Self-Efficacy of Pre-Service Educators in Facilitating Youth Civic Engagement for the Environment

Abstract

With environmental issues growing globally, action for environmental protection is necessary to prevent further loss of biodiversity. One avenue for addressing these issues is through civic action. While programs have been developed to introduce youth to civic action during adolescence with the help of trained educators, little is known about educator self-efficacy (SE) in facilitating this type of program. To assess the SE of pre-service educators (PSEs) in facilitating a civic action curriculum, a workshop was hosted to introduce 30 PSEs to the process of a civic action project. This workshop was used to conduct an exploratory study with a convenience sample of PSEs. A mixed-methods pre- and post-survey with no control group was used to compare SE before and after the workshop. A statistically significant increase in SE was observed from the pre- to the post-survey (p < 0.01), suggesting an increase in PSE SE in guiding youth through a civic engagement project. Additionally, open-ended questions about PSE’s understanding of civic engagement suggested that the educators had a limited understanding of civic engagement for youth prior to the workshop but improved their understanding following the workshop. While limited by the exploratory nature and small sample size, these findings suggest that PSEs may benefit from participation in similar workshops to support their self-efficacy to facilitate youth-led civic action projects.

1. Introduction

Many environmental issues threaten our changing world, including habitat degradation and biodiversity loss (Barouki et al., 2021), with climate change driving many of these issues (Habibullah et al., 2022; Pham et al., 2020; Shahid et al., 2016; Vicente-Serrano et al., 2019). Youth facing these seemingly unsolvable problems can develop ecophobia, a fear of environmental collapse (Strife, 2012), due to feelings that their individual efforts cannot make a difference (Chawla, 2020; Olsen et al., 2024). Amidst these issues of global scale, it is crucial that future generations of leadership learn how and why they can get involved in making lasting improvements to environmental policy.

Civic action for the environment is one way to engage youth in change-making and leadership from a young age. This involvement increases the civic knowledge and self-efficacy of youth (Smith, 2012) while also improving their civic, social, and educational outcomes as adults, especially among at-risk youth (W. Y. Chan et al., 2014). Further, this sort of participation in civic leadership can facilitate growth of social connection between youth (Flanagan et al., 2022) and increase confidence in the power of their unified voices to make change (Barnason et al., 2022; Flanagan et al., 2022). Learning through hands-on projects has specifically been linked to more positive engagement, higher confidence, and better attitudes towards environmental science among youth (Basche et al., 2016; Genc, 2015). These youth civic engagement impacts are crucial for improving the self-efficacy and life outcomes of adolescents involved in this form of environmental action.

In many U.S. schools, civics education is required or encouraged in some form for students to graduate (Shapiro & Brown, 2018). In fact, 20 states require students to take a civics course and exam with a passing grade to graduate, and an additional four states have a civics course requirement and an exam without a passing requirement (Craiutu & Ngalande, 2024). However, coursework is not the same as experiential youth organization of civic projects, which is rarely found in schools (Arthurs, 2018). This sort of experiential learning has tremendous potential to increase youth commitment to engaging in government while shaping their critical thinking and worldview to be more well-rounded and holistic (Arthurs, 2018).

Many countries outside of the United States also have notable levels of civic education and civic engagement knowledge among their students. Civic education in formal settings over time has been found to be associated with increased political participation in England (Weinberg, 2022). In Ireland, civic engagement training is embedded in teacher education at many secondary education institutions (Boland, 2010), especially thanks to emphasis on civic education in the Task Force on Active Citizenship (2007). A study in Spain looked at pre-service teacher civic perspectives before and after participation in a university-based service-learning opportunity, finding that the chance to engage in real-world community development programs influenced the PSEs’ political outlook and engagement (Maravé-Vivas et al., 2022). In a review of civic education centers across 21 European countries using data from surveys distributed to civics educators, there is a wide variety of visible civic education availability across formal and informal centers (Slavkova & Kurilić, 2023).

