Evaluating Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences: An exploration into the effects on participating students’ environmental stewardship characteristics and the relationships between these predictors of environmentally responsible behavior

• We evaluated a grant program funding watershed education.
• We assessed changes in students’ environmental stewardship characteristics and to what extent these were associated with specific instructional practices.
• Watershed education can increase students’ environmental stewardship characteristics and therefore, their environmentally responsible behaviors.
• Students are more likely to increase in environmental stewardship characteristics if they are engaged in specific science inquiry steps and participate in more or certain types of environmental actions.
• Environmental stewardship characteristics predict intention to act and interact in complex ways.

This study evaluated Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences (MWEEs) funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chesapeake Bay Watershed Education and Training (B-WET) grant program. It also empirically explores the relationships between predictors of environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) in the Hines, Hungerford, and Tomera (1986/1987) and Hungerford and Volk (1990) behavior models. Multilevel analyses identified associations between eight environmental stewardship characteristics, as well as between these outcomes and (1) participation in MWEEs (sample: 258 students in 20 treatment classes, 193 students in 12 comparison classes matched by grade) and (2) specific MWEE instructional practices (sample: 434 students in 29 treatment classes). Students who participated in MWEEs scored significantly higher in five of eight characteristics (i.e., knowledge of ecology, issues, and actions, individual locus of control, intention to act) than those in the comparison group. Students who were engaged in the science inquiry steps of analyzing data or reflection and those who participated in more of certain types of environmental actions also scored significantly higher in a greater number of environmental stewardship characteristics than students who did not have these experiences. Results suggest that MWEEs are likely to increase ERBs but are not reaching their full potential. Tests of the relationships between the variables in Hines et al. (1986/1987) and Hungerford and Volk (1990) models confirm that they predict a high amount of variance in intention to act and suggest that environmental stewardship characteristics are likely to interact in complex ways.