Investigation of environmental education in Illinois public elementary schools

Environmental education is an integral component of elementary school curricula to help children develop adequate environmental knowledge and adopt positive attitudes and behaviors to become environmentally conscious individuals. Illinois law reflects the importance of environmental education; however, it is not effectively addressed in the Illinois Learning Standards. The amount and extent of environmental education actually implemented in Illinois elementary classrooms was unknown. Surveys concerning the amount of environmental education taught, the manner in which it was taught, and reasons for its inclusion or exclusion in the curriculum were sent to 1,000 stratified randomly selected public elementary school teachers in Illinois. The response rate was 28.4%, with 256 returned surveys useable for analysis. Over 91% of the respondents (n = 234) said that they taught about the environment at least once during the 2005 to 2006 school year, but the majority of Illinois elementary students may have only been exposed to 22 to 100 minutes during that year. Only 37 of the teachers taught about the environment in an interdisciplinary manner, which is the preferred method. Of the teachers that included environmental education, 97 said they did so because of personal interest in the environment; 9 that excluded it said the reason was because of a lack of class time. These findings can be used to incorporate environmental education effectively into the Illinois Learning Standards and to understand why teachers may include or omit environmental education in the classroom.