Based on this review of civic engagement across the United States and parts of Europe, it is evident that youth civic participation is a moderate priority that is promoted in education but often in subtle ways. It is also not heavily researched in areas outside of the U.S. and Europe. Even more obscure is the focus on training PSEs in civic engagement, despite this being a critical way to introduce teachers to civics prior to beginning their career. Optimizing teachers’ civic knowledge and participation during their secondary education may improve their attitudes towards civic engagement (Haines & McClure, 2020), helping them to act as guides in building civic identities in students they engage with in their careers.

Professional development workshops are a commonly studied method for increasing the self-efficacy of educators (Ennes & Henson, 2025; Haines & McClure, 2020; Li et al., 2019; Menon & Sadler, 2016; Small et al., 2012; Teed & Franco, 2014). However, the literature largely lacks insight on the use of workshops to increase self-efficacy specifically as it relates to educator-facilitated youth civic engagement. The majority of the research that exists focuses on in-service teachers (Ennes & Henson, 2025) and there is an opportunity to assess how professional development workshops influence PSEs’ SE to lead civic action projects with their future students (e.g., Haines & McClure, 2020).

Theoretical Framework

Typically, youth are involved in civic engagement in educational settings, whether formal or informal. Many youth are capable of leading civic engagement projects on their own, but having the guidance and resources provided by an educator can improve identity-building outcomes for youth (Moya, 2017) and working with an adult can allow for access to otherwise less available community resources (Levy, 2016; Schusler & Krasny, 2010). However, little is known about how educators feel about guiding youth in the process of civic action projects (Ennes & Henson, 2025). This study explored the self-efficacy (SE) of pre-service educators (PSE) related to facilitating civic action projects with their students.

Civic action for the environment is defined in this study as a process that provides participants with the knowledge and skills to create a persuasive ask for change to leaders on an environmental issue that is important to them (Ennes & Henson, 2025). The terms civic action and civic engagement are used interchangeably in this paper. Civic action can be differentiated from service learning, which is a subset of civic action wherein participants give their time and energy to meet a need in their community, often in a one-time activity. The distinction lies in the request for change and long-term impact inherent to a civic action project but not a service-learning project (Ennes & Henson, 2025; Monroe et al., 2023).

An educators’ beliefs about their ability to engage students in learning is known as “teaching self-efficacy,” and is defined as “the beliefs teachers hold about their capabilities to carry out their professional tasks” (Morris et al., 2017, p. 796). For the research at hand, the “professional tasks” of the PSEs refer to their guiding youth in civic engagement projects for the environment. Further, the way teachers perceive the aims of civic engagement education has been found to impact their style of teaching, meaning that beliefs teachers hold about the purpose and outcomes of civic education projects may inform how they interact with their students, and this differs between socio-geographic regions (Reichert et al., 2021).

Bandura (1977) outlined four factors that influence an individual’s sense of self-efficacy. These include mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and affective states (Morris et al., 2017). Mastery experiences are past achievements that were accomplished through personal action and are considered to be the most influential component of self-efficacy (Morris et al., 2017). Enactive mastery experience is developed through the opportunity for educators to build their self-efficacy by successfully engaging in the new task or activity (Hampel et al., 2024). Vicarious experience is gained by seeing others engage in the activity, and can be particularly useful if the activity is novel and if the group observed is seen as similar to the educator observing (Morris et al., 2017). Social persuasion can also influence self-efficacy through praise, and is influenced by the individual’s perception of the credibility and knowledge of the person giving the feedback (Morris et al., 2017). Finally, affective states such as anxiety, stress, or other moods can influence an individual’s perceptions of their self-efficacy (Morris et al., 2017). Each of these four factors are important drivers in educators’ perceptions of their teaching self-efficacy.

