as technical high schools have additional vocational subjects varying with diverse departments in which students are enrolled, ranging from chemical engineering, car maintenance, data processing, beauty, nursing, child conservation, accounting, advertisement design, applied foreign language, gardening, aquaculture, culinary art, to hospitality. Consequently, as Chi & Lin (2009) revealed, in addition to formal subjects, academic high schools had significantly higher proportions of courses specialized in environmental protection or environmental topics as part of other subjects than technical high schools did. Insufficient learning hours in basic subjects could have led to observed lower performance of basic subjects of technical high school students than that of academic high school students (Chi & Lin, 2009), inspiring us to further probe into the potential disparity in environmental knowledge and thereby the associated environmental attitude and behaviour between these two school types of students. In research literature, only scant attention was given to the comparison in environmental literacy between academic and technical high school students. Several local and Korean master thesis studies had made such comparisons and found that academic high school students had better performance than technical high school students in environmental knowledge (e.g. Chang, 2016; Hyun, 2009), attitude (e.g. Yen, 2003), and behaviour (e.g. Chen, 2008). In view of the limitations of these studies concerning the smaller geographic scale and focus on partial components of environmental literacy, more complete investigations of a larger scale are necessary in order to unveil potential systematic differences in environmental literacy between the two school types of students. Moreover, these differences need to be addressed from the integration of environmental education (EE) into pedagogy by teachers as well as the learning conditions of students arguably resulted from high school systems and atmosphere.

Table 1. A comparison on the compulsory curricula of academic high schools and technical high schools (in number of credits).

		Academic high school	Technical high school
Mathematics		16	4-8
Language field	Chinese	24	16
	English	24	12
Social science field	History	8	6-10
	Geography
	Citizenship and society
Natural science field	Basic physics	16 (including basic earth science)	4-6
	Basic chemistry
	Basic biology
Artistic field	Music	10-12	4
	Fine art
	Artistic life
Life field	Living technology	10-12	4 (including other subjects)
	Home economics
	Introduction to information technology/computers
Health and nursing			2
Physical education		12	12
All-out defense education		2	2
Integrated activities		12	–

Source: Summarized from the curriculum guidelines which applied to the students in this study (Ministry of Education, 2009a, 2009b).

Taiwan’s Environmental Education Act was enacted in 2010 and prescribed that employees of governmental organizations as well as students, teachers, and staff of all schools should participate in at least four hours of EE activities every year. In addition, EE has been one of the major issues that Taiwan’s Ministry of Education set forth to be integrated into the teaching of high school curricula (Ministry of Education, 2014), which conforms to the recommended approach of infusing it into all subject areas in schools (Wilson & Smith, 1996). As there is, and should be, no one single subject that is specifically created to have students educated about, in, and for the environment, the implementation of EE in schools relies heavily on the integration of it into teaching by teachers of all subjects. This may not be an easy or common task for high school teachers all over the world. An earlier local investigation revealed that about half of high school teachers always or often integrated EE into instruction (Yeh & Liao, 1998). Less than half of high school teachers in a Korean city adopted the pedagogies suitable for EE (Govender, 2011). As Spahiu et al. (2014) criticized, most teachers remained to be traditional knowledge transferors in carrying out EE in high schools, in contrast to the emphasis on more active and interactive learning than knowledge transfer in education towards sustainability (UNESCO., 2012). Despite the documented obstacles such as limited time and large class size (Spahiu et al., 2014), teachers’ integrating EE into curriculum instruction could be a significant factor positively influencing the environmental literacy of high school students. Examples in chemistry courses suggested that using more environmental examples increased students’ awareness of environmental issues (Mandler et al., 2012) or urged them to form more positive environmental attitude (Robelia et al., 2010). Quintia (2011) also found that the pro-environmental behaviour of students increased after integrating environmental topics into a biology course with the assignment of action plans. These cases imply that there are still opportunities for the integration of EE within the restrictions of reality of high school education and the focus of investigation might be shifted to the integration practices that are handy and manageable to teachers.

