Promoting Environmental Stewardship through Project Based Learning (PBL)

Environmental stewardship is living responsibly as a caretaker of the environment for the benefit of present and future generations and is quickly becoming one of the most pressing public priorities for communities today. As stewards, we are personally responsible for the care and preservation of our fellow communities: human, plant or animal. It is grounded in an understanding of the importance of environmental quality and natural resources to the human race and the effects of human actions on the environment. Thus, it is important to provide relevant educational experiences that involve students and promote an understanding of their responsibility to care for the world and its resources. This paper presents the findings from a study conducted to investigate the effect of project-based learning on students’ attitudes and behaviors towards the environment. A total of 173 pre-service teachers enrolled in a chemistry teaching methods course participated in this study. The pre-service teachers were in their third year of the teacher education program. Data were collected through questionnaires containing Likert-type items designed to assess the degree of environmental concern and readiness in pro-environmental behaviours. As part of the project, they were required to identify topics in the chemistry syllabus that are deemed relevant and suitable to teaching climate change and to design a Web-Quest lesson on global climate change. The topic was chosen as it is one of the growing threats to society caused by human activities and the complexity of the topic offers an opportunity to engage students in higher order thinking skills in addition to making learning relevant. For, in the end, as noted by one Senegalese ecologist, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, we will understand only what we have been taught. Results indicated that adopting the PBL could enhance students’ attitudes and behaviours towards environment