Live green, think green: sustainable school architecture and children's environmental attitudes and behaviors

This study aimed to determine whether the environmental attitudes and behaviors of children attending primary schools designed or adapted for sustainability are different from those of children attending conventional schools. An NEP (Children@school) scale was developed to measure children's environmental attitudes and a GEB (Children@school) scale was developed to measure children's environmental behaviors. Data collected from children aged between 10 and 12 years were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The findings indicate that children attending primary schools designed to engage them with sustainable design had significantly more pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Thus, it is suggested that pedagogies for environmental education should be developed that require children to directly engage when learning with sustainable design features such as solar panels, the use of recycled water, natural daylighting, gardens and outdoor classrooms.