After the baseline investigation on the status of environmental literacy of citizens, e.g.Volk & McBeth (1998) review, a new focus on the analysis on the interplay between the sub-dimensions of environmental literacy is emerging. In these studies modelling environmental literacy, the most significant components of environmental literacy have being knowledge, attitude, and behaviour (Morrone et al., 2001), which are also the set of variables that was studied the most (Genc & Akilli, 2016). Additional components that researchers included in their environmental literacy models range from skills, environmental sensitivity, environmental concern, to other variables (Genc & Akilli, 2016). A number of studies constructed and tested the environmental literacy model of high school students. For example, Shamuganathan & Karpudewan (2015) included attitude, belief, knowledge, and responsible environmental behaviour in their model, observing that knowledge exerted no significant effect on responsible environmental behaviour. Genc & Akilli (2016) model consisted of environmental knowledge, attitude, tendency, and environmentally responsible behaviour, which were found to be positively linked to each other. Szczytko et al. (2019) tests resulted in a model in which ecological knowledge and hope both predict cognitive skills or behaviour. These works and others all contribute to the body of literature in the models of environmental literacy and responsible behaviour; yet the variables included remain to be associated with the attributes of the students themselves. The influence from teachers, a critical factor that needs to be addressed in the development of students’ environmental literacy, seems not to be incorporated as an essential variable in the modelling of environmental literacy. With the inclusion of the EE teaching of teachers, the present study advances the empirical analysis of environmental literacy. It also furthers the application of environmental literacy models to the comparative research that seeks to illustrate the differences between high school students of two major educational systems, academic vs. technical/vocational education, in the structure of relationships among several variables including teachers’ integration of EE into instruction and the components of environmental literacy.

Within the context introduced above, this study focuses on the following research questions and discusses the findings from the perspectives of both students’ learning and instructors’ teaching.

• What are the differences between academic and technical high school students in the levels of environmental literacy in general and its respective sub-dimensions in specific?

• What are the differences between academic and technical high school teachers in the frequencies of integrating environmental education into teaching?

• What is the interplay between the sub-dimensions of students’ environmental literacy and teachers’ integrating environmental education into teaching?

Method

Instrument

The development of the questionnaire used in this study took into a few considerations such as real situations in the life of high school students, the knowledge taught in current high school textbooks, questionnaire length that is convenient for teachers to distribute it in class, and the requirement of the statistical analysis. We hence invited a total of 45 teachers from both academic high schools and technical high schools to join focus group discussions aiming to devise a valid and efficient questionnaire. The finalized questionnaire is composed of five sections:

1. Environmental knowledge. It consists of 26 multiple-choice questions and 13 true-false questions, all of which are categorized into two aspects of ‘knowledge of environmental science’ and ‘knowledge of environmental issues.’ These questions were drafted with reference to the textbooks and reviewed by three high school science teachers. A sample question:

   Which of the following might not be alleviated by reducing the coal burned in thermal power plants? (A) acid rain (B) atmospheric warming (C) ozone depletion (D) particulate matter.

2. Environmental attitude. 19 items measuring the degree of approval for statements regarding such topics as ‘nature’s value’, ‘economic development’, ‘air pollution’, ‘energy’, ‘waste’, and ‘marine resources.’ A sample item:

   It is necessary to alter natural environment for social and economic development. Strongly disagree ← 1 2 3 4 5 → Strongly agree.

3. Environmental sensitivity. 4 items measuring the extent to which students notice the plants, climate, and wastes. A sample item:

   The changes and growth of flowers, grasses, trees, and other plants in living environments (schools and communities).

   Nearly not notice ← 1 2 3 4 5 → Always notice.

4. Environmental behaviour. 15 items asking students to indicate the frequencies or probabilities of performing behaviours with respect to climate change/air pollution, energy, wastes, green consumerism, marine conservation, and citizenship action. A sample item:

   Turning off the light and electric fans before leaving a room or classroom.

   Never 0 1 2∼3 4 5 Always.

   The numbers represent the number of times you do so out of five times.

5. Integration of environmental education (EE) into instruction. 6 items for students to rate how well their teachers perform in utilizing media, giving assignments, engaging students in actions, implementing outdoor instructions, and making themselves an example regarding the integration of EE into their classes. A sample item:

   The teacher usually gives assignments involving questions, investigations, or tasks of environmental protection.

   Strongly disagree ← 1 2 3 4 5 → Strongly agree.

All the above sections except Section (1), Environmental knowledge, used a five-point Likert-type scale. The teachers invited in the focus group discussions were consulted to provide suggestions on the development of these items, in particular those of Sections (4) Environmental behaviour and (5) Integration of EE into instruction. Estimates of internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s α) for several subscales were: Environmental attitude 0.745, environmental sensitivity 0.744, and environmental behavior 0.838.

Participants

With the official letters sent to high schools, the research team recruited 21 teachers from academic high schools and 24 teachers from technical high schools in different areas in Taiwan. These teachers helped distribute the questionnaire to students in their classes. As a result, 798 academic high school students (415 females and 383 males) and 751 technical high school students (322 females and 429 males) filled out the questionnaire. All of the students were eleventh-graders aged between 16 and 17.

