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Sustainability Education Through Green Facades: Effects of a Short-Term Intervention on Environmental Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Teaching can contribute substantially to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by addressing traditional curriculum-relevant topics in new contexts related to sustainability. A suitable context is green facades, which support several SDGs at once. The aim of sustainability education should be to foster all components of the KAP triad, i.e., promoting environmental knowledge (K) and attitude (A), but also enabling appropriate practices (P). This study analyzes the effect of a short-term extracurricular intervention (4 hours) on green facades on the KAP triad. Pre-, post- and follow-up tests were conducted with n = 71 students aged M = 14.20 (SD = 1.33). Knowledge and attitude development were analyzed using ANOVA. Regression analyses were calculated to assess the relations of knowledge and attitude with practices. The results show that even a short-term intervention can lead to longer-term effects regarding knowledge growth but will only bring about short-term changes in attitude. Attitude items with the strongest change were not related to students’ direct or immediate activities. In addition, environmental knowledge and attitude appear to support different kinds of activities. Therefore, it seems important that didactic interventions focus on knowledge and attitude to enable students to engage in pro-environmental behaviors.

Source: Sustainability

DOI: 10.3390/su17062609

Authors: Annalisa Pacini, Marie Brüggemann, Maren Flottmann, Jörg Großschedl, Kirsten Schlüter

Institutions: University of Cologne, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg

Language: English

Topic: Environmental Education and Sustainability

Subfield: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Quality education, Climate action

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,896