Few would doubt the need, in today's world, to promote behaviours that actively conserve environmental resources. At a general level, this often involves encouraging behaviours that involve a short-term cost for the individual in order to avoid a long-term negative outcome for the community. Examples of such behaviour are, taking the trouble to turn off lights to save electricity and fixing leaking taps to conserve water. It is these latter kinds of behaviours, namely those associated with the efficient use of water resources, which are the focus of this paper.

Faced with the high economic and practical costs of attempting to supply unlimited amounts of water for the Melbourne metropolitan area, the Board of Works has sought, by a number of means, to persuade its consumers to use water more efficiently. One aspect of its strategy was to promote water conservation within the educational curriculum by designing various educational materials and programs for different school levels. These and other promotional materials were made available to schools in the Melbourne metropolitan area in 1988. Prior to the distribution of this material, the data reported in this paper were gathered as the first stage of a longitudinal evaluation of the Board's education strategy.

The assumption underlying the Board of Works' educational program was that behaviour change is preceded by changes in knowledge. For example, it was assumed that a person, knowing something about the water cycle, and the system by which water is fed into our taps, would believe that it is important not to waste water. The result would be active water conservation in daily life. Some basis for this assumption has been provided by the report on domestic water use in Perth, Western Australia (Metropolitan Water Authority, 1985), where knowledge and attitudes were found to be predictors of actual water consumption. Such an assumption is based in a general way on a cognitive or information processing model of behaviour change, in which changes in behaviour are seen as proceeding from changes in relevant information or knowledge. This cognitive model is the basis for many social education programs both in schools and in the community. For example, the Quit Campaign and the AIDS campaign have both used strategies that aimed to inform the public about particular health-related behaviours.

The concept of education for the environment is well documented in the literature but is apparently less common in practice. Some of the reasons provided for this rhetoric-reality gap include: the controversial and political nature of the subject, the difficulty of empowering students into meaningful action, the challenge of using innovative methods, the difficulties associated with values education, and deficiencies in teacher preparation. Advocates of education for the environment encourage teachers to use student centred, experiential approaches yet provide little guidance to teachers on how to effectively utilise these approaches in their programs. There is a growing body of literature in the field of facilitation that is directly applicable to student-centred, experiential, environmental education. This paper will seek to demonstrate the relevance of facilitation skills, knowledge and experience to the effective implementation of education for the environment.

Participatory action research (PAR) derived from anti-colonial struggles in the third world in the 1960s. Traditionally it has been a method of the margins because of its commitment to linking social justice to research. Because of its counter-hegemonic tendency it has had great appeal among environmental educators advocating a socially critical approach to environmental education. However, with the ascendancy of neoliberal politics in recent years, PAR has become co-opted by international organisations such as the World Bank, IMF, OECD and UNESCO. In this paper I wish to critically examine the notion of participation in PAR, and its changing nature as a consequence of its cooptation into mainstream discourses. I explore “vectors of escape” from its assimilation into mainstream environmental education discourses. In exploring the notion of participation in participatory research processes I draw on South African case studies, which might find resonance in wider contexts.

The Youth Strike for Climate raised important global attention to interconnected climate, energy and environmental issues — it also compelled us to consider what we will do to address these pressing challenges. Developed through consideration of such dynamics, we propose critical energy literacy as an emerging theory that denotes understanding of the social, environmental, political and economic challenges, benefits and impacts of various energy sources, developments and technologies. Critical energy literacy is grounded in critical and decolonising approaches to STEM education; considerations for collaborative multi-, inter- and Trans disciplinary pedagogy; critical place-based inquiry and pedagogy; critical gender perspectives and critical media literacy and engagement. Enhancing societal critical energy literacy will assist with more equitable energy, transit, construction and environmental planning by and for communities, businesses and governments. In this theory-building commentary, we share insights related to and principles for our emerging theory of critical energy literacy which coalesced through personal experience with and previous studies into related initiatives and areas of inquiry, and recent reviews of literature as well as K-12, post-secondary and not-for-profit curricula in Canada with consideration for international contexts. A discussion of renewable energy development and education focused on the Canadian province of Alberta is presented as an illuminating exemplar.