Statistical analysis

As this study aims to compare academic high school students with technical high school students in terms of environmental literacy, MANOVA was performed to detect the differences between the two school types of students in the performance of overall environmental literacy which was composed of the measures of four sub-dimensions or constructs: environmental knowledge grade, total score of environmental attitude, total score of environmental sensitivity, and total score of environmental behaviour. Likewise, as each construct was measured by a set of indicators we ran the same analysis for each set of indicators. For example, the differences between the two school types of students in the four indicators, overall, of the construct environmental sensitivity were identified with MANOVA too. In accordance with the literature reviewed the research hypotheses tested with MANOVA are as follows.

• H1: The two school types of students differ in the measures of the four sub-dimensions or constructs of environmental literacy.

• H2: The two school types of students differ in the scores of indicators of the construct environmental knowledge.

• H3: The two school types of students differ in the scores of indicators of the construct environmental attitude.

• H4: The two school types of students differ in the scores of indicators of the construct environmental behaviour.

• H5: The two school types of teachers differ in the scores of indicators of the construct integrating environmental education into teaching.

In light of another purpose of this study to construct an environmental literacy model and analyse the complex relationships among its consisting variables, we employed structural equation modelling (SEM), a multivariate data analysis method that suits the purpose. The applications of this analytic technique are increasing in the tests of models of environmental behaviour or environmental literacy. In SEM, an abstract construct such as environmental attitude is specified as a latent variable and the questions or items of the questionnaire designed to measure the construct are measurement variables or indicators. With the statistical analysis program, AMOS, which provides a graphical interface for users to draw the model, the parameters of our specified model were estimated. The specified model in this study consists of six constructs (denoted by the ovals in an SEM diagram), namely Knowledge of environmental science (Env_scientific_knw), Knowledge of environmental issues (Env_issue_knw), Environmental sensitivity (Env_sensitivity), Environmental attitude (Env_attitude), Teacher’s integrating EE into instruction (Teacher_EE_intgrt), and Environmental behaviour (Env_behavior), along with a total of 35 indicators associated with these constructs (denoted by the rectangles in an SEM diagram).

Results

How academic high school students differ from technical high school students in environmental literacy was analysed from the comparison on the performance in the sub-dimensions of environmental literacy and on the models of structural equation modelling. Table 2 summarizes the mean scores of the sub-dimensions of environmental literacy for the two school types of students with the significance of the differences tested in MANOVA. In addition, students’ assessments of their teachers’ practices of integrating environmental education (EE) into course instruction were compared in Table 3.

Table 2. The performance in sub-dimensions of environmental literacy of two school types of students.

Sub-dimensions or constituent items	Academic high school students	Technical high school students	Significance of difference
Environmental knowledge	2.683	2.263	.000
Knowledge of environmental science	3.021	2.280	.000
Air pollution	.475	.347	.000
Climate change	.204	.135	.000
Energy	.526	.431	.000
Land and waste	.424	.345	.000
Ecology	.750	.492	.000
Water	.643	.530	.000
Knowledge of environmental issues	3.060	2.837	.000
Air pollution	.637	.637	.956
Climate change	.479	.405	.000
Energy	.605	.535	.000
Land and waste	.528	.522	.734
Ecology	.338	.254	.000
Marine resource	.475	.484	.506
Environmental attitude	26.66	26.50	.310
Nature’s value	4.163	4.037	.001
Economic development	3.191	3.161	.278
Air pollution	3.569	3.509	.104
Climate change	3.922	3.963	.287
Energy	3.530	3.573	.260
Waste	4.147	4.123	.533
Marine resource	4.083	4.043	.432
Environmental sensitivity	14.42	14.31	.474
Ecological	3.030	3.012	.763
Sky and air conditions	4.035	3.936	.048
Climate	3.959	3.909	.329
Waste	3.356	3.374	.749
Environmental behaviour	21.43	21.05	.058
Climate and air	3.175	3.090	.029
Energy	3.759	3.761	.955
Waste	3.521	3.455	.080
Green consumerism	3.710	3.521	.004
Civic action	3.101	3.041	.192
Marine resource	4.150	4.103	.435

Note: Shaded texts denote the sub-dimension or items with significant difference.

Table 3. The ratings of the integration of environmental education (EE) for two school types of teachers.

Construct and constituent items	Academic high school teachers	Technical high school teachers	Significance of difference
Integration of EE	15.278	15.565	.313
Video watching	2.565	2.681	.031
Photos and news	2.637	2.678	.447
Homework	2.427	2.544	.033
Participation	2.413	2.485	.189
Outdoor teaching	2.396	2.354	.467
Self as model	2.841	2.824	.767

Note: Shaded texts denote the items with significant difference.

