Ecological Civilization Education Tracks With Stronger Academic Results in Chinese Postgraduates

A six-year longitudinal study of environmental science postgraduates in China has found that students with greater exposure to ecological civilization education tended to earn higher grades and participate more actively in academic life. The research, published as open-access work in Discover Sustainability, followed 156 postgraduate students from 2018 to 2023 and combined annual questionnaire data with university academic records, offering quantitative evidence on how this politically rooted form of environmental teaching relates to measurable learning outcomes.

The educational approach under study, known as Ideological and Political Education of Ecological Civilization (IPE-EC), has been increasingly integrated into environmental science education in China. The researchers measured it along four dimensions: average exposure time, curriculum exposure, students’ recognition of ecological civilization concepts, and their willingness to engage in environmental protection behavior. Academic performance was assessed through overall grade point average, core-course GPA, publication activity, and participation in academic activities.

By 2023, the final year of follow-up, the statistical links between the two sides had tightened considerably. Overall GPA correlated positively with curriculum exposure, with a correlation coefficient of 0.342, a result the authors report as statistically significant. Willingness to engage in environmental protection behavior showed even stronger associations, correlating with exposure time, curriculum exposure, and concept recognition at coefficients of 0.355, 0.414, and 0.526 respectively. The association between ecological civilization education and academic performance strengthened over the study period rather than remaining static.

To move beyond simple correlations, the team applied multiple stepwise linear regression, machine learning models, Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) analysis, and coupling coordination analysis. The stepwise regression models achieved R-squared values between 0.62 and 0.78. A gradient boosted regression tree model performed best in cross-validation, achieving a mean R-squared of 0.88, indicating that the measured educational variables carried substantial predictive information about academic performance.

The SHAP analysis, a technique that quantifies how much each input variable contributes to a model’s predictions, identified recognition of ecological civilization concepts, curriculum exposure, and exposure time as the major contributors to academic outcomes. This ordering suggests that students’ internalized understanding of ecological civilization ideas may matter more for grades than raw hours of instruction, although the observational design cannot establish which factor drives which.

Coupling coordination analysis revealed a steady deepening of the relationship between ecological civilization education and academic attainment. The coordination score rose by 0.20 across the study window, climbing from 0.58 in 2018 to 0.78 in 2023.

The study’s design should be kept in mind when reading the findings. As a longitudinal observational study of a single cohort of environmental science postgraduates, it demonstrates association rather than causation, and the reported correlations and model statistics do not by themselves establish that ecological civilization education improves academic performance.

Nevertheless, the authors conclude that the work provides quantitative evidence that ecological civilization education is associated with academic performance through complex nonlinear interactions among ecological cognition, curriculum exposure, and learning-related factors, highlighting the value of integrating ecological civilization education with disciplinary learning.

Subject of Research: Longitudinal association between ecological civilization education and academic performance among environmental science postgraduates

Article Title: Longitudinal association between ecological civilization education and academic performance among environmental science postgraduates

Article References: Bai, H., & Wang, X. (2026). Longitudinal association between ecological civilization education and academic performance among environmental science postgraduates. Discover Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-026-05125-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43621-026-05125-1

Keywords: ecological civilization education, environmental science postgraduates, academic performance, longitudinal study, machine learning, SHAP analysis, coupling coordination, grade point average, China, environmental education, curriculum exposure, observational study