When it comes to teaching self-efficacy related to environmental education, teachers have indicated that a lack of knowledge is one of the most significant barriers to high levels of self-efficacy (Sia, 1992). This could potentially be an issue for PSEs who lack the experience of having taught professionally previously, making their knowledge generally limited. Thus, giving PSEs more knowledge and resources, in this case about civic engagement, may increase their self-efficacy. In previous research, professional development workshops for both in-service and pre-service educators have been shown to increase teaching self-efficacy (Haines & McClure, 2020; Li et al., 2019; Small et al., 2012), improve attitudes towards the subject matter (Haines & McClure, 2020), and increase knowledge of the subject (Small et al., 2012). The implementation of similar professional development workshops for PSEs on facilitating civic engagement could thus be hypothesized to lead to increased self-efficacy for leading these types of activities. However, little research has been carried out to test how PSEs feel about civic action projects. There is thus an opportunity to explore the self-efficacy of PSEs for civic engagement activities, a crucial facet of extracurricular science engagement among youth.

To address this need, a professional development workshop was carried out for PSEs on how to use a civic action curriculum geared towards youth aged 11–18. The self-efficacy of the PSEs was measured before and after the workshop to observe any changes. The research questions this exploratory study addressed were the following:

• How do PSEs perceive their ability to facilitate youth-led civic engagement projects?
• How does a professional development workshop impact the self-efficacy of PSEs towards civic action project facilitation and their understanding of civic engagement?

The hypothesis formulated for this study was as follows:

• PSEs would report an increase in self-efficacy following the civic engagement workshop.

2. Methods

2.1. Study Context

Community Action Projects for the Environment (CAPE) is a civic action curriculum for youth aged 11–18 (Monroe et al., 2023, 2026). This eight-module curriculum is designed based on Earth Force materials (https://earthforce.org/ accessed on 20 March 2026) and guides youth through the process of implementing a civic engagement project in their community. Youth focus on a locally addressable environmental issue, explore the root causes, identify decision makers who can make a change related to their issue, and develop a persuasive ask for change (Monroe et al., 2023, 2026). The curriculum is facilitated by educators, either formal or informal. In the fall of 2024, a workshop was conducted at two universities in a southeastern state in the United States to guide PSEs through the process of facilitating the curriculum with youth. The workshop covered the importance of civic engagement for the environment, the structure of the curriculum, and engaged participants in several activities in the curriculum. The participants received a handout to keep track of their ideas for implementing the program and a copy of the full leader guide that is used by facilitators to lead the curriculum. Portions of the workshop were designed to support the PSEs’ self-efficacy by engaging in mastery experiences and vicarious experiences, showcasing social support, and attempting to support positive affective states. See Figure 1 for an overview of the activities from the workshop and how they aligned with Bandura’s (1977) framework of self-efficacy.

2.2. Survey Development

To explore the self-efficacy of the workshop participants, a survey was adapted from an earlier study (Ennes & Henson, 2025) that included questions from Bandura (2006), DeJarnette and Sudeck (2016), and Lowenstein and Facing History and Ourselves (2007). Items from Bandura’s teaching self-efficacy scale included questions about educators’ “efficacy to enlist community involvement” (Bandura, 2006, p. 328). Additional questions were modified from the survey developed by DeJarnette and Sudeck (2016) to assess teachers’ self-efficacy to lead service-learning projects in their classroom. Adjustments were made to these questions to focus on civic engagement. The Component Scales of Teaching for Informed Civic Engagement Efficacy Belief Inventory (TICE-EBI) was requested from the author via email. The following sections of TICE-EBI were used to develop the survey: “Teacher Efficacy in Fostering Community Centered Classrooms,” “Teacher Efficacy in Promoting Deliberation,” and “Teacher Efficacy in Promoting Civic Literacy Scale” (Lowenstein & Facing History and Ourselves, 2007). The final self-efficacy survey consisted of nine questions on a Likert agreement scale of 0–4, with the values not at all, a little, moderately, very, extremely. This scale had a Cronbach’s alpha of α = 0.83, indicating good internal consistency and reliability in assessing the given items.

