Evaluating for long‐term impact of an environmental education program at the Kalinzu Forest Reserve, Uganda

Abstract

Although the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of conservation education programs cannot be underestimated, few evaluations of these programs and their resulting impact on the environment have been conducted. A partnership between scientists, educators, and local administrators on an evaluation program has been developed to evaluate a model of education program evaluation that includes short- and long-term evaluation of (1) knowledge and attitude change, (2) behavior change, and (3) positive biological impact. Previous work has shown short-term knowledge retention from this education program. In the current study follow-up evaluations were collected from students at 14 schools outside the Kalinzu Forest Reserve, Uganda. By comparing performance 30 days, 1 year and 2 years after the initial program we demonstrate that knowledge gain from this program is not transient. However, although knowledge is a prerequisite for appropriate conservation actions it does not guarantee appropriate behaviors will be performed. Anecdotal evidence of behavior change and positive biological impact is discussed within the context of the challenges with changing behavior and evaluating the true biological impacts of those behaviors. Ultimately, conservation professionals will need to partner with educators and social scientists to effectively measure the impact of conservation education and human-based conservation programs on primate populations and their habitat.

Conservation Messages in Speech Bubbles–Evaluation of an Environmental Education Comic Distributed in Elementary Schools in Madagascar

“…It should be noted that in the aforementioned categories, learning outcomes of the group using the additional materials were clearly better than those of students using only the comic book so peer-to-peer learning in smaller groups had a positive effect not only on overall knowledge acquisition, but also on the acquisition of more complex, interconnected and abstract forms of knowledge. The study, therefore, adds to the so-far-small body of empirical evaluation studies carried out under the challenging conditions of developing countries compared to evaluation studies in Western countries [50,52,55,66,68]. Providing environmental education for students proves to have a measurable and lasting positive effects [85].…”

“…Kuhar et al [68] also found evidence for long-term knowledge retention of their environmental education program in Uganda. They observed some trends towards a continued performance increase over time they attributed to follow-up instructions in class, older students transferring knowledge to siblings, friends and family and a sort of institutional learning of schools and teachers that were involved in EE programs for many years.…”

“…Only 21 answers (1.2%) out of 1670 answers were concerned with positive actions that could be taken to improve the environment or help conservation of habitats or species. In Uganda, Kuhar et al [68] equally found bare prohibitive rules to dominate when students were asked to name possible solutions for environmental problems. Rules, independent of positive or negative phrasing, that lack any explanation for the expected behaviour and local meaningfulness seem unlikely to be obeyed and translated into behaviour.…”

“…Traditionally, EE is insufficiently addressed during teacher training and not, or only marginally, included in the current Malagasy school curriculum, with the result that teachers frequently feel uncomfortable teaching this subject [6,58]. This has been reported from other education research in African developing countries as well [68]. Thus, it is necessary to strengthen teacher's environmental knowledge and required teaching skills and self-efficacy in regard to education materials.…”

“…Given the amount of effort invested in environmental education in developing countries, with few exceptions, there is a general lack of quality empirical studies on the outcomes and effectiveness of environmental education in general [62][63][64], the more so for Africa [65][66][67][68][69][70][71] and especially, Madagascar [6,23,58,72,73]. This may be a side effect of the current situation that almost all environmental education is provided by NGOs and undertaken by practitioners not trained in evaluation techniques, their donors normally financing only practical educational work and not time-consuming and costly scientific evaluation [74].…”