Performance of environmental literacy

The MANOVA results suggested that significant difference existed between academic high school students and technical ones in the performance of overall environmental literacy, i. e., the four components as a whole. As the significance values of the test of between-subjects effects indicate, this difference is most pronounced in the component environmental knowledge (p = 0.000), with a marginally significant (p = 0.058) difference in the component environmental behaviour. The academic high school students on average scored significantly higher (20.90) than the technical counterparts (17.63) in the total score of environmental knowledge, summing 39 questions each with a score of one for a correct response. By conversing these scores into the environmental knowledge grade with values between zero and five that reflect the extent to which a student can score in a knowledge test of environmental questions, we obtain that the academic high school students are graded 2.683, significantly higher than the grade of the technical counterparts (2.263). As regards the types of questions, academic high school students had a higher grade than technical high school students in both knowledge of environmental science (3.021 vs. 2.280) and knowledge of environmental issues (3.060 vs. 2.837). The total score of the items of environmental behaviour for academic high school students (21.434) is quite high, compared with that of the technical high school students (21.052). The results of MANOVA performed for the set of indicators of each component (construct) reveal further the differences at a finer level and are reported as follows.

Environmental knowledge

Academic high school students had significantly higher scores than technical high school students in all the six topics of knowledge of environmental science, namely air pollution, climate change, energy, soil and waste, ecology, and water resource. Whereas for knowledge of environmental issues the significant higher scores of academic high school students existed in three topics, climate change, energy, and ecology and no significant difference was found in other three topics, air pollution, soil and waste, and marine resources.

Environmental attitude

Among all the six topics of environmental attitude, the extent of approval of academic high school students (4.163) was significantly higher than that of technical high school students (4.037) in only one topic, nature’s value. The remaining six topics, economic development, air pollution, climate change, energy, waste, and marine resources, showed no significant difference between the two samples of students.

Environmental sensitivity

The significant difference between academic high school students and technical ones appeared on only one item, paying attention to sky and air conditions. Academic high school students scored slightly higher (4.035) than technical ones (3.936).

Environmental behaviour

The mean of frequencies of academic high school students was significantly higher than that of technical ones in only two of the six categories of environmental behaviour, climate change/air pollution (3.175 vs. 3.090) and green consumerism (3.710 vs. 3.521). No significant difference existed in other four categories (energy, wastes, marine conservation, and citizenship action) between the two samples of students.

Integration of EE into instruction

The mean of total score of teachers’ instruction (15.565) rated by technical high school students was significantly higher than that rated by academic high school students (15.278). The difference should result from two of the composing items, ‘Playing environmental videos’ (2.681 vs. 2.565) and ‘Assigning homework to practice environmental protection’ (2.544 vs. 2.427), both showing significantly higher scores of technical high school teachers than those of academic high school teachers. The teachers of the two school systems did not differ significantly in the rest four items, ‘Utilizing pictures and news’, ‘Encouraging participating in petitions and environmental activities’, ‘Taking students outdoors for teaching’, and ‘Setting an example by teacher’s own action.’

Environmental literacy models

The goodness-of-fit indices in the SEM diagrams of Figures 1 and 2 indicated that the SEM models of both academic and technical high school students had satisfactory fit to the data. The AGFIs (adjusted goodness of fit index) were larger than 0.8 and RMSEAs (root mean square error of approximation) were smaller than 0.06, all meeting the suggested criteria for good fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999; MacCallum & Hong, 1997). The model of academic high school students (Figure 1), however, had slightly better values of these indices than the model of technical high school students (Figure 2). The number above the ultimate dependent variable, Env_behaviour (environmental behaviour), represented the percentage of total variance explained by the independent variables altogether. It was 0.71 for the model of academic high school students and 0.64 for the model of technical high school students; the former model explained the variance to a higher extent (71%) than the latter (64%). Judging from the standardized path coefficients with significant p values, in the model of academic high school students (Figure 1), environmental sensitivity was shown to be an influential construct that had a path to environmental attitude with a coefficient of 0.41 and a path to environmental behaviour with a coefficient of 0.70. The path from teachers’ integrating EE into instruction to environmental behaviour had a coefficient of 0.14. Neither knowledge of environmental science nor knowledge of environmental issues had a path to environmental attitude or environmental behaviour with a significant coefficient. As to significant correlations, the correlation between teachers’ integrating EE into instruction and environmental sensitivity was 0.19. Knowledge of environmental science was correlated with environmental sensitivity of a magnitude of 0.23 but it was negatively correlated with teachers’ integrating EE into instruction as the value of -0.12 indicated.

Figure 1. The standardized SEM model of the environmental literacy of academic high school students.

Figure 2. The standardized SEM model of the environmental literacy of technical high school students.