This paper highlights issues identified in a study that explored the perceptions of secondary pre-service teachers, from Key Learning Areas (KLAs) that are traditionally and non-traditionally linked to environmental education. Perceptions shared by these pre-service teachers illustrated that they held views about the nature and scope of environmental education that could limit their practice as potential environmental educators. They also shared perceptions about constraints to the implementation of environmental education policy into practice. Implications for pre-service teacher education are discussed in light of these findings.

Aspects of environment are common topics in Australian primary schools. However Education for Sustainability (EfS), where students actively investigate the underlying causes of unsustainable practices and actively plan for and instigate change, is less well understood and less commonly practised. It cannot be assumed that pre-service teachers have the knowledge, skills and desire to incorporate EfS, as advocated in Australian policies, into their repertoires of practice, or, that they will acquire those skills as they gain teaching experience. Therefore for EfS to become an integral component of the primary school experience, carefully planned rather than ad hoc preparation for EfS is necessary in pre-service teacher education.

This essentially qualitative study describes how a one-semester, final year pre-service primary teacher unit in EfS was shaped, and reports on how a cohort of pre-service teachers responded, particularly in terms of how well prepared they felt to engage with EfS in future teaching. Although motivation and confidence to engage with EfS varied across the cohort, pre-service teacher education appeared to make a positive contribution to both. In a longitudinal design, five teachers who had participated in the EfS unit became the focus of individual case studies early in their teaching careers. Each case study investigated ways in which the beginning teacher engaged with EfS, linking teaching decisions to pre-service teacher education. The constructivist approach adopted by the tutors was particularly valued by the early career teachers. They appreciated various modes of experiential learning including engagement with the kinds of teaching strategies advocated in EfS and a strong orientation to the curriculum requirements of primary school.

However, the extent to which each early career teacher implemented EfS was tempered not only by personal skill and motivation, but also by work situations which did not necessarily support EfS endeavours. While pre-service teacher education has a vital role in the promulgation of EfS in schools, and this study shows that it can be effective in advancing the desires of beginning teachers to do something for the environment, there are broad implications for the institutions that so heavily impact on the capacity of school systems and university systems to act in EfS.

Information communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential to enable intending and in-service teachers in regional, rural and remote regions greater access to tertiary education. This paper describes how a fourth year environmental education subject has been successfully delivered wholly online for several years and how pre-service and in-service teachers have responded to learning through an online platform. Research indicates the necessity to create a social learning space in cyberspace to support learning; as well as the importance of building flexible learning opportunities and offline assessment tasks to generate meaningful learning experiences related to local places. Teaching environmental education online may initially create the dilemma of how to engage meaningfully with place-based learning through the no-place of cyberspace. However, carefully designed, online learning can and does support positive learning outcomes. While there are limitations to online study, well-conceived, web-based delivery is certainly no barrier to teaching and learning environmental education in the tertiary sector.

Informed by Stern and colleagues’ value-belief-norm theory and their earlier empirical work, we examined levels and predictors of cognitive and behavioural environmental concern (EC) of university students in a Canadian postsecondary context. Data for this study were obtained through completion of self-administered questionnaires from a sample of 421 undergraduate students attending a public university in Saskatchewan, a province heavily focused on expanding resource extraction. The study used a descriptive, correlational, and cross-sectional methodology. Statistical analysis was performed in three parts: (a) univariate description of students’ cognitive and behavioural EC indicators; (b) bivariate associations to assess the nature and direction of the relationships between EC measures; and (c) multivariate analyses to test the causal structure of the theoretical model. Results showed no widespread acceptance of the ‘New Ecological Paradigm’. Students were slightly more prone to place responsibility for environmental protection at the door of government and industry than themselves. Respondents practised a range of environmentally supportive behaviours (ESB) with varying intensities. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses provided support for several of the theory’s propositions in predicting generalised and specific environmental beliefs and ESB. Findings highlighted the complex relationships between personal background, academic and cognitive variables and ESB. That formal instruction on the environment influenced cognitive and behavioural EC, both directly and indirectly, suggests it is essential universities have formal curricula that expose students to the types of environmental knowledge, awareness, and critical thinking skills to promote environmental literacy and address unsustainable lifestyles and attitudes. Institutional interventions, including universities’ role as ‘effective change agents’, are discussed.

