**2. Research Question**

The group of researchers implemented a quasi-experimental survey design to answer questions about the reliability and validity of the environmental citizenship questionnaire, about the environmental citizenship characteristics of first-year undergraduate students in a large technical Lithuanian university, as well as the impact of the designed educational intervention. These questions are answered, and the survey results are discussed in detail in a separate article [3]. This abstract from the iREEC 2022 conference presentation will further discuss the following research question:

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**Citation:** Boeve-de Pauw, J.; Telešiene, A.; Goldman, D.; ˙ Hansmann, R. The Impact of a General Elective Course on Sustainability of the Environmental Citizenship of Undergraduate Students. *Environ. Sci. Proc.* **2022**, *14*, 19. https://doi.org/10.3390/ environsciproc2022014019

Academic Editors: Andreas Ch. Hadjichambis, Pedro Reis, Marie-Christine Knippels, Demetra Paraskeva-Hadjichambi, Jan Cincera and Kateˇrina Janˇcaˇríková

Published: 4 April 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

What is the impact of students' participation in a general elective course 'Sustainable Development' on their environmental citizenship?

The research question was answered while testing a general overall hypothesis: the general elective course focusing explicitly on sustainable development (by implementing it via learner-oriented pedagogical methods identified as effective in developing sustainable development competences) will foster increased environmental citizenship in participating students.

### **3. Methodology**

Using a randomized pre-group/post-group quasi-experimental survey design, we explore the students' environmental citizenship before and after the intervention course 'Sustainable Development', compared to students in a general elective course 'Media Philosophy'. Students were divided into two main groups (experimental vs. control) and then randomly assigned to either a pre- or post-intervention survey, resulting in four groups with unique respondent membership. Each of the nine subscales of the environmental citizenship questionnaire showed excellent reliability (alpha values ranging between 0.830 and 0.930); the entire instrument also had excellent internal consistency (0.929).

### **4. Findings**

ANOVA showed that, when comparing the four groups for each of the EC scales, no main effects were present (all *p* > 0.05), suggesting no effect of the intervention on the subscales. However, when the four groups were compared based on the overall EC construct (overall mean of all items of all scales), the results indicate meaningful and significant differences (*p* = 0.016). Two-by-two post hoc analyses showed, as expected, no differences between the pre-intervention group and the pre-control group, and between the pre-control group and the post control group (all *p* > 0.05). However, as hypothesized, the post-intervention group displayed significantly higher EC than the pre-intervention group (*p* = 0.007), and significantly higher EC than the post-control group (*p* = 0.025). Cohen's d shows a medium effect size for both estimates (both *d* = 0.52).

### **5. Conclusions**

The results support that participation in the 'Sustainable Development' course induced positive changes in the students' environmental citizenship. The presentation at iREEC2022 will also highlight the specific pedagogical design of the 'Sustainable Development' course and relate it to the learning outcomes that we observed in our study. As such, our paper provides a timely contribution, shedding light on how specific pedagogical approaches in higher education can foster environmental citizenship.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H.; methodology, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H; software, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H; validation, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H.; formal analysis, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H; investigation, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H; resources, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H; data curation, J.B.-d.P., A.T. and R.H; writing—original draft preparation, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H; writing—review and editing, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H; visualization, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H; supervision, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H; project administration, A.T.; funding acquisition, J.B.-d.P., A.T., D.G. and R.H. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Institute of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities at Kaunas University of Technology (protocol no. V19-1253-7-1, 27 August 2020).

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** A publicly archived dataset with a questionnaire is available through LiDA: https://hdl.handle.net/21.12137/RZJ0FL (accessed on 22 December 2021).

**Acknowledgments:** This study is partly based on work from Cost Action ENEC (European Network for Environmental Citizenship) (CA16229), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). The authors also want to thank the lecturers and the students of the "Sustainable Development" and the "Media Philosophy" courses at Kaunas University of Technology, for supporting or taking part in the investigation.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

