Integrating Ethics in Environmental Education

Project introduction and background information

For a long time, education has been seen as pivotally important for tackling environmental problems. Education, especially higher education, shapes the world through knowledge acquisition, but also norm development. It is the social aspect of learning, of education, that has made our species so incredibly successful in developing technologies- be it material or social (i.e. Hermann, 2024). Our technical and socio-cultural inventions shapes our live ubiquitously. The food we eat, the means with which we travel, the way we produce our energy. They all are the product of a long process of developments of knowledge through education. In the social realm this is no different. Most of us identify as citizens of a state, even though we never met almost all of our fellow countrypeople. We value things like human rights, justice and equality. Values that are passed down through generations through pedagogy, be it parental or institutional. The competences of our collective species are now so far reaching, that they do not only shape our lives. But they shape the world as a whole. Some say we even entered a new era. The epoch of the human. Shortly: the Anthropocene. This is the notion that our species, Homo Sapiens, is now the main driver of the development of the natural world. Geologists have, after long collaboration, recently rejected the term (International Union of Geological Sciences, 2024). However, the idea that an Anthropocene might even be possible would be unimaginable just a few centuries ago. Hence, education is a necessity in the project of steering the development of nature towards the good. Education, in other words, is normative.

Objective and expected outcomes

There is need for an ethic that transcends the individual, as their actions are entangled in a complex whirlpool of causal chains that the effects of those actions are often unrecognizable. At the same time, individuals are the only bodies that can take responsibility, ultimately. Education on environment needs to give students the tools to navigate responsibly the complex world that is handed to them. For this is needed a concept of the world, and a concept of the self. This is also the logic of this dissertation. The first part is about the natural world, about the different ways that society is embedded in the natural world. And of course, central to this, how this translates to higher education. The second part is about the individual, more specifically the student. It is about the meaning of responsibility in the age of environmental decline, and a renewed relationship to one another and society as a whole.

This link between the outside and the inside is not a contingent one. It is at the very center of the question of this thesis, which is what are the central elements in environmental education that foster environmental responsibility and sustainability in students?

The main question ought not to be understood as focusing only, or even mainly, on the level of the individual. The student might be the level of analysis, the notions of environmental responsibility and especially sustainability are very much about the world in which the student is embedded. To be able to act responsibly and sustainably, one needs a model of the world, and a notion of the causality through which it functions. However, as the natural world is so vast, so complex, and so multilayered, there is no one definite agreement on how to exactly understand it. Through these competing definitions, or rather narratives, about the world arise different normative understanding of the world. In the world of environmental education, in other words, both what the stage is, who the protagonists are, and what the script is- is contested. However, these elements need to be in congruency to tell a helpful story as a teacher or as a university as a whole, about how to make the world we inhabit a better place.

The first chapter (Loonstra & Tassone, 2024) is concerned with providing an overview of the different layers of description at play, and the way these layers interact. A body of literature was selected that focused specifically on fleshing out the different paradigms of thought, and was suitable for empirical analysis (the second chapter). The notion of paradigms is of utmost importance in both philosophy of science, as in educational sciences; especially in the context of transformative learning. Three levels of description were the scientific, the socio-political and the anthropological. We aim to show in this chapter that not only are there clearly discernable and partly incommensurable ways of defining environmental problems, these definition choices translate to other domains. So: our scientific paradigm (meta-level) shapes our understanding of the world. Our understanding of the world shapes the way we choose to live and relate to this world socio-politically (macro-level). Our lives and relation to the world shape how we as humans understand ourselves (micro-level).

The second chapter (Loonstra, Tassonne, Robaey & Brok, 2024) builds on these paradigms, but moves beyond the exploratory part. With the conceptual framework of the first chapter set in place, this chapter aims to systematically analyze the way in which the paradigms of chapter one are taught, and if they are taught in a balanced manner. That is, to what extent is there plurality in terms of content and pedagogy? So, on top of doing an analysis of what the central elements of higher education on environment are, this study also aims to describe the different ways in which students come in context with these. These are the two ways in which this study answers the main research question. It does so by performing a systematic content analysis of close to a thousand courses on environmental problems. The study identified per course guide the dominant paradigm from which it was taught. By focusing on the learning outcomes, this study also identified if it was taught focusing mostly on one or more learning domains, being: cognitive skills, affective skills, or behavioral skills.

Results and learnings

We showed that, broadly, there are a few fundamental differences at play in the way we understand and act in the world. These are fundamentally concerned with the extent to which we see nature as an abstract outside set of entities that we can control. The affirmative to this statement is here called a mechanistic paradigm, the rejective is called the ecological paradigm. In this chapter, we do not take a normative position on how we should understand the world we inhabit. Rather, we propose a normative ideal of plurality. In order for students to understand and have the ability to navigate between, different paradigms. This study, in other words, provides the context and content of answering the first part of the research question. It tries to illuminate, at least partly, the central elements that are in contradiction with each other when trying to define environmental problems in scientific education. We show how these paradigms materialize in contemporary curricula, but do not provide a structured empirical analysis of this.

The second study found that while the mechanistic paradigm was not as dominant as sometimes presented in the literature, there was a very strong hegemony of paradigms within disciplines. In other words, when looking at the university level, there might be a myriad of approaches to environmental problems, but when looking at the actual education students receive, it is rather monolithic. There exist disciplinary silos in which some paradigms are hegemonic. In terms of learning domains, the cognitive domain was absolutely the most dominant no matter the discipline. This is worrisome, as the literature suggests we need a balance in learning domains to foster an effective ‘whole person’ approach to learning in environmental education.

Recommendations

To transcend the disciplinary stratification that exists in both the academic literature on environmental problems and in higher education it is wise to align the different curricula to reflect all perspectives on environmental problems. If students are aware of the theoretical plurality in understanding our relationship to the natural world they are more able to reflect critically on their own theoretical premises and they switch more flexibly between different disciplines. In order to provide an ethical education for environmental problems that is fitting and in line with the complexity and multi-sidedness of the problems at hand, there is need for a multi-modal education that goes beyond the solely cognitive domain. This means that we (as educators) need to reorient the curriculum (especially in terms of learning outcomes) towards the affective domain and the practical domain.

Practical outcomes

As of now, this project yielded a number of publications and a podcast.

Skills Project WUR | Educational Media WUR | Substack

Applying Eurocentric food ethics to non-Western contexts: Challenges and resolutions

https://edepot.wur.nl/683244

Phronesis in a Complex World: Normative Education and Climate Change Ethics

https://zenodo.org/records/14254836

The foundations and applications of teaching environmental problems: paradigms, learning domains, worldviews, and how they interact

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504622.2024.2405887

Paradigms in Climate Change Education: A Taxonomy as a Reflexive Tool for Educators

https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-031-25960-9_86-1