Green Awareness in Action of Saving Energy in School Life: Modeling Environmental Literacy in Theory and Practice Experience

Abstract

Digitization has already become an important element of environmental education to support “green” educational initiatives. The 3-year project GAIA (Green Awareness In Action) as a European educational initiative piloted IoT (Internet of Things) devices to improve sustainability approaches within classrooms. Its main goal was to enhance classrooms’ CO2 balance without impacting school life quality. The competence area of knowledge discovery was specifically promoted (e.g., observation, comparison, and experimentation and using different work methods) to enable explorative learning situations in classrooms. Throughout the 10-week intervention, specific after school activities provided students with background information to decrease their in-class carbon footprint. The target group were sixth graders, of which the authors randomly selected participants of one participating school in Greece (N = 154, M = 11.7, SD ± 0.5, 50.0% = females). Altogether, the authors assessed cognitive learning and monitored the attitude and behavioral measures as well as science motivation. The interrelation between all these variables indicated an acceptable model fit via chi-square χ2 = 145.391, df = 97 (p = 0.02). CFI (0.802), RMSEA (0.064, p = 0.144), and SRMR (0.086) using a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed correlations between both latent variables pro-environmental behavior and science motivation (ξ = 0.20, p = 0.03). The latter also shows a linear relationship to the latent value variable of preservation (ξ = 0.40, p = 0.002). Preservation contains the variables knowledge (ξ = 0.45, p = 0.001) and pro-environmental behavior (ξ = 0.28, p = 0.02). The variable utilization in contrast showed a negative correlation to knowledge (ξ = −0.46, p = 0.04). Modeling environmental literacy proves to be a promising tool of educational initiatives, contributing to assessments by visualizing the interaction of education, digital equipment, and effectiveness of such projects. In consequence, the classroom intervention GAIA successfully implemented the handling of classroom energy consumption by interacting with the monitored constructs of our study. Additionally, the authors will refer exemplarily to some other important and national educational examples regarding their effectiveness in this context. The project GAIA made an important contribution to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), for instance, by boosting sustainable goals such as affordable and clean energy, sustainable cities and communities, and climate action.