Environmental health literacy (EHL) has recently been defined as the continuum of environmental health knowledge and awareness, skills and self-efficacy, and community action. In this study, an interdisciplinary team of university scientists, partnering with local organizations, developed and facilitated EHL trainings with special focus on rainwater harvesting and water contamination, in four communities with known environmental health stressors in Arizona, USA. These participatory trainings incorporated participants’ prior environmental health risk knowledge and personal experiences to co-create training content. Mixed methods evaluation was conducted via pre-post participant surveys in all four trainings (n = 53). Participants who did not demonstrate baseline environmental science knowledge pre-training demonstrated significant knowledge increase post-training, and participants who demonstrated low self-efficacy (SE) pre-training demonstrated a significant increase in SE post-training. Participants overall demonstrated a significant increase in specific environmental health skills described post-training. The interdisciplinary facilitator-scientist team also reported multiple benefits, including learning local knowledge that informed further research, and building trust relationships with community members for future collaboration. We propose contextual EHL education as a valuable strategy for increasing EHL in environmental health risk communities, and for building academia-community partnerships for environmental health research and action.

Our study examined the two-dimensional nature of the Two Major Environmental Values model (2-MEV) in comparison with the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale’s unidimensional construct. The latter places respondents on a continuum from a bio-centric to anthropocentric worldview, where an individual can either have a pro-environmental (bio-centric) or an anti-environmental (anthropocentric) perspective, but not both. On the other hand, the 2-MEV treats biocentrism (Preservation, PRE) and anthropocentrism (Utilization, UTL) as two separate and not necessarily related components. The model allows us to place individuals into one of four quadrants, rather than on either end of a continuum, allowing an individual to have a bio-centric and an anthropocentric worldview at the same time. Students’ environmental perceptions were measured using the NEP and 2-MEV questionnaires. As predicted, high preservation/low utilization scorers preferred a biocentric worldview on the NEP; similarly, low preservation/high utilization scorers preferred an anthropocentric worldview on the NEP. However, the NEP failed to differentiate between the high preservation/high utilization and low preservation/low utilizations scorers. Both of these groups of students, while on different quadrants on the 2-MEV, cluster together in the middle of the unidimensional NEP. Evidence suggests that the NEP may not fully explore all dimensions of environmental perceptions.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Astronomy Education Research.] We report on a study of almost 13 000 undergraduate students enrolled in introductory astronomy courses at the University of Arizona. From 1989 to 2016, students completed a basic science knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes survey. From 2014 to 2016, a subset of the sample completed an additional survey that probed their overall interest in science and astronomy, where they reported getting information about science, and their judgment of those sources. Our sample of mostly nonscience major students outperformed the general public on basic science knowledge questions during the time of the study. Additionally, there was very little change over the range of time of the study in students’ basic science knowledge whose scores averaged around 79% correct over the 27 years. Students’ self-reported demographic information and beliefs and attitudes in science and technology accounted for only 11% of the variance in their science knowledge scores and there was no systematic pattern between where students reported getting their information about science and their basic science knowledge. Despite this, there was a relationship between how students rated the reliability of sources and their science knowledge. Our findings support that introductory astronomy courses are opportunities to improve students’ attitudes towards science and ability to evaluate scientific information. Although this group of students’ basic science knowledge and attitudes remained relatively unchanged over 27 years there was a measurable relationship between students’ beliefs and attitudes, interest, science knowledge, and information literacy.

The nature of science is a prevalent theme across United States national science education standards and frameworks as well as other documents that guide formal and informal science education reform. To support teachers in engaging their students in authentic scientific practices and reformed teaching strategies, research experiences for teachers offered in national laboratories, university research centers, and national field-sites promise opportunities to help teachers update their current understanding of STEM fields and experience firsthand how scientific research is conducted with the end goal of supporting more inquiry-based teaching approaches in their classrooms. This qualitative interpretive study used an adapted Views of Nature of Science and Views on Scientific Inquiry surveys and protocols to investigate changes in 43 practicing teachers understandings about the nature of science and scientific inquiry as a result of participation in one of three summer science research programs. Each program provided participants with research experiences alongside professional researchers as well as activities intended to increase participants abilities to provide inquiry-based science learning activities for their students. Data were collected using open-ended surveys pre-program, post-program and long-term follow-up surveys, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, along with researchers observations and field-notes. Participation in these programs led to small, measurable enhancements in teachers understandings of scientific inquiry and the nature of science. Teachers prior experience with research was found to have the strongest relationship to their knowledge of the nature of science and scientific inquiry. The data in this study provides evidence that research experiences can provide valuable experiences to support teachers improved knowledge of how science is conducted.