As Figure 2 presented, most of the paths with significant coefficients in the SEM diagram of technical high school students were similar to those in the SEM diagram of academic high school students. Environmental sensitivity still had a significant path to environmental attitude and one to environmental behaviour though with smaller standardized coefficients (0.38 and 0.66 respectively) than the coefficients of the same paths in the diagram of academic high school students. The coefficient of the path from teachers’ integrating EE into instruction to environmental behaviour was 0.18, slightly larger than that in the diagram of academic high school students. Again, neither knowledge of environmental science nor knowledge of environmental issues had a significant path to environmental attitude or environmental behaviour. The pattern of correlations between the constructs that served as independent variables was quite different from the case of academic high school students. Teachers’ integrating EE into instruction was significantly but negatively correlated with knowledge of environmental issues (-0.19). Except a negligible correlation between environmental sensitivity and teachers’ integrating EE into instruction (0.05), other correlations were comparable to those of academic high school students, knowledge of environmental science still significantly correlated with environmental sensitivity (0.19) and also highly correlated with knowledge of environmental issues (0.69).

Discussion

The major conclusive result that academic high school students were more environmentally literate than technical/vocational high school students, particularly in environmental knowledge and quite possibly in environmental behaviour at a level of sub-dimensions, required to be addressed with the differences between these two school types of students, engendering a reflection of great educational significance. It emerges as a universal phenomenon regardless of the cultures involved that secondary students enrolled in academic programs or high schools have better academic achievements than the students of vocational programs or schools (Barnes, 2000; Chi & Lin, 2009; Chiou & Lin, 2016; Erefah, 2005; Kiliç & Sağlam, 2010; McDool & Morris, 2022; Newman, 1991; Rasinski & Pedlow, 1994; Tyumeneva & Kuzmina, 2012). This is natural as academic students are tracked in a curriculum with more learning hours of academic subjects than the technical/vocational students can receive. Hence, the result that academic school students were more knowledgeable about the environment, particularly the science about the environment, than technical high school students should be conceivable since the former had better academic achievement than the latter did. A noticeable difference in curricula between these two types of high schools is likely to contribute to better knowledge of climate change issues of academic high schools. In Taiwan, both types of high schools have the same compulsory subjects in natural science including physics, chemistry, and biology but earth science is a compulsory subject for academic high schools, not technical high schools. Climate and weather are a major topic taught in earth science; academic high school students hence learn about issues associated with climate change. Though technical high school students also learn physics and biology they have much fewer learning hours than academic high school students, potentially resulting in their relative ignorance of energy and ecological issues that teachers can supplement in sufficient time of teaching.

What makes technical high school students seem to perform environmental behaviour less frequently than academic high school students? Both external and internal factors involved in the differences between technical and academic students provide informative accounts. Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the external, significant factors. Educational studies had consistently revealed that technical/vocational students were in a lower SES than academic students (Agarwal et al., 2021; Byun & Park, 2017; Choi & Hiroshima University, 2022; Chu et al., 2015; Lin, 1999; Lucas, 2001; Rose, 2008; Üstün et al., 2014; Wang & Guo, 2019). The SES was identified as a socio-demographic factor in characterizing individuals who usually act environmentally; those with higher SES conduct environmental behaviours more often than those with lower SES (Berger, 1997; Chen et al., 2011; Eom et al., 2018; Gifford & Nilsson, 2014). This might also in part explain the result that technical high school students were less willing to conduct behaviours of green consumerism than academic high school students. School culture appears to be another factor worthy of consideration as informed by an experienced teacher of a technical high school in the interview. She noticed that in technical high schools the atmosphere of environmental education (EE), whether it was EE integration in curricula or the campaign for specific environmental issues, seemed not as vibrant as in academic high schools. In her words, it could be due to the lack of niches for EE in diverse vocational departments in technical high schools in contrast to the suitable subjects for implementing or integrating EE for homogeneous students without the division of vocational departments in academic high schools. The culture of acting pro-environmentally is therefore more prevailing among academic high school students.