Two further Likert questions (same coding scale as the self-efficacy scale) asked how familiar the participant is with civic action for the environment and how comfortable they are facilitating civic engagement projects. Both surveys began with an open-ended question asking the participants: How would you describe a youth-led civic action project? In the previous study (Ennes & Henson, 2025), it was suspected that the decrease in SE was due to the participants evaluating themselves in terms of their SE to lead service-learning projects rather than civic action projects. To address this issue, a definition of civic action projects was added to the survey following the question where the PSEs were asked to define it in their own words in hopes of clarifying what they were asked to evaluate themselves on. The survey also included one further open-ended question on the pre-survey and three on the post-survey to assess the participants’ opinions about the civic engagement process (see Appendix A for the full survey).

2.3. Data Collection and Analysis

The pre-survey was emailed to the professors of two classes at two different universities and students were asked to complete the survey before attending the workshop that took place during their normal class period. A QR code was posted in the classroom at the beginning of the workshop for any students who had not completed the survey prior to class. The students then completed the post-survey at the end of the workshop before leaving class. The 5-point Likert-style questionnaire for determining levels of self-efficacy towards civic action project facilitation was used to compare scores (0–4) across nine questions between the pre- and post-survey. Two additional quantitative questions were analyzed, questions A and B, which asked participants to rank on a 5-point Likert scale their familiarity with civic engagement and their confidence facilitating civic engagement projects, respectively. The survey included four open-ended questions regarding the following topics: defining civic engagement, explaining their understanding of why civic engagement involvement is or is not beneficial for youth, outlining potential challenges to implementation (post-survey only), and listing resources needed for implementation (post-survey only). To analyze these questions, two researchers open-coded the responses and themes were identified. After reviewing the codes, an agreement was reached for any discrepancies between coders (Campbell et al., 2013). The coding for this study was modeled on the methods and codebook developed in a previous study by the authors (Ennes & Henson, 2025). To determine whether a respondent’s definition of civic engagement showed understanding of the civic action process, the research team looked for a mention of an ask to community leaders, a key facet of any true civic action project as defined by the CAPE curriculum (Monroe et al., 2023, 2026). Similar definitions that lacked the ask to community leaders and a focus on long-term institutional change may still be correct definitions of similar concepts, such as service learning. However, for the purposes of this study, only definitions which fit the definition of civic action based on the CAPE curriculum addressed in the workshop were coded as a correct understanding.

The mean self-efficacy scores were calculated for each of the nine questions on both the pre- and post-survey, as well as an overall mean self-efficacy score for the pre- and post-survey. To explore the differences in overall self-efficacy between the pre-survey and the post-survey across all questions, a Mann–Whitney U-test (α = 0.05) was carried out in SPSS (version 2025) to account for the small sample size and skew in the distribution of by-question average scores on the pre-survey. To look at the effect size of the statistical tests, a Hedges’ g calculation was carried out. This was chosen over Cohen’s d to provide a more conservative, unbiased estimate of the effect size.

Individual Mann–Whitney U-tests (α = 0.05) were carried out in SPSS to determine differences in means by question from the pre- to the post-survey. To assess differences in mean scores in familiarity with civic engagement projects and comfort implementing these types of projects from the pre- to post-survey, Mann–Whitney U-tests (α = 0.05) were carried out in SPSS to account for small and unequal sample sizes. To analyze the difference in understanding of the definition of civic engagement from the pre- to the post-survey, a 2-proportion z test (α = 0.05) was carried out to compare the proportion of PSEs who correctly defined civic engagement during the pre-survey to the proportion of PSEs who included a correct definition on the post-survey. This study was approved by the university’s IRB board (ET00042760) and all participants completed an informed consent.

3. Results

3.1. Participants

Twenty-nine PSEs in two classes on education attended the professional development workshop on facilitating civic action projects for the environment during their normal class period. Of the 30 participants who took the pre-survey, one was removed from data analysis because they did not attend the workshop, for a total of 29 respondents on the pre-survey. One student did not complete the post-survey, for a total of 28 participants. This resulted in unequal sample sizes. Due to the anonymity of the survey, responses could not be paired in the analyses.

