Environmental Education Research

Climate change education is a complex and controversial undertaking in the United States given the federated nature of educational policy and the partisan nature of climate change discourse. Despite international treaty obligations, the United States struggles to implement climate change education across its educational sector. This article examines the political and geographic factors at play in the standardization of climate change science education in Delaware. Using a geographically representative sample of science teachers, we explore the specificity of NGSS-informed climate change science standards enactment, including its relationship to both voting patterns and individual teacher politics. We show how teachers' political orientation and cultural worldview shapes climate change education independent of local context, raising important questions about professional ethics and the limitations of standards-driven science education reform during a time of intense partisan science denial and socially organized misinformation and dis-information campaigns. Specifically, we find that local political context has no effect on reports of teaching practice; instead, a science teacher's political orientation influences if and how they enact NGSS-driven climate change science education reforms. We conclude with considerations for the field of climate change science education given the social and political realities of the modern United States educational system.

In educational settings, educators’ individual perceptions of theories and concepts (e.g. about teaching and learning) are crucial for their professional performance. Thus, regarding education for sustainable development (ESD), it is vital to focus on teacher educators’ (TEs’) perceptions of this concept. As ESD is a comparatively young and dynamic field of research, not all academic lecturers are familiar with it. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that they all have a well-founded or similar understanding of it. In this study, we surveyed TEs’ perceptions of ESD and provided further insight into the understanding and application of ESD in teacher education, thereby contributing to the professional development of TEs in the context of ESD. We characterised the presented perceptions as subjective theories and used the research programme subjective theories (RPST) procedure to describe them. We found that aspects of instrumental and emancipatory ESD and transformative learning were mixed in the subjective theories. Moreover, the TEs in our study presented learning objectives and methods that could be assigned to the key competencies of ESD in higher education. Our results serve to describe TEs more precisely and thus enrich the basis for their involvement in ESD implementation processes and suitable support services.

In cultures committed to making everything explicit, calling for trickery in education seems suspicious. However, for better or worse, trickery is already prevalent in education. In particular, it quietly persists in assumptions it is possible and desirable to be explicit about many educational matters, including learning intentions, and knowledge of self and others. In this philosophical and autobiographical inquiry, we explore trickery's role in disrupting and exposing this presumptive transparency, and in working with the educational possibilities that then arise. In parallel, we take note that the Anthropocene is an ambiguous and undetermined situation, which promises to trick whoever seeks secure diagnoses and prescriptions of what is at stake. There are therefore confluences between disrupting explicitification in classroom ecologies and ecologies of the broader world. Suspicious of habits that foreclose people's ability to respond to events as they arise, trickery surfaces and engage ambiguities, contradictions, and potentials inherent in the invisible and assumed. Despite such antics, the trickster is no mere jokester. As she deals in duplicity, confusion, and concealment, she attends evermore carefully to sincerity, trust, and revelation, to the freedom of people and planet, and to the ongoing threats and promises of a perpetual return to harmony.

This study explored and compared attitudes toward animals between primary school students and primary school prospective teachers, focusing on educational and cognitive influences. A cross-sectional survey of 100 primary school students and 102 primary school prospective teachers assessed animal behavior, animal attitudes, species conservation preferences, and general animal preferences. Data analysis revealed attitude similarities and differences. Primary school students often categorized animals as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, while prospective teachers displayed a more balanced understanding due to higher education. Both groups preferred killing non-appealing animals and showed a bias towards conservation of culturally positive animals. Regarding common fears, both groups showed similar inclinations, shaped by evolutionary and cultural factors. The results showed that, broadly, preferences and attitudes towards animals and animal conservation are already formed at the primary school stage, although some of these aspects seem to be modulated along students’ education process. Therefore, findings highlight the need for educational interventions promoting positive attitudes towards all animals, with balanced narratives and enhanced training for prospective teachers. This study contributes to the broader understanding of environmental and sustainability education by highlighting the importance of early and higher education in shaping animal conservation attitudes.

This article examines the integration of climate change education (CCE) within the curricula of agriculture, biology education, and environmental studies majors at a university in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. The study employs a qualitative approach, utilizing semi-structured interviews and focus groups with lecturers and students to explore their perceptions and experiences. The findings reveal diverse pedagogical strategies, such as hands-on experiences and interdisciplinary projects, but highlight significant challenges including rigid curricula, resource constraints, and limited interdisciplinary collaboration. Students expressed a need for more mandatory and practically oriented CCE, emphasizing the relevance to their local environment. The discussion contextualizes these findings within international perspectives, comparing them to global trends and highlighting the necessity for curriculum transformation to address the identified challenges. The article concludes by advocating for a more integrated and flexible curriculum that leverages digital platforms and community engagement to better prepare students for the multifaceted challenges of climate change.