The internal factors with respect to the psychological state and learning of students might explain in more depth the differences in the performance of environmental behaviour. Studies in environmental behaviour demonstrated that self-efficacy has a positive effect on environmental behaviour (Lauren et al., 2016; Meinhold & Malkus, 2005). As Friedkin & Thomas (1997), Chang (2003), and Chu et al. (2015) observed, academic students had in general higher self-efficacy, more internal locus of control (Catsambis et al.,1999), or more intrinsic motivation (Zhang et al., 2016) than technical/vocational students, supporting that academic students felt more confident in acting pro-environmentally than technical/vocational students. Compared to academic students, the inferior status of learning for technical/vocational students could result in not only that sense of futility (Van Houtte, 2016) but also more of their negative development manifested by deviant behaviours (Catsambis et al., 1999; Oakes, 2005; Van Houtte & Stevens, 2008) such as smoking (Anderson Johnson et al., 2006; Jeon & Lee, 2001; Tsai, 2007; Yan et al., 2014), drinking (Chang, 2003) or disciplinary problems (Berends, 1995). It prompted us to explore whether the less frequent environmental behaviour of technical/vocational students was also associated with their deficit intellectual development due to insufficient academic learning. Gamoran (1994) argues that academic study potentially enriches one’s intellectual development by fostering appreciation of science and literature and is important for citizenship preparation. This argument should shed some light on the findings that academic students held a more proactive attitude toward citizenship participation (Chen, 2006) or had higher intention to vote and participate in political actions such as boycotting, signing a petition, and demonstrating (Persson, 2012) than technical/vocational students. As responsible environmental behaviour has been considered as a type of, or in a broad sense equivalent to responsible citizenship behaviour in the views of Hungerford & Volk (1990), Ramsey & Hungerford (2002), and Culen (2005), more intellectually-oriented curricula of academic high schools arguably contributed more effectively to the cultivation of a citizenship that engage students in protecting the environment than the technically-oriented curricula of technical high schools did.

Moreover, intellectually-oriented learning in academic high schools could be advantageous for the formation of a desirable norm or value in students that guides them to behave as the school or society expects. Studies on the effects of tracking suggested that students who achieved well academically were prone to accept the norms of behaviours required by schools (Hallinan & Sørensen, 1985; Hallinan & Williams, 1989), which are in essence congruent with social norms. In the case of political participation, Persson (2012) presumed that the difference between academic and technical/vocational students in the legitimacy of participation forms reflected academic students’ higher degree of commitment to social norms. Another example was that academic high school students scored higher in the behaviour to practice public good than technical/vocational high school students (Kim, 2002). In the same vein, we posit that the academic high school students in this study would practice environmental protection more than technical high school students as a result of their higher acceptance of the right norms cultivated through more intellectual learning. This effect might not be reflected in the differences in all fields of environmental behaviours between the two school types of students. The observed higher behavioural intention of academic high school students in climate change and air quality and higher sensitivity to air quality could ostensibly be prompted by more relevant knowledge learned in academic high school curriculum (e.g. earth science is taught only in academic high schools), in conjunction with those pro-school norms in their minds.

Nature’s value, the only item of environmental attitude that stands out to show significant difference between academic and technical high school students, merits in-depth discussion. The stronger approval of nature’s value of academic high school students might be another outcome of more intellectual development arising from their academically-oriented curricula. It is argued that the intellectual learning not only substantiates the knowledge about the world but also inspires liberal values of academic high school students, supported by the findings that academic students tend to be more liberal while technical/vocational students are relatively conservative (Ekehammar et al., 1987). Liberals were found to be more environmentally concerned than conservatives (Liere & Dunlap, 1980; McCright & Dunlap, 2010), which could be due to more approval for harm/care and fairness/reciprocity as moral categories that liberals expressed (Haidt, 2007). These moral concerns of academic high school students were possibly nurtured through their immersion in more intellectual activities. For example, as they conduct the academic inquiry into biology comprehensively, the appreciation of the value of fauna and flora could arise gradually. Likewise, the only item of environmental sensitivity on which two school types of students differed significantly, paying attention to sky and air conditions, was probably resulted from more academic learning activities that academic high school students were engaged in. Physics, chemistry, and earth science, compulsory subjects for academic high school students not technical ones, involve topics associated with sky and air. A deeper exploration of the result uncovers a potential role of the more reflective, instead of transmissive, learning of knowledge occurred in more intellectual development in academic high school students. In Kim et al. (2004) findings, the proportion of academic high school students who reached the formal operational levels was significantly higher than that of technical high school students. Piaget’s formal operation involves generalization and is essentially reflective (Gray, 1990; Padak, 1982) for ‘formal thought is derived from the reflection on verbal thought’ (as cited in Bond, 2013) and formal operation incorporates higher order learning process relying on reflection and metacognition (Padmanabha, 2020). More sufficient time of learning science subjects enables teachers to do more than knowledge transmission in teaching and hence engenders more practices of generalization and reflection among academic high school students. They have more opportunities to generalize the knowledge of air pollution learned in class to the everyday encounters and reflect on that knowledge with those encounters.