3.2. Self-Efficacy

The average self-efficacy scores for the PSEs increased from the pre-survey ($\overline{x}$ = 2.133) to the post-survey ($\overline{x}$ = 2.726) across all the questions. A Mann–Whitney U-test across the whole scale resulted in a p-value of <0.001 (U = 617, g = 0.6722). This is a statistically significant increase in overall self-efficacy for facilitating civic action projects from the pre-survey to the post-survey. The effect size was also moderately large. Significance is broken down by question in

Table 1. Self-efficacy for facilitating civic action projects of PSEs.

Question	Mean (SD)		Test Statistic	p-Value
	Pre	Post
1. Impact within student reach	2.86 (0.875)	2.96 (0.693)	429.5	0.679
2. Knowledge about project implementation	1.79 (0.978)	2.75 (0.967)	610	<0.001 ***
3. Confidence implementing civic action	1.72 (0.996)	2.46 (0.838)	562.5	0.009 **
4. Knowledge to increase engagement	1.93 (0.799)	2.61 (0.737)	577.5	0.003 **
5. Know strategies to explore social issues	1.83 (0.711)	2.89 (0.685)	689	<0.001 ***
6. Make students feel positive difference	2.90 (0.772)	2.96 (0.693)	427.5	0.700
7. Confidence with community groups	2.28 (0.841)	2.75 (0.701)	528.5	0.034 *
8. Confidence with businesses	1.86 (0.990)	2.54 (0.793)	552.5	0.014 *
9. Confidence with universities	2.03 (0.906)	2.61 (0.832)	534	0.031 *
Overall	2.133 (0.874)	2.726 (0.771)	617	<0.001 ***

Note. Asterisks indicate level of significance: * = p < 0.05, ** = p < 0.01, *** = p < 0.001.

, to show which questions on the survey had the strongest differences in mean self-efficacy scores from the pre- to the post-survey using Mann–Whitney U-tests for each question (responses could not be paired due to study design). Figure 2 shows these differences visually.

Question 2, “I am knowledgeable about strategies to implement a project that improves or supports the community,” along with question 5, which was “I know strategies that help students examine and discuss possible solutions to current social issues,” had large changes from the pre- to post-survey. Only questions 1 (“I believe that having an impact on community problems is within the reach of the students I teach”) and 6 (“Through my lessons, I can help students feel that they can make a positive difference in their communities”) resulted in a non-significant difference.

Two qualitative questions were asked which were not part of the self-efficacy scale. They were (A) “How familiar are you with civic action projects for the environment?” and (B) “How comfortable would you feel implementing a civic action project for the environment with students?” A Mann–Whitney U test indicated a significant difference in self-reported familiarity with civic engagement facilitation between the pre- and post-survey, U = 708, p < 0.001. The difference in mean familiarity for question A is shown in Figure 3.

Results for the second question also indicated a significant increase in comfort implementing civic action projects for the environment from the pre- to the post-survey, U = 588, p < 0.001. This difference is shown in Figure 4.

3.3. Understanding of Civic Engagement

On both the pre- and post-survey, participants were asked to define civic engagement in their own words. The resulting proportions are shown in

Table 2. Pre-service educator understanding of civic engagement, pre- and post-workshop.

	Pre	Post	Examples
Proportion who understood civic engagement	0.103	0.464	- “A project that youth put together to implement a change in policy in their community” (post-survey). - “A project where students find an environmental issue in their community and come up with the effects and root of the issue, bring that to their community leaders and try to create a positive environmental change within their community” (post-survey). - “An activity that engages youth in learning about civic/community issues, dials in on a specific manageable issue, and finds solutions to said issue by working with local community, government, business, etc” (post-survey).
Proportion who did not understand civic engagement	0.862	0.536	- “Activities such as picking up trash around the community” (pre-survey). - “I would describe a youth led civic action project as community service” (pre-survey).
Educators who were unclear in their description	0.0345	0	- “I have never heard of civic action project” (pre-survey).

. The researchers used the definition of civic engagement outlined in the curriculum to code responses into those who defined it correctly (Proportion who understood civic engagement), those who did not include the necessary definition elements (Proportion who did not understand civic engagement), and those who were unclear in their response and could not be coded into either category (Educators who were unclear in their description).

