Hey guys, welcome back to my blog! 🙂
Last week, Song Thye asked me a really interesting question: Is there a correlation between education levels and environmental literacy? After doing some research, I came across a few interesting findings from various articles and I thought I’d share them here! Therefore, today I’ll be talking about environmental education and what can schools do to make it effective.
Environmental education is defined as education that helps individuals to become more knowledgeable about their environment and to develop responsible environmental behaviour to improve the quality of the environment (UNESCO,1978).
Throughout my 12 years of education under the Singapore education system, I learnt about the impacts of climate change and what various stakeholders can do to mitigate it. However, it only occurred to me recently that throughout my studies, my school teachers have never emphasised the importance of environmental sustainability, let alone promote pro-environmental behaviour. Wi and Chang (2018) accurately explain that this is because most schools “rely essentially on information dissemination and do not help individuals understand the given information.” As a result, I would like to highlight that schools should strive to make the “distant, global, and nebulous threat of climate change personally relevant” by helping students to understand why they should adopt pro-environmental habits rather than just transferring environmental knowledge to them (Monroe et al., 2017).
‘Children must first come to know and love the natural world before they can become concerned with its care’ (Palmer and Suggate, 1996)
A surprising finding that I came across in several journal articles was that the university major with the least environmental knowledge is in fact, a major in Education (Kaplowitz et al., 2005). This is further corroborated by research in Finland that discovered that students undergoing pre-school teacher training were among those scoring lowest for environmental knowledge (Tikka et al., 2000). In my opinion, this is very concerning because teachers play a fundamental role in shaping students’ social behaviour (including pro-environmental behaviour)! This might imply that even in Singapore, school teachers are lacking in environmental knowledge, and action has to be taken to address such an issue.
Therefore, I would like to recommend that schools:
- Emphasise on pro-environmental behaviours AND help students understand WHY they should adopt such habits (make it relevant!)
- Send teachers to environmental workshops held by NGOs. Why NGOs? As mentioned in my previous blog post, environmental sustainability is not considered a “key education outcome” in Singapore so the only way teachers can go for formal training will be to attend workshops by environmental NGOs!
Ultimately, tackling climate change is a collective effort and schools should not wait lest it ends up being too late. I hope that all schools (pre-school to post-secondary institutions) will take charge in spreading pro-environmental behaviour, attitudes and knowledge to students and teachers alike to combat our climate crisis!
Thank you for reading!
References:
- Sara Arnon, Nir Orion & Nurit Carmi (2015) Environmental literacy components and their promotion by institutions of higher education: an Israeli case study, Environmental Education Research, 21:7, 1029-1055, DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2014.966656
- Páivi M. Tikka, Markku T. Kuitunen & Salla M. Tynys (2000) Effects of Educational Background on Students’ Attitudes, Activity Levels, and Knowledge Concerning the Environment, The Journal of Environmental Education, 31:3, 12-19, DOI: 1080/00958960009598640
- Michael D. Kaplowitz & Ralph Levine (2005) How environmental knowledge measures up at a Big Ten university, Environmental Education Research, 11:2, 143-160, DOI: 10.1080/1350462042000338324
- Martha C. Monroe, Richard R. Plate, Annie Oxarart, Alison Bowers & Willandia A. Chaves (2017): Identifying effective climate change education strategies: a systematic review of the research, Environmental Education Research, DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2017.1360842
- UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scienti c, and Cultural Organization). 1978. Final report. Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education. ED/MD/49, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization with United Nations Environment Program in Tbilisi, USSR, October 14–16, 1977Paris, France: UNESCO.
- Palmer, J. A., J. Suggate, I. A. N. Robottom, and P. Hart. 1999. “Significant Life Experiences and Formative Influences on the Development of Adults’ Environmental Awareness in the UK, Australia and Canada.” Environmental Education Research 5: 181–200.
- [Image]. Retrieved from: https://www.9skips.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/forests.jpg
Hi Letitia!
Wow, really interesting post! You really opened my eyes to an issue that I have never thought about! I feel that education like what you said could really play a huge role in creating more people that care for the environment! However, what if people develop a distaste for the environment as a subject? Like how some of us realise that “Physics” or any other subject is not our cup of tea through education and develop a huge disinterest in the subject.
– Bryan
Hey Bryan!
Interesting question!!
To me, there will always be people who are sceptical and dismissive of climate change. It can be difficult to change if they strongly believe so. According to this article on effective climate change education strategies, schools can try to make environmental education (EE) enjoyable by using “role-plays and simulations to mimic reality” and visual cues such as watching documentaries! In that way, it could make EE less dull for students and hopefully not develop a distaste for the environment as a subject.
From the articles that I came across (refer to references section above), I think that EE is more often than not a very effective method to promote environmental literacy in children. I believe that if the majority of students in schools can develop pro-environmental behaviour through EE, that should already be considered a success.
Besides, there’s always a possibility that peer pressure will make sceptics adopt pro-environmental behaviour! 🙂
I hope this answers your question!
– Letitia
hello Letitia!
