The Ecocentric and Anthropocentric Attitudes toward the Sustainable Development (EAATSD) scale measures environmental concern in relation to sustainable development. This article will discuss how this scale was tested with three groups of Dutch higher education students. Findings demonstrate that anthropocentric and ecocentric values are independent of the students’ chosen course of study, suggesting that students attracted by the ‘sustainable development’ course title do not necessarily associate ‘sustainability’ with ecocentric aims. This article discusses why ecocentric values are beneficial to the objective of a sustainable society and proposes ways forward in which these values can be enhanced in learners. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci7030069 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Based on his personal experience, the author aims to examine some of the key competencies that he considers essential for facilitators of group activities in arts-based environmental education (AEE). In this, participants are encouraged to enhance their sensibility to the environment through artistic approaches. A case in point is a workshop called “making a little me”. Its participants sculpt – while keeping their eyes closed – a clay version of their own seated body in miniature. When guiding such a workshop, it is of critical importance, according to the author, to encourage the participants to suspend their judgments on the art works of others. The facilitator should make every effort to provide a safe environment by practicing “holding space”.
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The divide between us and the rest of nature has been attributed to various rootcauses: the growing disenchantment of the world, the loss of direct experience andlately the replacement of the real with simulations of it. Modernity's move away fromthe natural world has also generated countervailing movements, beginning with theRomantics and leading up to the manifold forms of environmental education in ourtimes. When we seek to reconnect to the natural world through an open-ended artistic process, what happens? In this thesis, Jan van Boeckel explores the kind of learning that takes place through arts-based environmental education.
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This chapter addresses environmental education as an important subject of anthropological inquiry and demonstrates how ethnographic research can contribute to our understanding of environmental learning both in formal and informal settings. Anthropology of environmental education is rich in ethnographies of indigenous knowledge of plants and animals, as well as emotional and religious engagement with nature passed on through generations. Aside from these ethnographies of informal environmental education, anthropological studies can offer a critical reflection on the formal practice of education, especially as it is linked to development in non-Western countries. Ethnographic and critical studies of environmental education will be discussed as one of the most challenging directions of environmental anthropology of the future. This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge/CRC Press in "Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions" on 7/18/13 available online: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203403341 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Currently, various higher education (HE) institutes develop flexible curricula for various reasons, including promoting accessibility of HE, the societal need for more self-regulated professionals who engage in life-long learning, and the desire to increase motivation of students. Increasing flexibility in curricula allows students to choose for example what they learn, when they learn, how they learn, where they learn, and/or with whom. However, HE institutes raise the question of what preferences and needs different stakeholders have with regard to flexibility, so that suitable choices can be made in the design of policies, curricula, and student support programs. In this workshop, we focus on student preferences and share recent insights from research on HE students' preferences regarding flexible education. Moreover, we use participants’ expertise to identify new (research) questions to further explore what students’ needs imply for several domains, namely curriculum-design, student support that is provided by educators/staff, policy, management, and the professional field. Firstly, a conceptual framework on flexible education and student’s preferences will be presented. Secondly, participants reflect in groups on student personas. Then, discussion groups have a Delphi-based discussion to collect new ideas for research. Finally, participants share the outcomes on a ‘willing wall’ and a ‘wailing wall’.
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In this article, we elaborate on the role of dialogical learning in identity formation in the context of environmental education. First, we distinguish this kind of learning from conditioning and reproductive learning. We also show that identity learning is not self-evident and we point out the role of emotions. Using Dialogical Self Theory, we then suggest that individuals do not have an “identity hierarchy” but a dialogical self that attaches meaning to experiences in both conscious and unconscious ways. We describe the learning process that enables the dialogical self to develop itself, and we elaborate on the characteristics of a good dialogue. We conclude with some remarks expanding room for a dialogue that would foster identity learning. https://doi.org/10.3390/resources5010011 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Education is a key factor to respond to the threat of climate change, increasing not only knowledge but also encouraging changes in attitudes and behaviors to adopt sustainablelifestyles. Scholars and practitioners in the field of education call for innovative ways of engaging youth—a reason why gamification has gained more attention in recent years. This paper aims atexploring the role of gamification in aecting pro-environmental behavioral change and searching for best practices for educational purposes. For that aim, pro-environmental gamification platforms are identified and analyzed by applying two dierent frameworks: the Octalysis Framework and the Climate Change Engagement through Games Framework. After scanning 181 cases, a final sample of six is analyzed and two of them are selected as best practices with higher potential to engage users inpro-environmental behavioral change: SaveOhno and JouleBug. Meaning, ownership, and social influence, as well as achievability, challenge, and credibility, are seen as core elements that canincrease the success of gamification platforms. In conclusion, the more attributes are enclosed in the gamification design, the stronger physical and mental connections it builds up with participants.Insights from this study can help educators to select best practices and gamification designers to better influence behavioral change through game mechanics.