A two-proportion Z-test was used to test whether the proportion of PSEs who understood civic engagement was significantly different from the pre- to the post-survey. This test resulted in a p-value less than 0.01 (Z = −3.031), indicating a significant difference. Figure 5 shows proportion differences based on coded responses.

There was a clear difference in the level of understanding of civic engagement between the pre- and post-survey. Some responses that show the lack of understanding in the pre-survey are shown in Table 2. Many responses indicate a lack of knowledge of civic engagement, insufficient specificity, or a misunderstanding, often shown by descriptions of service learning rather than civic engagement projects.

Meanwhile, in the post-survey, though there are still many responses indicating a lack of understanding; there are also many more who now were able to give sufficient definitions of civic action projects.

3.4. Educator Perceptions

Participants were asked one open-ended question on the pre-survey and three in the post-survey (Appendix A) to assess their opinions on the structure and content of the curriculum. For question 1, which asked whether educators should involve their youth in civic action projects for the environment and why, all participants across the pre- and post-survey said yes, educators should involve their youth. In coding the responses for why respondents believed educators should involve their youth, several themes emerged. This included the idea that civic engagement is a learning experience, it inspires youth, it gets kids involved in their community, it is good for youth, and it is good for the community. Responses in which the coders could not understand the participant’s meaning were coded as “Unclear” and were not included in the analysis. The number of times each theme was mentioned is shown in

Table 3. PSE opinions on why civic engagement should be implemented by educators, pre- and post-workshop.

Code	Pre-Survey (n)	Post-Survey (n)	Examples
Learning experience	12	10	“By involving students in civic action projects, students will gain a better understanding of the environment, become more connected with their community, and can help people that the projects benefit” (pre-survey).
Inspires youth	6	12	“It shows students that they have the ability to make a difference and can inspire them to do more in the future” (pre-survey).
Gets kids involved	4	6	“It is important for youth to be involved in what they are passionate about” (post-survey).
Good for youth	4	5	“It would help create more active and educated students (pre-survey).
Good for community	1	3	“Environmental/community issues affect everyone, therefore, if we want change in the future, we need to teach young students how to start getting involved so that they can create more change in the future” (post-survey).

Note. Some respondents listed more than one reason why civic engagement should be implemented.

. The most common responses to this question were that civic engagement is a learning experience and that it inspires youth to make a difference.

Question 2 asked what challenges the PSEs would anticipate if they implemented civic action projects with their youth. The coded challenges included parents, youth stress, a lack of resources, problems with youth engagement, lack of success, conflicts of belief, lack of community support, and choosing an issue. Responses which were not understandable were coded as “Unclear” and were not included.

Table 4. PSE beliefs about what challenges could arise during a civic action project with youth (post-survey).

Code	n	Examples
Youth engagement	9	“Getting them to believe they can make a difference in their community.”
Community support	8	“I think getting community support would be difficult if you lack connections.”
Choosing an issue	5	“Finding local problems that are realistic to be able to make change.”
Success	4	“Making a change actually happen.”
Conflict of belief	3	“Cultural differences and differences of belief (political or environmental).”
Parents	2	“For parents to help their students.”
Lack of resources	2	“I feel as though time and organization would be the two hardest parts.”
Youth stress	1	“Push back from parents, stress on students.”

Note. Some respondents listed more than one challenge.

shows the number of times each code was mentioned and examples of each code. The most mentioned challenges were a lack of youth engagement or community support.

When asked what resources would be necessary to facilitate a civic action project, all of the responses fit into the three themes of needing more knowledge and training material, as well as resources like time, money, or volunteers, and further community support. The breakdown of response coding is given in

Table 5. PSE beliefs about what resources would be needed to facilitate civic action projects with youth (post-survey).

Code	n	Examples
Community support	14	- “Help from specific people with knowledge on the topic of the project.” - “Guest speakers and community groups to collaborate with.”
More knowledge/materials	11	- “I think knowledge of varying cultures and geographic differences.” - “The CAPE booklet, knowledge of how to research local policies and who to contact.”
Resources	8	- “Volunteers to help and time” - “Time, meeting area, people”

Note. Some respondents listed more than one resource.

