2016 Volume 12 Issue 4 Pages 273-284
Objective. This paper examines the effects of an environmental education program based on Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) for two cohorts of students at an elementary school. The program included lessons on rainwater harvesting, green wall, and natural energy. The goals of the environmental education were to teach students the abilities of critical thinking and projecting the future to promote their pro-environmental behavior. As the effect measurement, a questionnaire study on the students’ critical thinking ability and career decision skills was conducted for both the implementation group and the control group at follow-up, two years after the program implementation was complete. Follow-up studies were conducted for students in three cohorts (Cohorts 0 to 2), who were in middle school at the time.
Results and Discussion. The environmental education program was implemented in 2010 for the students in Cohort 1, when a rainwater harvesting system was installed at the elementary school. The students in Cohort 1 received lessons on rainwater over 2 years, when they were in 4th and 5th grade. In 5th grade, a lesson based on LCT implemented. The students in Cohort 2 received a lesson based on LCT about green wall or rainwater harvesting in one of two classes in 5th grade, starting in 2012, and a lesson on natural energy in 6th grade. The lessons based on LCT included explanations about the idea of LCT before information on the amount of CO2 discharged by using the rainwater harvesting system to cultivate the green wall. Both the implementation and the control group in Cohort 0 had no previous experience in an environmental education program. The results of the follow-up study showed that Cohort 1 was the only cohort in which the implementation group had significantly higher scores of critical thinking ability and career decision skills in comparison to the control group. The students in Cohort 1 had received two lessons on the same subject, rainwater harvesting, over 2 years.
Conclusions. Two conclusions can be drawn from these findings. First, the students acquired critical thinking ability and career decision skills through learning and understanding LCT. Second, it is important to teach the same subject over 2 years for the environmental education program based on LCT to be effective.