This study explores the way in which secondary schools can accommodate student-led, community-based pedagogies within the formal education system. The study identifies benefits and drawbacks associated with different strategies. Through such projects, students can develop their agentic power, that is, an ability to bring about change which is seen as distinct from the power of agency, which implies having the freedom to act. Through semi-structured interviews with teachers and leaders from five schools in different European countries, the study shows how various approaches have knock-on effects related to timetabling, staffing and assessment. This 'fitting in' of projects is often achieved in ways that meet the approval of critical communities, such as parents and local authorities that may have an impact on the school. In doing so, these school help to create supportive conditions for the further development of community-based projects. In this way, such schools are modelling their own agentic power to their students, thus creating a virtuous cycle of experiential learning.

This research explores how picturebooks can enhance ecocritical awareness and sustainable attitudes among 97 primary school children aged 8–9 in a Spanish school. The study includes 24 reading sessions in three formats: individual, small group, and adult-mediated. The selection of the corpus for children’s readings aligns with theoretical studies focusing on an ecocritical approach to children’s literature, a scholarly perspective that has gained prominence in recent decades. Results indicate that adult-mediated sessions are more effective than individual or small-group readings, fostering greater emotional and cognitive engagement. While students generally showed an ecocentric perspective, an anthropocentric view of sustainability persisted. The study highlights that, although guided reading is beneficial, a more integrated and multidimensional educational approach is needed to cultivate a regenerative consciousness. The educator’s role is crucial for guiding students toward deeper, more meaningful ecocritical understanding.

Social studies scholars have argued that environmental issues are social issues, not merely the domain of natural science education. This study conducts a scholarly review of social studies advocacy for Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE). My analysis focuses on exploring how social studies scholars rationalize the inclusion of ESE in social studies classrooms. Starting with a broad search, I identified 31 articles where the authors explicitly stated their values or assumptions connecting social studies with ESE. I then discussed three themes: civic responsibility, lit- eracy development, and reconstructing relationships (ecocentrism), as these themes reflect both mainstream and marginal trends in US school- ing. In justifying the legitimacy of teacher implementation, I argue that literacy development and civic responsibility are likely more accessible for teachers, as these themes align more closely with the professional norms of social studies educators. Conversely, the ecocentrism approach may face significant barriers and challenges, making it difficult to inte- grate into the school curriculum, given its aim to deconstruct the long existing anthropocentric paradigm in social studies. However, ecocentrism could be incorporated into special programs, such as after-school clubs and field trips.

Eco-Schools is the world's largest sustainable school program. Drawing on biopolitical theory and fieldwork conducted in Rwanda, South Africa, Sweden and Uganda, this article explores and compares how Eco-Schools is enacted in contexts marked by widely differing socioeconomic living conditions. Attention is drawn to the biopolitical rationalities and techniques through which Eco-Schools is rendered operable and to how the program's peculiar combination of global standardization and flexible adaptation to context enables differentiation. The analysis demonstrates how poor students become educated for micro-entrepreneurial subsistence and community self-reliance, whereas wealthy students are targeted as mass consumers and rendered aware of problems that exist elsewhere for 'others'. Ultimately the article suggests that the biopolitical rationalities and techniques though which Eco-Schools operate undermine the program's efficacy to challenge inequality. These findings support previous studies arguing that current modes of local adaptation of sustainability education risk reproducing a global biopolitical divide between rich and poor.

Outdoor environmental education (OEE) programs can provide a valuable entry point for youth of color and girls who may have felt excluded and/or marginalized from traditional science learning experiences. This study investigated: (1) Can OEE programs contribute to the development of positive dispositions toward science and the environment?, and (2) Are there differences in effects by racial/ethnic and gender identity, or interactions thereof? Youth (n = 457; grades 4-6, approximate ages 9-12) reported their dispositions toward science and the environment along 5 scales before and after participating in OEE programs. Results found growth across all subscales for youth overall. Girls showed stronger effects than boys, and youth of color showed stronger effects than White youth. Girls of color showed particularly strong growth in Comfort in Nature. The implications of these results, particularly as a challenge to long-standing biases and inequities in the field, are discussed.

In this article we consider the use of visual images to assess perceptions of plants. Using data drawn from a Swedish study we review our choices regarding the type of image used, and the responses they provoked. Furthermore, we consider these choices in the light of other studies, propose a tentative model of levels of seeing, and call for further research. In sharing our methodological challenges with the research community, we wish to contribute to current discussions in plant awareness studies. More specifically, to the development of a visual prompt item that is not explicitly connected to knowledge. Thus, the main contribution of this article is to visual research methods in relation to plant awareness studies.

There is a need for valid and reliable instruments to assess learning outcomes in education for sustainable development (ESD). Measurement invariance (MI) needs to be established before results of these instruments can be validly compared between groups. Despite its importance, establishing MI is an often overlooked validation step. To provide an example of testing for MI in the field of ESD, thereby setting a precedent for subsequent studies, this study tested the MI of the Action Competence in Sustainable Development Questionnaire (ACiSD-Q). First, Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFAs) were carried out to make refinements to the original model. Subsequently, nested multiple-group CFAs were performed to test for MI of the ACiSD-Q for the grouping variables of educational level (primary versus secondary), language spoken at home (instructional language versus other languages), and gender. Model fit indices of the refined model and the ACiSD-Q's proneness to MI are discussed.