Evaluation of the Environmental Education Program at the New Jersey School of Conservation

The New Jersey State School of Conservation serves elementary and middle-school students in New Jersey Schools.  The four curricular areas taught include environmental sciences, humanities, outdoor pursuits and social sciences.  The external evaluation of this program included quantitative and qualitative components aimed at examining the extent to which the program successfully impacted affective, cognitive and conative outcomes among student participants.  Pretests and posttests around student visits were administered using the Children’s Attitudes Towards the Environment Scale (CATES) to measure changes in students’ attitudes towards the environment.  The evaluation instrument had been validated in previous research studies.  In addition to analyzing the pretests and posttests, the evaluators conducted a qualitative examination of the match between NJSOC lesson plans and program mission objectives.