Designing school buildings with change: Impacts on children's environmental attitude

Abstract

This paper investigates the differences in environmental attitude among children in sustainable schools and conventional schools, and discusses about the impact of changing the school design approach-from conventional to sustainable design- on children’s environmental awareness. 597 children of 10-12 years old from six randomly selected primary schools in Victoria, Australia, took part in a survey. Three of the selected schools were sustainably designed and three of them had traditional designs. NEP scale was used to examine whether those who attend schools with a sustainable design, bear higher levels of environmental attitude compared with those attending conventional schools. Outcome of the research indicates that sustainable design of the school building provides the opportunity for children to obtain higher level of environmental attitude.