Whether in the SEM model of academic high school students or that of technical high school students, teachers’ integrating environmental education (EE) into instruction was significantly, negatively correlated with knowledge of environmental science or issues, indicating that the more EE the teachers integrated the less environmental knowledge the students had. For academic high school students, watching videos, outdoor learning, discussing environmental news, and other EE-integrating activities were bound to compress the learning time of natural science courses taught mainly with lectures, resulting in lower performance of knowledge of environmental science. For technical high school students, since less emphasis was put on the learning of scientific knowledge in their courses so it was likely the learning time of knowledge in environmental issues that were excluded. More fundamentally, the integration of EE into instruction might fail to be tailored to the knowledge and concepts of the courses and did not make salient the environmental values or attitude involved, parallel to Yueh & Barker (2011) comment that it was usually ‘unstructured opportunistic environmental education content teaching’ occurring in the classroom. Despite that technical high school teachers received higher ratings in integrating EE into instruction, particularly watching videos and assigning homework, technical high school students did not perform as much as academic high school students in environmental knowledge and some items of environmental attitude and behaviour. The activities were speculated to pitifully consist of simply watching videos without supplementing lectures and discussions about the knowledge and value involved. According to our interviews with technical high school teachers, there were allegedly cases of playing videos quite often in physics courses. This could be associated with the higher flexibility for technical high school science teachers in planning the contents of syllabus since the subjects they teach are not covered by the technical university entrance exam for most of the departments. For the same subjects, academic high school science teachers have relatively little such flexibility because the general university entrance exam covers the subjects. The insignificant link between teachers’ integrating EE into instruction and environmental attitude in the SEM models for both school types of students was also partially due to the inadequately designed integration activities of EE. Nevertheless, it was relatively certain that the integration of EE into instruction fostered the environmental behaviour of both academic high school students and technical high school students, which could be a result of the inclusion of measurement variables such as setting an example by teacher’s own action and requiring students to practice daily environmental behaviours. Teachers’ environmental awareness and commitment to encourage environmentally responsible behaviours was considered crucial to the success of integration of EE (Wilson & Smith, 1996). Our finding suggested that such teacher influence was positive to the environmental behaviour of students though these students might not necessarily hold an environmental attitude or values as positive as the influence.

The structural relationships between the components of environmental literacy in the SEM models of the two school types of students appear to differ in the effects of teachers. In the model of technical high school students, teachers affected only environmental behaviour of their students while in the model of academic high school students, besides environmental behaviour teachers additionally had significant effect on environmental sensitivity of their students. Academically-oriented curricula of academic high school might be an effective context that enabled teachers to heighten students’ environmental sensitivity through EE-integrated instruction. This argument was informed by the result of the significant correlation between environmental sensitivity and knowledge of environmental science in both models, with the stronger correlation existing in the model of academic high school students. As learning of the science about the environment should be more complete in academically-oriented curricula than in technically-oriented ones, academic high school students received more opportunities of being prompted by the topics learned to be sensitive to the environment than technical high school students. With such an advantageous curricular context, academic high school teachers can wield the influence of integrating EE into instruction in making their students unwittingly notice the changes in the environment. Lastly, the goodness-of-fit indices of SEM models suggested that the model of academic high school students had a better fit to the data (GFI= .901, AGFI= .885, RMSEA= .044 in Figure 1) than the model of technical high school students (GFI= .887, AGFI= .869, RMSEA= .047 in Figure 2), according to the suggested criteria: GFI≧ .900, AGFI≧ .900, and RMSEA≦ .050. Along with the higher percentage of variance explained by the academic model (.71 in Figure 1) than the technical model (.64 in Figure 2), additional variables are needed for a refined model of environmental literacy specifically for technical high school students. Since our models consisted of major conventional variables (sub-dimensions) of environmental literacy, the alternative variables that could add to better fit and higher explanative power of the model should provide directions for future studies.

Conclusion and suggestions

As ethically thought-provoking as the contention that a citizen’s proficiency of basic literacy measured with PISA should be equal for both academic high school students and technical high school students (Chi & Lin, 2009), these two school types of students ought to be equally knowledgeable, concerned about, and behaviourally responsible for the environment despite their different aptitudes. Regrettably, the present study unveiled the disparity in environmental literacy between the two tracks of high school students. Academic high school students outperformed technical high school students in environmental knowledge and were more sensitive to atmospheric conditions than the technical counterparts, largely in line with the results of Lin’s (2015) national survey. Though the curricula of these two types of schools, either academically- or technically-oriented, were naturally considered conducive to the difference in environmental knowledge, the sub-dimension with the most pronounced difference, we delved deeper into the potential as well as developmental effects of academic learning in these curricula that were illuminative for explicating the latent difference in environmental behaviour sub-dimension as well as the significant differences in certain items of other sub-dimensions, environmental attitude, environmental sensitivity, and in the influence of teachers’ integrating EE into instruction.

Academic high school students were quite likely to conduct environmental behaviour more often or be more willing to do so than technical high school students, which was particularly the case for the behaviour regarding climate change and air quality as well as green consumerism behaviour. They also expressed more approval for nature’s value than technical high school students. The intellectual development, which was relatively completed in academic high school curricula, was presumed to motivate socially desirable norms for behaving pro-environmentally and inspire liberal values that encourage the appreciation of nature. Other difference between the two school types of students such as socioeconomic status should have some effect on their green consumerism behaviours.

