REWIND: Environmental Role-Playing and Student Engagement in Climate Change Education

Climate change education increasingly calls for experiential and participatory approaches capable of engaging students cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally. This study examined REWIND, a three-hour itinerant urban role-playing intervention on climate change and sustainable resource use, using matched pre-test/post-test data from 153 upper-secondary students in Italy. Outcomes comprised psychological well-being, pro-environmental behaviors, low- and high-threshold environmental activism, and educational orientations; experience-specific enjoyment was necessarily assessed after participation. Students from technical/professional schools increased in pro-environmental behaviors and low-threshold activism, whereas changes were not generalized across outcomes or school tracks. Male students, who began with lower low-threshold activism, improved significantly; however, their post-test scores did not differ from female students in either unadjusted or baseline- and track-adjusted comparisons. A baseline-adjusted multivariate model showed no overall post-test differences by gender or school track. The overall adjusted association of enjoyment with the four continuous outcomes was borderline, whereas enjoyment-by-school-track interactions were significant and were driven mainly by low-threshold activism. Findings indicate heterogeneous short-term associations rather than causal intervention effects. REWIND therefore shows promise as a situated environmental education activity, while requiring further iterative testing of validity, practicality, and effectiveness.