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Ecocentrism has roots in environmental philosophy, which questions the conceptual dichotomy between humans and the environment, acknowledging nonhuman species' right to flourish independently of human interest (Naess 1973). Generally, ecocentrism refers to a planet- and nature-centered as opposed to the human-centered (anthropocentric) system of values. Inspired by this philosophy, ecocentric education focuses on intrinsic values of the ecosystem, environment, and individual living beings and habitats in environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD). https://rd.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-319-63951-2 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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For environmental governance to be more effective and transformative, it needs to enhance the presence of experimental and innovative approaches for participation. This enhancement requires a transformation of environmental governance, as too often the (public) participation process is set up as a formal obligation in the development of a proposed intervention. This article, in search of alternatives, and in support of this transformation elaborates on spaces where participatory and deliberative governance processes have been deployed. Experiences with two mediated participation methodologies – community art and visual problem appraisal – allow a demonstration of their potential, relevance and attractiveness. Additionally, the article analyzes the challenges that result from the nature of these arts-based methodologies, from the confrontational aspects of voices overlooked in conventional approaches, and from the need to rethink professionals’ competences. Considering current environmental urgencies, mediated participation and social imaginaries still demonstrate capacities to open new avenues for action and reflection.
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In today’s technological world, human intertwinement with the rest of nature hasbeen severely diminished. In our digital culture, many people hardly have any direct experience of and sense of connection with “the real” of the natural world. The author assumes that when we want to find ways to mend this gap, arts-based environmental education (AEE) can play a meaningful role. In AEE, artmaking is regarded as itself a way of potentially gaining new understandings about our natural environment. As a reflective practitioner, the author facilitated three different AEE activities, at several times and at diverse locations. On basis of his observations, memories, written notes, audio-visual recordings and interviews with participants, teachers and informed outsiders, he interpreted the experiences both of participants and himself. To this end he employed interpretative phenomenological analysis paired with autoethnography.The artmaking activities researched here aimed to bring about a shift in focus. Participants were encouraged to approach natural phenomena not head-on, but in an indirect way. Moreover, the artmaking process aspired to heighten their awareness to the presence of their embodied self at a certain place. The research questions that the author poses in this study are: (1) What is distinctive in the process of the AEE activities that I facilitate?; (2) Which specific competencies can be identified for a facilitator of AEE activities?; and (3) Does participating in the AEE activities that I facilitate enhance the ability of participants to have a direct experience of feeling connected to the natural world?In this explorative study, the author identifies facilitated estrangement through participating in AEE as an important catalyst when aiming to evoke such instances of transformative learning. In undergoing such moments, participants grope their way in a new liminal space. Artmaking can create favorable conditions for this to happen through its defamiliarizing effect which takes participants away from merely acting according to habit (on “autopilot”). The open-ended structure of the artmaking activities contributed to the creation of a learning arena in which emergent properties could become manifest. Thus, participants could potentially experience a sense of wonder and begin to acquire new understandings – a form of knowing that the author calls “rudimentary cognition.” The research further suggests that a facilitator should be able to bear witness to and hold the space for whatever enfolds in this encounter with artistic process in AEE. He or she must walk the tightrope between control and non-interfering.The analysis of the impacts of the AEE activities that were facilitated leads the author to conclude that it is doubtful whether these in and of themselves caused participants to experience the natural environment in demonstrable new and deep ways. He asserts that most of their awareness was focused on the internal level of their own embodied presence; engagement with place, the location where the AEE activity was performed, seemed secondary. The findings show that AEE activities first and foremost help bring about the ignition and augmentation of the participants’ fascination and curiosity, centered in an increased awareness of their own body and its interactions with the natural world. The present study can be seen as a contribution to efforts of envisaging innovative forms of sustainable education that challenge the way we have distanced ourselves from the more-than-human world.
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