Cultivating change through environmental dynamics: School-based sustainability education as a catalyst for youth agency

This mixed-methods study explores how sustainability education, rooted in a broader environmental dynamics framework, can equip youth in under-resourced communities with the tools to understand and participate in local environmental systems. It examines how culturally grounded storytelling can support environmental literacy and awareness of local food systems among a sample of third-grade students in Arkansas. Anchored by two complementary interventions, a culturally grounded children's book and an ArcGIS StoryMap presentation and activities, the study employs a three-group design to assess changes in student knowledge and engagement through matched pre- and post-surveys. This research contributes to an emerging scholarship on environmental dynamics and positions culturally relevant children's literature and place-based experiential learning as viable tools for teaching complex relationships between food, land, and community. Quantitative analysis using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test revealed a statistically significant increase in agricultural knowledge across the full matched sample, rising from 8 percent to 64 percent following the interventions (W = 8.5, p < .001), while Group C showed no change, providing strong descriptive evidence that the interventions drove the observed gains. Qualitative analysis drawing on a narrative inquiry framework (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Daiute, 2013) revealed three emergent themes in student responses: community care and collective responsibility, food and health, and personal agency modeled on the book's protagonist. Findings suggest that school-based sustainability programs, when grounded in local context and culture, can produce measurable knowledge gains, deepen student engagement, and support the early development of environmental stewardship and land-based learning among historically underserved youth.