Office of Environmental Education
All of North Carolina's EE Resources in One Place!
Environmental Education Research & Data

Read the latest articles and research about the benefits of environmental education!

eeResearch News

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eeResearch Organizations

National Environmental Education Foundation
The National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) is a non-profit organization that advances environmental education through learning-oriented solutions to environmental problems.

Natural Learning Initiative
The NLI is a Research and Design Assistance Program of the College of Design at North Carolina State University. Its mission is to help communities create stimulating places for play, learning, and environmental education.

Landscape and Human Health Laboratory
The LHHL at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a multidisciplinary research laboratory dedicated to studying the connection between greenery and human health.

The Children & Nature Network "Research & Studies"
C&NN has set out to compile a premier set of research studies to help us all understand the connection between nature and the healthy development of children.  

eeResearch Studies

Direct links to notable peer-reviewed research. See eeResearch News above for current studies.

Place-Based Education Evaluation Collablorative - Quantifying a Relationship Between Place-based Learning and Environmental Quality
EPA-funded study shows that environmental education programs can measurably improve environmental quality.

Natural Learning Initiative Research and Projects

Significant Life Experiences: A New Research Area in Environmental Education Thomas Tanner (1980)
This often-cited study provides evidence that those in conservation-related careers had positive, frequent experiences in nature. Tanner suggests that effective EE that gets children outside is essential to a sustainable future.

Closing the Achievement Gap: Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning Gerald A. Lieberman and Linda L. Hoody, State Education and Environment Roundtable

Childhood Outdoors: Toward a Social Ecology of the Landscape. Robin Moore and Donald Young (1978).

Coping with ADD: The surprising connection to green play settings.Faber Taylor, A., Kuo, F.E., & Sullivan, W.C. (2001) Environment and Behavior, 33(1), 54-77. (Scroll down to the bottom for access to the paper--download is free but they do ask that you tell them your organization and purpose for downloading.)

Is love of nature in the US becoming love of electronic media? 16-year
downtrend in national park visits explained by watching movies,
playing video games, internet use, and oil prices Oliver R.W. Pergamsa, Patricia A. Zaradicbn (2006) More about their work and research since the study at videophilia.org.

Why Conservationists Should Heed Pokémon Balmford, Clegg, Coulson and Taylor (2002)
Survey of UK School Children revealed they could identify more "species" of Pokémon charaters than species of native UK wildlife.

 

Several studies have shown that environmental education and outdoor experiences can improve student learning and behavior and help students with learning disabilities. Time spent outdoors benefits adults in similar ways. This page provides information and peer-reviewed studies on these topics for use in articles, grant-writing or other research.

Contact the Office of Environmental Education for more information or assistance.

Cite Your Sources...

Writing an article, grant or position paper on environmental education or the benefits of outdoor experiences? There's a wealth of information out there to pull from, but citing peer-reviewed research backs up your statements and is essential to making a good argument.

To find research and data you can use, see the eeResearch Studies block below, and keep a check on or subscribe to eeResearch News. Also, here are two sources of ready-to-use statistics:

The Children and Nature Network has published Children’s Nature Deficit:
What We Know – and Don’t Know (compiled by by Cheryl Charles, Ph.D., and Richard Louv) which provides statistics and references to numerous recent studies and research.

In addition, the National Trails Training Partnership has this helpful page: Research-Based Indicators of Nature Deficit

NTT has combed the studies on the Children & Nature Network research pages and lists brief quotes from several cited sources. You can find the referenced studies on the C&NN Annotated Bibliography page.
Kids around pond.

 
 


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