Assessing the contributions of green building practices to ecological literacy in the elementary classroom: an exploratory study

Ecological literacy in the elementary classroom typically focuses on abiotic and biotic relationships, without including how human activity and ecosystems interrelate. A possible way for students to make these connections is through their school building. To that end, we examined ecological literacy outcomes for 5th-grade students in two classrooms, one classroom was a green classroom and the other was non-green. This study was exploratory with no curricular intervention. Results indicated that students' overall ecological literacy did not grow across the school year; however, students did use their physical classrooms to make human-ecosystem connections. While students were aware of ecological impacts of the two classrooms, they described these impacts differently. Students in the green classroom conveyed a positive human-ecosystem impact relationship while students in the other classroom used more negative tones. Implications suggest that students do use their building to make human-ecosystem connections, but require curriculum to further support their ideas.