**1. Rational and Objectives**

Several authors have suggested approaching environmental problems through citizenship [1–3], and important efforts have been made to conceptualise the idea of environmental citizenship [4].

Education is considered a main tool for capacity building and for providing citizens with fundamental knowledge and meaningful opportunities to exercise action competences to actively contribute to the generation of sustainable solutions to current and future problems.

Different pedagogical approaches with high potential to promote environmental citizenship have been identified. Cinˇ ˇ cera et al. [5] maintain that these interventions that have been proven to have a significant impact on people's beliefs, attitudes and behaviours exhibit common features: they engage individuals in the collaborative construction of sustainable solutions to local problems, fostering a sense of ownership and empowerment towards environmental issues.

The model developed by Paraskeva-Hadjichambi is aligned with the key pedagogical features previously mentioned [6], including processes such as inquiry, planning, acting, evaluating, reflecting and use dissemination and networking to enhance the effect of those interventions. Nevertheless, there is a need to better understand how this educational

**Citation:** Ariza, M.R.; Pauw, J.B.-d.; Olsson, D.; Van Petegem, P.; Parra, G.; Gericke, N. Key Pedagogical Features and a Common Approach to Evaluate Education for Environmental Citizenship: An International Perspective. *Environ. Sci. Proc.* **2022**, *14*, 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/

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

Published: 10 March 2022

environsciproc2022014013

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model might be implemented in different contexts and situations, as well as to evaluate the impact of these interventions on environmental citizenship. The Sustainability Consciousness Questionnaire (SCQ) has been proven to be a powerful instrument for this purpose [7].

Addressing all these concerns, this work sets the following objectives:


### **2. Research Design and Methodology**

A single-group, pre and post test research design was used to measure the effect of various educational interventions on participants' beliefs, attitudes and self-reported behaviours, using an instrument previously validated in the specialised literature [8].

### **3. Findings and Conclusions**

The results show significant differences between pre and post scores, with a positive impact on the behavioural dimension in all the reported interventions. Even though the three cases presented addressed different target groups, took place in very different contexts and varied in length, we can find common pedagogical features: the three of them promoted active and situated learning and were contextualised in real-life problems, offering meaningful opportunities for action-taking and reflection.

**Author Contributions:** This paper is the result of a truly collaborative work where all the authors (M.R.A., J.B.-d.P., D.O., P.V.P., G.P. and N.G.) significantly contributed to its conceptualisation, methodology, validation, formal analysis, data curation, and the writing, editing and reviewing process when preparing the present manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** The Belgian case was part of the VALIES project and was supported by the Flanders Research Foundation (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, FWO) under Grant number S010317N within the Strategic Basic Research program. The Swedish case was funded by The Swedish Institute for Educational Research (grant number: 2017-00065). We received a fee to cover the open-access costs for publication in *Sustainability* from the ENEC COST action CA16229.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** In the Belgian case, data were collected under the positive advice given by the ethical committee for social sciences and humanities to the VALIES project (SHW\_18\_25). In the Spanish case, data collection follows the guidelines provided by the ethical committee for social sciences and humanities of the University of Jaén. In the Swedish case, the study follows the ethical guidelines provided by Karlstad University.

**Informed Consent Statement:** All Belgian participants provided active informed consent; for minors, consent was received from a parent or legal guardian combined with the children providing informed assent. The Spanish participants were informed about the purpose of data collection, accepted to participate and provided patient consent. The Swedish participants were informed about the purpose of the project, and they all provided active informed consent for participating.

**Data Availability Statement:** Data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

**Acknowledgments:** This article is based upon work from COST Action European Network for Environmental Citizenship—ENEC CA16229, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA16229/ (accessed on 2 March 2022).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study, in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data, in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

