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2000 P Street NW Suite 540 Washington DC 20036-6921 Tel: (202) 419-0412 Fax: (202) 419-0415 www.naaee.org
August 12, 2008
Dear Participating Sixth and Eighth Grade Teachers:
Please accept this letter as an introduction into the National Environmental Literacy Assessment Research (NELA) project. Your receipt of this letter means two things: (1st) your School Principal has accepted an invitation from GfK Roper for your school to serve as one of fifty middle schools across the United States to participate in this important project; and (2nd) you have been asked by your School Principal to serve as the teacher contact for one of the participating 6th or 8th grade classes in your school.
Several agencies, organizations, and individuals have been working diligently toward the goal of an environmental literate population without the benefit of being able to compare their efforts to a benchmark; the NELA project was designed to help develop this benchmark for the middle grades. With this goal in mind, several people have spent the last year preparing for this data collection phase of the NELA project. We hope that our preplanning will make the data collection progress as smooth and as convenient as possible for you.
If it has not happened already, a data collector (a research assistant) from your region of the country will contact your School Principal to plan for the administration of the survey. The data collector will also make sure that all forms are signed, collected, and sent to Dr. Ron Meyers. The packets that have been sent to your Principal received contain all of the required forms. The packets and forms of particular relevance to you are as follows.
2. Packet I: School Information This Packet included:
• Active or Passive Parental Consent Forms: The form that you should plan to use is the one that your School Principal designates as meeting your school district’s policy regarding parental consent procedures. If this has not happened already, your School Principal of her/his designee will soon ask you to distribute this form to all parents and guardians of 6th or 8th grade students in the participating class.
3. Packet II: Program and Teacher Information Packet
A copy of this packet is to be distributed to and completed by each participating 6th and 8th grade teacher
• Teacher Consent Form and Teacher Information Form.
• The Program Information Form is to be completed by the lead, environmental, or science teacher that works with each participating classroom. We need the form completed for each class taking the MSELS. In other words, teachers should neither summarize information for both 6th grade classes or both 8th grade classes on one form, nor should 6th and 8th grade teachers summarize responses for both grade levels on one form. We recognize this is duplicative but need the data collected this way so we can properly do our data analysis.
It is very important to this project that all of these forms be completed as described. The data collector for your school will discuss with your School Principal and with you and your fellow teachers the arrangements to be made for the students to take the survey, as well as arrangement for any students whose parents or guardians do not give permission for them to participate.
On behalf of the Steering Committee for the NELA project, I would like to thank you for your participation and cooperation in this most important study. If you have any questions concerning the NELA project, please feel free to contact me at
<[email protected]>. If you have questions concerning the data collection that cannot be answered by your regional data collector, please feel free to contact Dr. Ron Meyers at <[email protected]>.
My Sincere Thank You, William C. McBeth, Ph.D., NELA Project Coordinator
Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Platteville
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TEACHER CONSENT FORM
The National Environmental Literacy Assessment Project: Year 1 National Survey
A class in which you teach was selected to participate in a national survey of environmental literacy among 6th and 8th grade students in public and private schools across the U.S. This survey is part of the “National Environmental Literacy Assessment Project," a research project funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE). The information below addresses the consent requirements of this study.
Please read through this information carefully.
The purpose of this survey is to explore the level of environmental literacy among 6th and 8th grade students in public and private schools across the U.S. The survey sample was developed by GfK Roper. Using census data, they selected 50 counties from across the country, and then randomly selected one public or private school in each county that had both 6th and 8th grade classes. Then, they asked the Principal if that school could participate in this survey.
If the Principal agreed, they randomly selected 6th and 8th grade classes to participate. Yours is one of those classes.
The two forms you are asked to complete are: (1) a Program Information Form, which has been designed to gather information about any environmental program in which this class participates, as well as about common classroom practices; and (2) a Teacher Information Form, which has been designed to
gather information about the lead, environmental, or science teacher for this class of students. We estimate that these forms will take approximately 45 minutes to complete.
While each form asks for the teacher’s name, this is done solely to (a) identify the teacher who completed a form should there be any need for follow-up; and (b) permit the program and teacher information to linked to the completed surveys for that class during data entry and analysis. Please note that each school, class, and teacher will be assigned an ID number during data entry. Thus, the only members of the project team who will ever know your name are those involved in data entry. No other member of this team will know your name or be able to connect your responses to you. Beyond this, none of your responses will ever be singled out in reports or presentations of the results of this survey.
It is hoped that this survey will result in an improved understanding of environmental literacy in the middle grades across the U.S. A report of this survey will be provided to EPA, NOAA, and NAAEE, and results will be presented at conferences and in research journals. Upon request, the project team will forward a summary of survey results to your school. Beyond this, survey results may be used in Years 2-6 of this project, as well as to guide improvements to environmental education programs for middle grades.
If you agree to participate, the only thing that you are asked to do is complete these two forms as completely and accurately as possible, and then submit them to your School Principal or to the data collector on the day this survey is administered to your class.
If you do not wish to participate in this survey, please discuss this with your School Principal.
Finally, you may withdraw from participation at any time and without penalty. Further you have a right to ask questions about this survey at any time. To do so, you may contact Dr. Ron Meyers, Assessment Coordinator, University of Arkansas: (501) 683-5231, or <[email protected]> or Dr. Bill McBeth, Project Director, University of Wisconsin - Platteville: (608) 342-1284 or <[email protected]>. In addition, you may contact Florida Institute of Technology’s Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects through its staff office at (321) 674-8120.
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TEACHER INTRODUCTION OF THE DATA COLLECTOR TO CLASS
Today we’ll be participating in a survey. I’d like you to give your full attention to the person who’ll be handing out questionnaires. This is Mr./Ms. _______________, who will be working with us today.
When you’re completing the questions, it’s important that you give answers that show how you feel, what you think or what you do. All answers will be kept strictly confidential.
You’re not going to put your name on the questionnaire so nobody, not even I, will know what answers you gave. When finished, you will put your questionnaire, with no name on it, into a box where it will be mixed together with all of the other questionnaires. There are no right or wrong answers to the questions, so please be completely honest when filling out the questionnaire. If there is a question that you feel you cannot answer honestly, please leave it blank.
If you have any questions, please ask the person giving out the questionnaire.
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