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Environmental education research often emphasizes the importance of community context, but conceptualization and measurement of environmental literacy has mostly occurred at the individual level, often focusing on individual behaviors. The environmental problems facing the world today require collective action--communities coming together to address large-scale problems. Accordingly, understanding and encouraging collective action requires a shift in focus from individual to community-level environmental literacy (CLEL). Despite its importance, CLEL has been left largely undefined and unmentioned in environmental education literature. To understand the field's current conceptualizations and measurement strategies around CLEL, the authors held a convening of 24 researchers to discuss the topic. Here, we report the findings of this convening and present a series of tensions that emerged in conceptualizing and measuring CLEL. We see this area of research as rich with opportunity for innovation and offer considerations for researchers engaging in this work.

Although gender gaps associated with K-12 science achievement have narrowed significantly, gaps in science engagement and efficacy in childhood likely explain why women remain underrepresented in science careers. Early intervention programs may address root causes of gender gaps in science careers. Outdoor science education (OSE) is one understudied but promising strategy, that provides ample opportunity for reform-based instructional practices that may benefit girls, including girls of colour. Using a pre-post, treatment-control quasi-experimental design, we evaluated how an OSE program differentially impacted the science grades, science knowledge, and science self-efficacy of fifth grade girls versus boys (n = 640). We found the OSE treatment increased knowledge and maintained science grades for girls while grades fell for girls in the control group. We also found that science self-efficacy decreased for both boys and girls in the treatment group. We did not detect direct or interaction effects of race on science outcomes. Research suggests OSE may help students associate science learning with challenge, which may help explain the decrease in self-efficacy coupled with the increase in achievement for girls. We suggest future research continue to investigate how OSE can benefit all students, including those who may become disengaged with learning in traditional classroom settings.

The pressing nature of climate change and its associated impacts requires a climate literate citizenry. Climate change education in K-12 settings may provide a unique opportunity to make inroads towards climate literacy. However, many K-12 teachers avoid teaching climate change because they are uncomfortable with the subject or do not see its relevance to their curriculum. Removing barriers to climate change professional development (CCPD) for teachers may help increase confidence in teaching about climate change. To understand the perceived barriers to participating in CCPD, a survey was conducted with 54 middle school science teachers who did not respond to a previous invitation to participate in a CCPD program. The most significant barrier was time to participate. The participants were also asked to rate their confidence about whether climate change is happening. The results were compared between teachers who were confident climate change was happening and those who were not to examine whether these beliefs influenced teachers' perceptions of barriers. Those who were confident climate change was happening were less likely to perceive administrative support, interest in the workshop, and knowledge of climate change content as barriers. However, both groups of teachers reported that time was the primary barrier rather than the topic. This suggests that, rather than developing unique strategies, existing best practices in teacher professional development can be used to support CCPD opportunities. Additional recommendations include thinking creatively about how to create time for teachers to attend and making the professional development directly relevant to teacher's local contexts.

Although elementary school may be a prime stage for building environmental literacy, elementary school teachers face significant barriers to including it in their instruction. Several studies have identified teachers' limited ecological science content knowledge and heavy emphasis on state standards and testing as common constraints to environmental literacy instruction. However, few of these studies have measured actual (versus perceived) ecological knowledge or focused on how teachers are successful in including environmental literacy instruction despite constraints of standards and testing. The present exploratory study surveyed 627 randomly selected elementary school teachers in North Carolina to begin addressing this gap. We found ecological knowledge levels were high (89.9% average score). Lack of instructional time was the most oft-listed barrier to environmental literacy instruction (76.7%), followed by lack of resources (53.4%), whereas lack of content knowledge was rarely mentioned (21.6%). Respondents identified access to environmental literacy-related lesson plans, activities that integrate children's literature, and access to and training in published environmental education curricula as the resources needed to be more successful in inclusion of environmental literacy concepts in the elementary school classroom.

Environmental education (EE) practitioners struggle to consistently and rigorously evaluate their programs, particularly when little time is available for evaluation. Since environmental literacy (EL) is the goal of environmental education, a very short EL instrument -- amenable to use when longer tests are not practical for practitioners -- would address an important EE need. We describe the development and validation of the Environmental Literacy Instrument for Adolescents (ELI-A) that is short enough for use in field applications (i.e. 5-15 min) and measures four domains of environmental literacy (ecological knowledge, hope, cognitive skills, behaviour). Factor analysis, item response theory, and concurrent validity tests were used in the validation process. Structural equation modelling supported the fit between the ELI-A and prevailing EL frameworks. The results support a valid and reliable instrument that is short enough for practical use but comprehensive in measuring four primary components of EL. This instrument could help fulfil the call to evaluate EE programming in both formal and informal settings.

Understanding adolescent climate change concern (CCC) may be a key strategy for building a citizenry that supports climate change action, as adolescents are likely less influenced by ideological polarization than adults. Prior research shows that climate education may build concern among adolescents, but other factors such as peer pressure may also be important. We investigated the relationships between CCC, acceptance of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), perceived level of acceptance among friends and family, and frequency of discussion of the issue among 426 middle school students in North Carolina, USA, and developed a novel instrument to measure each of these constructs. Acceptance of AGW had the strongest association with CCC. Frequency of discussion with friends and family was the second strongest predictor. Perceived level of acceptance among family and friends was the third strongest predictor. Model selection results suggest family had more influence than friends in this study. Girls perceived climate change as a higher risk than boys. In addition to building acceptance of AGW, leveraging discussions with peers and especially family may help build concern for climate change among future generations.

Although research suggests that family dynamics likely play a role in shaping children's behaviors, few studies focus on environmental behaviors, and none to our knowledge investigate how parents shape climate change mitigation behaviors among their children. We begin to fill this gap through a quantitative case study using matched household-level survey data from 182 coastal North Carolina families (n = 241 parents aged 29-77; n = 182 students aged 11-14) associated with 15 middle school science teachers. Family climate change discussions, parent behaviors, and children's climate change concern levels predicted the degree to which children will participate in individual-level climate mitigation behaviors. These results provide evidence that promoting climate-related conversations within households may promote climate action even when parents are apathetic about climate change. Similarly, parental behaviors, but not their concern levels, were important predictors of adolescent behaviors. This study highlights novel ways that family dynamics may promote climate change mitigating behaviors and a new pathway to promoting climate mitigation at familial, and ultimately, societal levels.

This article explores the false consensus effect (FCE) in private landowner perceptions of hunting. The decisions made by private landowners regarding hunting on their properties can have a significant impact on landscape-level conservation strategies. The study conducted a mail survey of non-industrial landowners in North Carolina to examine their perceptions of hunting on neighboring properties. The results showed that both hunting and non-hunting landowners had inaccurate perceptions of the prevalence of hunting in their communities. These findings have implications for conservation efforts and suggest the need for improved communication and education regarding hunting among landowners. [Extracted from the article]

Climate communication research suggests strategic message framing may help build public consensus on climate change causes, risks and solutions. However, few have investigated how framing applies to adolescents. Similarly, little research has focused on agricultural audiences, who are among the most vulnerable to and least accepting of climate change. Among 950 high school agriculture students in North Carolina, we found agriculture and environment framing of climate change, but not community and health frames, elicited feelings of worry, and these together with community frames elicited hope. Further, students feeling more worry were more supportive of individual and collective action. Those accepting climate change and females had more emotive responses and higher support for all action measures, and acceptance of human causes predicted more worry and support for collective action. We find these results encouraging as agriculture teachers likely employ agriculture and environment frames when following best teaching practices.