Tag Archives: Crouch

Research Example #6 (Environmental Education and Politics)

Crouch, R., & Abbot, D. S. (2009). Is Green Education Blue or Red? State-Level Environmental Education Program Development Through the Lens of Red- and Blue-State Politics. Journal Of Environmental Education, 40(3), 52-62.

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Environmental Education (EE) programs are greatly controversial because, as seen when looking at political views and the environment, not everyone believes that the same things are happening with the environment. Because of this, the question is whether to let schools teach about environmental issues. The purpose of this research article by Crouch and Abbot is to see whether there is a difference in state-level Environmental Education program activity in Republican and Democratic states.

The article starts with the idea that liberal/Democratic views are the major environmental views and conservative/Republican views are the non-environmental views. In order to see what the effect is on the Environmental Education programs in Democratic schools as opposed to Republican schools, Crouch and Abbot took survey results from 1995 that evaluated certain points that comprehensive Environmental Education programs should have.

The survey was conducted by another group of researchers who had already identified the components that a successful Environmental Education program should have and did a survey to see what schools were following it. They got results from all 50 states, with a total of 173 EE leaders in different areas around the United States. The survey was designed to figure out what states had comprehensive Environmental Education programs or if they were being developed.

In order to do this research, Crouch and Abbot took the results of the Environmental Education survey that showed how each state was doing, and compared them to the state’s past election history of being Democratic or Republican. The researchers did correlation tests to see if there was any pattern here.

The results were that political affiliation did not seem to effect whether a state had a good or bad Environmental  Education program. They did point out that their probability was not as good as they would wish. I also have the complaint that taking this data at the state level seems a little large, and that coupled with the probability makes this data a little less reliable than I would like to use as a reference.