Development of a K-12 environmental education program and an evaluation instrument to measure environmental education knowledge and attitudes of Yemen Arab Republic high school students

The purpose of this study was to propose an environmental education program rationale, key concepts, goals, general objectives, and intended learning outcomes (ILO's) for Yemen Arab Republic students in grades K-12; and develop and validate an instrument to be used for long-term measurement of high school students' attainment of cognitive and affective objectives in the proposed environmental education program.;The curriculum has been developed to fulfill the need for environmental education in Yemeni schools. The intended learning outcomes were determined to be specific enough for building a curriculum which incorporates a wide range of issues and problems suitable for study in Yemen.;Additional studies need to be done to develop strategies for the implementation of the environmental education curriculum into Yemeni schools. Research should focus on the impact of the environmental education curriculum on students' achievement and attitudes.;The study was conducted in two phases: (1) Phase One developed and validated a curriculum plan. The validation process included four steps: First, the proposed curriculum was reviewed by educators at Kansas State University; second the program was sent to professional environmental educators in the U.S.A.; and third the revisions were sent to Yemeni graduate students at various universities in the U.S.A. Finally, professional educators at Sana'a University and the Yemen Ministry of Education validated the curriculum. (2) Phase Two developed the environmental education instrument. A bank of items was developed and validated to measure a random sample of fifty percent of the validated ILO's for each grade, ten through twelve. Content validity for individual items was established by professional environmental educators. These educators evaluated the appropriateness of each item and its match with specific ILO's. The researcher then assembled the validated items into an assessment instrument. This instrument was given to sample high school students in the United States. Cronbach Alpha analysis was conducted for the purpose of increasing reliability and validity of the instrument. After translating the instrument into the Arabic language, further validity and reliability were established by testing the instrument on 50 high school students in Yemen.