. The most common resource cited as a necessity by the PSEs was community support.

4. Discussion

The increase in SE from the pre- to the post-survey (U = 617, p < 0.001) shows a change in PSE self-efficacy in facilitating civic engagement projects with youth following the workshop. It is possible that the increase in understanding of civic engagement from the pre- to the post-survey (p < 0.01) could have played a role in increasing PSE confidence in the civic action process. The growth in comfort and familiarity with civic engagement projects may have also played a role, with the workshop exposing the PSEs to the process of a civic action project and resources they can rely on should they implement the program. Improving educator familiarity with resources and materials such as these have the potential to enhance the outcomes for youth by providing them with community resources (Levy, 2016; Schusler & Krasny, 2010).

Of the self-efficacy scale questions, a few had larger differences from the pre- to the post-survey, including question 5, “I know strategies that help students examine and discuss possible solutions to current social issues,” and question 2, “I am knowledgeable about strategies to implement a project that improves or supports the community.” The curriculum’s activities that were collaboratively discussed among the educators often include discussion of how to address varying opinions and ideas. Given that a large part of the curriculum is designed to address diverse issues with broad impacts, the workshop may have provided resources to improve self-efficacy in this area.

Only questions 1 and 6 on the self-efficacy scale were not significantly different from the pre- to the post-survey. This was likely because both were rated highly on the pre-survey and remained high on the post-survey. These questions had the highest average scores on both the pre-survey (question 1, $\overline{x}$ = 2.86; question 6, $\overline{x}$ = 2.90) and on the post-survey (both $\overline{x}$ = 2.96). This suggests an overarching confidence in these areas among PSEs in our study.

The results of the question meant to assess the educators’ understanding of civic engagement varied widely. The question asked the participants to define a youth-led civic action project. The proportion of educators who correctly described a civic action project, according to the researchers’ definition (Monroe et al., 2023, 2026), did increase from the pre- ($\widehat{p}$ = 0.103) to the post-survey ($\widehat{p}$ = 0.464). However, the proportion of participants who understood the concept in the post-survey was still less than half of the total participants. The discrepancies observed in understanding of civic engagement suggest a need to introduce PSEs to civic engagement projects. Follow-up workshops could be a way to improve the proportion who understand and feel confident facilitating civic engagement projects (Tschannen-Moran & McMaster, 2009).

Looking at the qualitative responses, some common challenges in implementing a civic engagement project mentioned by the PSEs were youth engagement (or lack thereof) and finding community support. Given that educators expressed concern about these issues after the workshop, follow-up workshops may be a solution to provide further knowledge and training along with new community resources. To promote youth engagement, it is important for educators to know how to keep youth involved in the process and interested in protecting the environment (Reichert et al., 2021). Question 4 on the self-efficacy scale asked about whether the educators know how to keep students engaged, and scores were fairly low ($\overline{x}$_pre = 1.93, $\overline{x}$_post = 2.61). This is an area for improvement which should be addressed in future research in order to potentially increase educator self-efficacy. Encouraging pro-environmental civic action requires that the youth feel included and engaged in the process of environmental protection, so it is important that educators have the experience and knowledge to address this challenge (Monroe et al., 2026; Reichert et al., 2021).

Similar to the seeming lack of knowledge on maintaining student engagement, the PSEs also expressed no significant change in their positive belief that their students can make an impact and in their own ability to help students feel they are making a difference. This is likely due to the educators rating these items high on the pre-survey and maintaining those positive beliefs on the post-survey. The workshop did include success stories that illustrated positive outcomes of youth projects using the curriculum (vicarious experiences), which may have contributed to this maintained positivity in responses. Future workshops could also include success stories to this effect.