Interesting read as this is something I have never considered as I continue to learn about the environment, without venturing into this portion on learning about sustainability in the formal education context. I do agree that this is important as learning about sustainability from a young age would allow us to incorporate these practices from a young age, which many of us are only aware of at a later age, thus posing as an ‘inconvenience’ for us to make these lifestyle changes as we are already used to our ‘old and unsustainable habits’. While making changes to the education syllabus may take time, what can we university students do in the meantime instead to raise greater awareness on this issue among our peers? 🙂
Hi Jia Yuan! Thank you for reading!
As university students and BES in particular, I believe that we can promote greater awareness through our daily actions! This article mentioned that friends and even neighbours can be influenced to adopt pro-environmental behaviours because of the pro-environmental people around them! Likewise, I believe that through our actions (refusing plastic and eating sustainably etc), our non-BES friends might develop an interest in our reasons for doing so and ask us about it. (or we could just tell them even if they don’t ask… like a conversation starter! 😉 ) Therefore, through such interactions, we university students can raise awareness of climate change.
Hope this answers your question! 😀
– Letitia
Hi Letitia! I thought that this was particularly interesting that I decided to read your post this week because, in my latest blog post, I found that higher education was correlated to a drop in religiosity, but I didn’t consider the relationship that education also has with environmental knowledge -perhaps that is a possible confounder in my results. You can read my post here: blog.nus.edu.sg/ohmygod/meditatingonmethodology.
What I wanted to bring to your attention, though, was that there are a few awards for schools for promoting environmental knowledge, like the School Green Awards (https://sec.org.sg/sga/) and the President’s Award for the Environment (http://www.wildsingapore.com/news/20060506/060530-1.htm). Do you think that these are effective in engaging schools to do more to promote care for the environment in students?
Hey Dennis!
Your post sounds interesting. I’ll check it out soon! 😀
Anyway, I believe that those awards you mentioned will definitely motivate schools to do more to promote environmental education. However, we must keep in mind that there are many other types of awards. While some schools may work towards improving environmental sustainability, others are often more enticed to work towards other awards such as “Best Practice Award” and “School Distinction Award”. Ultimately, the best way to make schools promote environmental education is when MOE makes it compulsory in our learning outcomes.
Thanks for reading my post, Dennis! 🙂
– Letitia
Hi Letitia,
Thanks for this great post. I’d like to ask you about this statement.
“Throughout my 12 years of education under the Singapore education system, I learnt about the impacts of climate change and what various stakeholders can do to mitigate it.”
It surprised me tremendously because I’ve gotten to know hundreds of students by now, and have asked many of them about the nature of their formal environmental education. Nearly all of them have said it largely consisted of the 3Rs and little else.
So I’m curious – is your cohort somehow representative of some shift that occurred in the curriculum or approach – one I’m not aware of ? Because even you said in your last post that environmental knowledge isn’t a formal learning outcome. Did you go to a different kind of school ?
jc
Hi Dr Coleman!
I’m glad that you enjoyed reading my post!
I attended government schools for all 12 years of my formal education. I want to clarify that what I learnt about climate change was from my geography lessons. Even then, I would like to highlight that my teachers merely taught its content and did not try to make it personally relevant for us students. Hence, it only transferred the necessary information to us but did not impact our environmental attitudes and behaviour permanently.
What you said is surprising to me because I didn’t take into account that other students who did not pursue geography were not taught about the impacts of climate change. Clearly, that’s something that MOE should alter to be in line with the government’s agenda of being committed to combat climate change.
In the meantime, we should do our best as individuals to keep carrying out pro-environmental practices and to spread a green message to those around us.
Have a good weekend ahead 🙂
– Letitia
I’d really like to understand better what you’re talking about. But you don’t have to reply here. Maybe you could just come see me some time after class and explain. Especially, I don’t know what you mean by “pursue geography”. Maybe I just don’t understand what year of schooling you’re referring to.
Hey Letitia!
Thanks for the interesting read! I think your suggestion on sending teachers to environmental workshops conducted by NGOs sound refreshing and worth carrying out. Apart from imparting real-world environmental knowledge to students, I believe the teachers themselves can be pretty inspired from this journey too 🙂 However, what do you think of the feasibility of this idea? Especially from the point of view of the school management boards? Since you mentioned that “environmental sustainability is not considered a “key education outcome” in Singapore”, will schools be willing to provide funding for and resources to this external activity that may not even help boost their rankings (which I assume is extremely important to the management)?
Deborah
Hi Deborah!
Thanks for dropping by!
I think you’re quite right that based on the current outlook of our education system, school management boards may not be willing to endorse environmental education workshops if they require a substantial allocation of budget and resources. I was thinking along the lines of NGOs conducting free environmental education workshops for school teachers instead. When I interviewed WWF Singapore some time ago and asked them about their eco-schools programme, they mentioned that NGOs like WWF are often invited to environmental networking sessions — thereby allowing them to reach out to schools and promote their programme actively. My main point being that NGOs like WWF are always on the lookout to collaborate with schools and increase environmental awareness. 😀 Although local schools may not be receptive to external activities that “do not boost their rankings” now, we must never forget the importance of constantly finding new ways to spread awareness of our environmental crisis.
Cheers,
Letitia 🙂