School experiences enhancing grade nine students’ sustainable actions

The aim of the study is to investigate how grade nine students’ sustainability-related school experiences and psycho-social factors influence their ecology-related sustainable actions. A large-scale survey was carried out in Finland. A questionnaire was developed to study students’ sustainable school experiences, values, personal norms, self-efficacy belief as well as their sustainable intentions and actions out-side school. Applying the theory of planned behaviour a hypothetical model on the relationship of the studied factors was tested using a survey and a sample of 2,361 grade nine students. The hypothetical model was studied using structural equation modelling (SEM). Excellent model fit showed that in-school agency and prosocial experiences enhance students’ psycho-social factors, especially pro-environmental values and self-efficacy for sustainable actions. Through intentions out-of-school ecology-related sustainable and vicarious actions were enhanced by the psycho-social constructs, especially by the value and self-efficacy constructs in the model. The model suggest that school education for sustainable development should not provide only ecological sustainability-related experiences, but connect prosocial and agency experiences with approaches in which self-efficacy development and pro-environmental values are emphasized.