Green Schools, Greener Minds: Mapping How Indonesia’s Eco-Schools Shape Students’ Ecological Worldviews

A sweeping survey of more than 1,200 secondary school students in Indonesia’s Banten Province has found that teenagers enrolled in the country’s flagship environmental education program hold measurably stronger ecological worldviews than their peers in conventional schools, with the gap varying dramatically from one district to the next. The study, published in Discover Education, offers one of the most detailed spatial portraits yet of how school-based sustainability programs relate to the deep-seated beliefs that underpin pro-environmental behavior, and its findings carry implications for the growing global movement of eco-schools.

The research team, led by Enggar Utari of Universitas Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa, set out to compare students’ ecological worldviews using the New Environmental Paradigm, or NEP, framework, a foundational instrument in environmental sociology first developed by William R. Catton Jr. and Riley E. Dunlap. The NEP scale measures the degree to which individuals have shifted from an anthropocentric orientation, in which humans are seen as dominant over nature, toward an eco-centric perspective that recognizes ecological limits and the interdependence between people and ecosystems. The framework captures five dimensions: limits to growth, balance of nature, anti-anthropocentrism, eco-crisis awareness, and rejection of human exemption from ecological constraints.

The target of the comparison was Indonesia’s Adiwiyata Program, a national initiative run by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry that integrates sustainability principles into school governance, curriculum, and daily practice. Adiwiyata schools emphasize curriculum integration, waste management, energy efficiency, and behavioral habituation, aiming to cultivate ecological literacy alongside environmental preservation. The program shares broad objectives with international initiatives such as the Foundation for Environmental Education’s Eco-Schools program, active in more than 100 countries, and UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development framework, though its policy architecture and implementation mechanisms are distinctively Indonesian.

To capture the landscape of beliefs across Banten, the researchers surveyed 1,210 students in grades 10 through 12, drawn equally from eight Adiwiyata and eight non-Adiwiyata schools across the province’s eight districts and cities, from the industrial sprawl of Tangerang to the rural expanse of Lebak Regency. Multistage proportional sampling ensured balanced representation across regions and school categories. Data were collected between March and May 2026 using an Indonesian-language adaptation of the revised NEP Scale, translated through a forward-backward procedure and pilot-tested for clarity. Statistical validation was rigorous: corrected item-total correlations ranged from 0.556 to 0.698, factor loadings from 0.694 to 0.812, and the overall scale achieved a Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.876, indicating good internal consistency.

The results were striking in their consistency. Students in Adiwiyata schools recorded higher mean scores than their non-Adiwiyata peers on every one of the five NEP dimensions, and in every one of the eight districts and cities. Overall NEP scores averaged 39.01 for Adiwiyata students against 35.57 for their conventional-school counterparts. Eco-crisis awareness emerged as the highest-scoring dimension in both groups, at 8.12 versus 7.34, suggesting that recognition of environmental degradation is the most readily cultivated ecological belief. By contrast, rejection of human exemption, the belief that humans are not exempt from ecological constraints, scored lowest in both categories, hinting that anthropocentric assumptions about human dominance over nature are the most stubborn beliefs to shift.

Inferential statistics confirmed that these differences were unlikely to be chance artifacts. Mann-Whitney U tests, chosen after Kolmogorov-Smirnov testing revealed significant departures from normality, found statistically significant differences across all five NEP dimensions between the two school categories. Multivariate Analysis of Variance, interpreted through Pillai’s Trace for its robustness to non-normality, confirmed significant simultaneous differences across the five correlated dimensions in six of the eight districts after Bonferroni correction. In Pandeglang and Lebak Regencies, differences fell below the conventional significance threshold once the stricter correction was applied, a nuance the authors treat as evidence that school status alone does not guarantee distinct ecological worldviews everywhere.

Perhaps the most visually compelling contribution of the study is its spatial analysis. Using choropleth maps with a five-tier classification ranging from very low to very high, the researchers mapped NEP scores across the province. Adiwiyata schools scored between 3.68 and 4.15, with South Tangerang City topping the scale in the very high category and Lebak Regency at the bottom in the low category. Non-Adiwiyata schools clustered between 3.46 and 3.68, with every district falling into the low or very low bands. Effect sizes told a parallel story: Cohen’s d ranged from 0.353 in Lebak to 0.954 in South Tangerang, with the largest gaps concentrated in urban areas such as South Tangerang, Serang City, and Tangerang City, and the smallest in rural regencies.

This urban-rural gradient is the study’s most provocative finding, though the authors are careful to frame it as descriptive rather than causal. Urbanicity was not formally operationalized or statistically tested, and the cross-sectional design means the results are associative by nature. Still, the pattern aligns with prior international research suggesting that institutional capacity, teacher preparedness, access to environmental learning resources, and community engagement all shape how effectively environmental education takes root. Urban schools in Banten may simply have more institutional support, environmental information, and sustainability infrastructure at their disposal, allowing the Adiwiyata designation to translate into a deeper cognitive shift among students.

The correlation analysis added another layer of insight. All five NEP dimensions were positively and significantly correlated, with the strongest relationship between eco-crisis awareness and limits to growth at r = 0.561. This interconnected structure supports the theoretical claim that ecological worldviews operate as coherent belief systems rather than isolated attitudes. It also suggests that interventions targeting one dimension, such as raising awareness of ecological crises, may ripple outward to strengthen beliefs about resource constraints and the fragility of natural systems.

For policymakers, the implications are twofold. First, the consistent advantage of Adiwiyata schools reinforces the value of institutionalizing sustainability across governance, curriculum, and school culture, rather than treating environmental education as a bolt-on subject. Second, the spatial disparities argue for targeted adaptation: regency-level regions with low NEP classifications may need additional teacher training, experiential learning resources, and community partnerships to close the gap. The authors also caution that beliefs about human exemption from ecological limits appear resistant to change through knowledge transmission alone, pointing toward reflective, experience-based learning as the next frontier. As eco-school programs expand worldwide, this Banten study suggests that where a school sits on the map may matter almost as much as what happens inside its classrooms.

Subject of Research: Comparative and spatial analysis of ecological worldviews among students in Adiwiyata and non-Adiwiyata schools in Banten Province, Indonesia

Article Title: Spatial comparison of the new environmental paradigm between Adiwiyata and non-Adiwiyata schools in Banten Province Indonesia

Article References: Spatial comparison of the new environmental paradigm between Adiwiyata and non-Adiwiyata schools in Banten Province Indonesia. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02295-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02295-y

Keywords: New Environmental Paradigm, Adiwiyata schools, environmental education, ecological worldview, spatial analysis, Banten Province, Indonesia, NEP scale, eco-schools, environmental psychology, sustainability education, choropleth mapping