SPiEE Publications

The health of the planet is rapidly declining due to human activity, but there is still hope to turn things around.

We have an opportunity to engage people with environmental subjects in ways that inspire them to take interest in environmental issues and take action to protect the natural world.

The SPiEE lab researches different ways of delivering environmental content, working to identify the most effective methods for achieving learning retention, pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, and valuing of the natural environment.

We accomplish this by leveraging environmental storytelling to educate people about challenging environmental issues. Different storytelling methods have included:

• written passages

• photos as interventions

• personalizing content to learners

• incorporating social perspective taking in hypothetical scenarios

We have implemented environmental storytelling techniques in formal K-12 classroom settings as well as informally, with adult populations online. The promising results of previous and current studies have encouraged us to continue our environmental storytelling inquiry.

Through future research, we hope to educate individuals and groups about pressing environmental problems, while simultaneously increasing compassion for others and the natural world.