Ecological Aesthetic Education Participation and Children’s Environmental Literacy, Attitudes Toward Nature, and Emotional and Behavioral Indicators: An Exploratory Cross-Sectional Observational Study

Ecological aesthetic education brings together aesthetic experience and engagement with nature, but empirical evidence on its associations with child outcomes remains limited. This exploratory cross-sectional observational study examined associations between course participation and environmental literacy, attitudes toward nature, and emotional and behavioral indicators among children aged 5–10 years in Nanjing’s Jiangbei area. The study was conducted from January to April 2023 through a primary school and a kindergarten. A single post-course survey yielded 200 questionnaires, of which 183 were valid: 93 from participants and 90 from non-participants. Regression analyses incorporating measured individual, family, school, and social covariates indicated that participation was positively associated with environmental literacy and attitudes toward nature. Emotional and behavioral findings were concentrated in higher prosocial-behavior scores, with lower conduct-problem scores in the continuous-score models; the categorical models showed statistically significant associations only for prosocial behavior. Supplementary analyses identified positive associations with visual and ecological aesthetic measures. Further research will address potential confounding and use more rigorous study designs to clarify whether course participation has causal effects on these outcomes.