As the SEM models of environmental literacy for both school types of students exhibited, environmental sensitivity was a major sub-dimension of environmental literacy that significantly and highly correlated with environmental behaviour. The significant link between students’ environmental sensitivity and teachers’ integrating EE into instruction appearing only in the SEM model of academic high school students was again speculated to be resulted from the knowledge-intensive learning activities that paved the way for teachers’ influence on students’ awareness of the phenomena in the environment. However, perplexingly, teachers’ EE-integrating practices seemingly inhibited the acquisition of knowledge of environmental science for academic high school students and knowledge of environmental issues for technical high school students. Yet, teachers’ integrating EE into instruction positively affected environmental behaviour of both school types of students. The SEM model of technical high school students was inferior to that of academic high school students in terms of model fit, implying that future studies might incorporate alternative variables into the model. For example, novel variables could be explored from the peers or social media that greatly influence these adolescents.

Echoing the call of Van Houtte (2016) to have equal esteem for both tracks and appreciate occupations, we propose raising public’s concern about technical high school education in general and high school teachers’ reflection on the integration of environmental education (EE) in particular. While the intellectual development enhanced in academically-oriented curricula of academic high schools was speculated to be conducive to the better environmental literacy of their students, it was not justified to recommend increasing academic content in technical high school curricula since it obviously went against the needs and goals of technical/vocational education. Instead, in light of the already packed curricula, consisting not just common basic subjects but also vocational subjects, of technical high schools, the potential for improvement lies in the environmentalization of the curricula of common basic natural science. With the environment set as the entire context in which chemistry, physics, biology, and especially the long lacking earth science are integrated, the materials are environmentalized and would assist technical high school students to learn the science about the environment efficiently and systematically. What is even more critical than the EE-integrating practices per se is how teachers design the EE pedagogies that guide and improve students’ learning processes of being environmentally literate. Well-planned pedagogies approached with the central ideas of systems thinking (Eaton et al., 2019), action orientation, and student-centered in education for sustainability (Rieckmann, 2018) are of practical significance. Teachers are suggested to devise EE-integrating activities more thoughtfully and purposefully so that students’ learning experiences are soundly based on the knowledge about and attitude toward the environment to be learnt and formed. Technical high school teachers might be more required in this regard inasmuch as their integrating EE into instruction failed to be significantly correlated with environmental sensitivity thought their integrating EE into instruction received higher ratings than academic high school teachers’. Unlike the natural science courses of academic high schools, in technical high schools those courses have more flexibility for teachers to play videos and give assignments about environmental topics in that those are not the subjects of university entrance examination for all technical high school graduates. Students, however, need to be guided, informed, and motivated through the well-designed ‘plots’ in those environmental teaching performances of teachers.

Limitations

In consideration of the major purpose of the quantitative analysis of SEM, this study focuses only on what activities the teachers employ in integrating EE into teaching rather than how they design the pedagogies. The teachers whom the students rated for their integrating EE into teaching were unknown for their demographics and teaching-related information, providing limited pedagogical insights into EE integration and no further analysis of teachers’ influences. Interviews with a representative sample of students were lacking, either; no qualitative evidences of how students perceived the EE integration and how their learning was affected by it can be provided to strengthen some of the proposed arguments. These inadequacies give a direction for prospective research to scrutinize the pedagogies and teachers’ roles in sustainability education facing an era of astonishing digital technology (Papenfuss et al., 2019; Sandri, 2022).

Note

1. In literature, both ‘technical (high school) students’ and ‘vocational (high school) students’ are used to refer to the non-academic (high school) students. In this article, ‘technical high school (students)’ is used in the descriptions about the curricula, participants, and results of this study, conducted in Taiwan, in order to be consistent with the official terminology of Taiwan’s educational policies. ‘Technical/vocational (high school) (students)’ is used in the discussion on relevant international studies and the arguments of this study to be applicable to different countries.

Ethics statement

This research is non-interventional and has no foreseeable risk of harm or discomfort to the participants. The funding agency waived the need for ethics review of this research (Project No. MOST 107-2511-S-150-001-MY3).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology under Grant No. MOST 107-2511-S-150-001-MY3.

Notes on contributors

Yu-Long Chao

Yu-Long Chao holds a Ph.D in Public Affairs Management and serves as an assistant professor at the Center for General Education, National Formosa University, Taiwan. With the experiences in teaching earth science in high schools as well as planning and implementing programs in community environmental education/education for sustainable development, his research interests cover environmental education, education for sustainable development, environmental behavior, and environmental policy evaluation.