Addressing environmental knowledge and environmental attitude in undergraduate students through scientific argumentation.

This study was aimed at connecting undergraduate students to nature and later involving them in scientific argumentation as an effort to improve environmental education. The objective was to investigate the effect of this involvement in addressing students' environmental knowledge (EK) and environmental attitude (EA). Two pre-existing sections of Bio-sciences students were taken as study sample, with one section randomly assigned to an experimental (N = 42) and the other to a control group (N = 32). The qualitative part included observation of environmental problems and delivering of presentation using scientific argumentation in the experimental group. The quantitative approach covered the measurement of environmental knowledge and environmental attitude through two tests in both the groups. The findings revealed significant positive correlation between environmental knowledge and environmental attitude (r = 0.785, p <.01) in the experimental group. This group also performed better on environmental knowledge and attitude tests than the control group. It can be concluded that connecting students with nature and then involvement in scientific argumentation helped in improving students' environmental knowledge and attitude. • Connecting students with nature impact the environmental attitude. • Engaging students in scientific argumentation improves environmental knowledge. • A positive correlation exists between environmental knowledge and attitude. • Improvement in Environmental knowledge and environmental attitude improves ecological behavior. • Author contribution in the Research Paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]