Research projects conducted by faculty in STEM departments served as the inspiration for a new curriculum of inquiry-based, multiweek laboratory modules in the general chemistry 1 course. The purpose of this curriculum redesign was to improve students' attitudes about chemistry as well as their self-efficacy and skills in performing inquiry activities. Students' ability to plan experiments and interpret data improved throughout the semester, as did their confidence in conducting research-like lab activities. Improved confidence was observed among men and women, science and engineering students, and Caucasian and international students. These outcomes are similar to those found with authentic research-based experiments. The curriculum had less of an impact on students' attitudes about chemistry. A research-inspired curriculum offers many benefits to students without the difficulties of designing actual research-based projects for general chemistry classes.

Since the early days of the field, attitude-behavior (A-B) relationships have received sustained attention in the evaluation and researching of environmental education (EE). This level of interest extends beyond the field's scope though, in part due to a certain reliance on theoretical and empirical assertions which claim that attitudes serve as a strong precursor and/or predictor of behavior. In this paper, we consider reviews of studies on the A-B relationship in EE and other fields that routinely challenge such assumptions, leading to the questioning of corresponding foci and commitments for research, evaluation, practice, and development. With key findings from these studies in hand, we highlight several insights that may be useful for dispelling some of the folklore about what matters in, and what can be argued with, A-B studies, if we are to develop the design, conduct, reporting, and critique of studies and practices of EE reliant on such relationships. KEYWORDS Attitudes and behavior; research design principles; research findings; research claims; quality use of evidence On the one hand, many of the goals of the field frequently cite the need to change both attitudes and behaviors, argued from a range of perspectives and positions on what EE is (really) for. On the other, there are questions about what EE is (actually) able to achieve, through ideal, innovative, current, or past forms of its provision. Put starkly, on both sides, EE is understood as a tool that variously enables others to become something other than they were, are or might become, which in this case, usually means using theory and evidence to argue for deepening or reworking the relationship between particular attitudes and behaviors, and/or adopting or promoting more environmentally responsible ones and patternings than those in existence before. Unsurprisingly, hundreds of assessment, evaluation, and research studies in EE have explored and assessed the status and significance of A-B relationships in theory and practice, including some of the most cited and discussed papers and reviews in this field (

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Though environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) has been a focus of many studies in the field of environmental education, very few scales have been developed to assess children's ERB. In this regard, this article focuses on the development and validation of Children's Responsible Environmental Behavior Scale (CREBS) and also reports the psychometric properties of this scale. The items in the CREBS were developed initially from the responses to four open-ended items by 229 fourth and fifth grade students. This initial form was pilot tested with 673 fourth and fifth graders and then subjected to exploratory factor analysis. Later, the revised version of the scale was administrated to 2412 fifth graders, and those results were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis. CREBS consists of 23 items measured using a seven-point Likert-type scale, which have been organized into four sub-scales: political action (six items, a = .92); eco-management (six items, a = .70); consumer and economic action (five items, a = .70); and Individual and Public Persuasion (six items, a = .80). Study results indicate that CREBS can be used for exploring the extent to which elementary school students in Turkey demonstrate four types of behavior to help prevent and resolve environmental problems and issues.

This chapter recommends an educational role for evaluators in nonformal settings, including the development of program theory and long-term evaluation capacity building.

This study focuses on the design, development, validation, and psychometric properties of the Children"s Environmental Affect Scale (CEAS). The following steps were taken in developing the CEAS. A substantial review of literature on environmental affect and EL helped the researchers identify several scales and questionnaires that, in turn, help establish the item pool. The initial scale derived from this item pool was reviewed by the selected experts (n=17) and then pilot tested with 673 students in 4 th -5 th grades. These pilot data were subjected to Explanatory Factor Analysis (EFA) to reveal the dimensions underlying these pilot items. Later, the revised version of the scale was administrated to 2412 students in 5 th grade as part of a national assessment. The data from this full study were used to validate the factorial structure observed in EFA through using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) procedures in AMOS. The final version of the CEAS employs a Likert-type scale to measure 14 items that reflect three sub-scales; Willingness to take environmental action (5 items, α= .87), Environmental Attitudes (5 items, α= .82) and Environmental Sensitivity (4 items, α= .67).