The framework of the existing literature on educator professional development and self-efficacy suggests that professional development workshops may increase self-efficacy across varying educator groups, including formal pre-service (Haines & McClure, 2020; Menon & Sadler, 2016) and formal in-service (Li et al., 2019; Small et al., 2012; Teed & Franco, 2014). However, there is a gap in assessing self-efficacy as it relates to facilitating civic engagement with youth. A recent study looked at the impact of a curriculum workshop on the self-efficacy of informal educators for facilitating civic engagement and saw a decrease in self-efficacy (Ennes & Henson, 2025), potentially due to pre-workshop inflation of self-reported confidence in facilitating civic engagement projects. This study suggests areas to explore within the literature gap on how self-efficacy of PSEs for civic engagement facilitation can be impacted through professional development workshops that support their enactive mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and affective states (see Figure 1).

4.1. Limitations

The small sample size (n = 29) for this study limited the types of statistical analysis that could be used to assess levels of self-efficacy change. A larger sample size would give a better idea of whether a workshop like this would truly be efficient for a larger population. Further, as the participants volunteered to participate, there was no sample randomization; this study can therefore only be described as exploratory with a convenience sample, allowing for correlational but not causal inference and limited generalizability. Additionally, while research frequently uses self-reported self-efficacy measures to explore educators’ beliefs about their teaching abilities (e.g., Morris et al., 2017), care should be taken when generalizing these results in other contexts (D. Chan, 2010).

This study used an anonymous response survey across the same group of PSEs for the pre- and post-survey; however, the exploratory statistical analyses could not be paired given that the responses of individuals could not be matched across the two surveys. This lowers the statistical power of the analyses and may potentially misrepresent patterns in the data. The design of this study did not allow for pairing of data, making the statistical analyses largely exploratory in nature.

4.2. Directions and Implications for Future Research

This research sheds light on potential avenues for increasing educator self-efficacy in facilitating projects with youth for the environment, which represents a key barrier to youth civic engagement exposure. Assessing the impact of various types of professional development workshops on educator self-efficacy for civic engagement facilitation is a key research direction in the field of environmental education. Future research should address what structure of workshop would be the most efficient in this scenario of pre-service educators and youth civic engagement. Understanding how to support enactive mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and affective states of PSEs through professional development workshops can lead to improvement across contexts. Additionally, testing the impact of follow-up workshops would be prudent to understand what could improve long-term self-efficacy. A randomized research design with a larger sample size could also allow for causal inference as to the direct effect of a workshop on self-efficacy.

A more thorough measure of some of the familiarity, understanding, and comfort of the educators for civic engagement facilitation could be used to more closely examine differences in constructs related to self-efficacy. As this study focused most heavily on SE, the aforementioned measures did not include component scales, and results in these categories were predominately exploratory.

5. Conclusions

This exploratory study investigated the impact of a professional development workshop on pre-service educators’ self-efficacy and conceptual understanding of facilitating youth-led environmental civic action projects. The results demonstrated an increase in both self-efficacy and the educators’ ability to accurately define civic engagement following the training. These findings suggest that targeted workshops could effectively prepare future educators to support youth-led environmental initiatives by overcoming barriers related to knowledge and familiarity.

The possibility that professional development workshops have the potential to increase the self-efficacy of PSEs for facilitating civic engagement projects with youth aligns with previous research on the importance of professional development workshops to increase educators’ self-efficacy (Haines & McClure, 2020; Li et al., 2019; Small et al., 2012), improve attitudes towards the subject material (Haines & McClure, 2020), and increase knowledge on the subject (Small et al., 2012). The structure of the workshop may play a role in the degree of self-efficacy changes. Future research should test the impact of follow-up workshops. A key factor in the self-efficacy changes that our exploratory study observed could be the change in understanding of what civic engagement means according to the curriculum. Exposure to civic engagement through professional development workshops for PSEs should be explored as an avenue to increase familiarity with its components and perhaps encourage higher self-efficacy for working with youth on a project for the environment. Based on responses in the post-survey, challenges that should be thoroughly addressed in a civic engagement workshop are ways to keep youth engaged and gain community support. Covering possible solutions to these issues may benefit the educators should they implement a civic engagement program. Taking measures to introduce future and current educators to the civic process may support greater engagement in these types of programs, leading to students who feel empowered to make change in their community.