This article draws on La Via Campesina's definition of food sovereignty and its potential for reconceptualising food as a basic human right within the dominant Australian food discourse. We argue that the educative value that emerges from urban food production in Australia stems from the action of growing food and its capacity to transform individuals’ social and environmental concerns over food systems. Community participation in urban food production can promote a learning process that generates political understanding and concerns over food systems. We use the education theories of transformative learning and critical consciousness to discuss how Australian urban food production systems can create this social and environmental support for alternative food systems. By having control over food production practices and building collective understandings of how food choices impact global food systems, elements of food sovereignty can develop in an Australian urban context.

Despite the increasing importance of, and interest in, documenting the impact of environmental education programs on students' learning for sustainability, few tools are currently available to measure young students' environmental learning across all the dimensions of knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours. This paper reports on the development of such a tool, using an iterative action research process with 134 students, aged six to eleven, attending programs at an Environmental Education Centre in Queensland, Australia. The resulting instrument, the Environmental Learning Outcomes Survey (ELOS) incorporates observations of students' engagement in learning processes as well as measuring learning outcomes, and allows both of these aspects to be linked to particular components of the environmental education program. Test data using the instrument are reported to illustrate its potential usefulness. It is envisaged that the refined instrument (appended) will enable researchers to measure student environmental learning in the field, investigate environmental education program impacts and identify aspects of programs that are most effective in facilitating student learning.

This study investigated student views on the relationship between their environmental attitudes and behaviours and their thoughts about barriers and motivators to environmentally responsible behaviours. The environmental attitudes and behaviours of students participating in a classroom-based environmental education program were measured using two Likert scales that had been tested for internal consistency and validity using the Rasch polytomous measurement model. Focus groups were held for students to comment on the results from the two questionnaires and provide suggestions with regards to the barriers and motivators influencing their behaviour. The findings of the study support previous research about the relationship between attitude and behaviour and the students' comments on the results provided insight that has not been widely reported elsewhere. Conclusions were drawn regarding the most significant barriers to specific environmental behaviours for high school students and how environmental education programs could be designed and delivered more effectively in secondary schools with the aim of engendering environmentally responsible behaviours in students.

Implementing environmental activism at school can be socially risky business. This paper explores the narratives of three women who undertook award winning environmental projects in two regional Australian schools. Tara (student, age 15), Anne (student, age 15) and Andrea (principal, age 42) document the complex and courageous social negotiations they were forced to undertake in response to being negatively constituted as “a greenie” at school. Tara and Anne met resistance from their peers and family and Andrea fielded complaints from members of the local school community. This micro-qualtitative analysis shows that, despite the heartfelt rhetoric of environmental education, assuming an environmental identity at school can be problematic and difficult to enact. Environmental action is still not seen as a “cool” social practice in some adolescent peer groups. Nor is environmental action positioned as central to the “legitimate” practices of schooling in some communities. Successful projects rely on students and staff who are willing to actively, and persitently, negotiate social opposition to their achieving an ecological vision for school practice.

The School Strike for Climate campaign led to public discussion about children’s political participation. Children are generally excluded from formal political systems, however this campaign challenges mainstream attitudes that children are not sufficiently competent to participate in politics. This paper presents an analysis of Australian mainstream media representations of adult responses to the School Strike for Climate events held in Australia in March 2019. When analysed against theories of childhood, two primary narratives are reflected in what adults said about children’s participation in the campaign. Anticipatory narratives focus on children appropriately developing into adults, and are represented by the notion that strikers should be in school, be punished for missing school, and are ‘just kids’ who should not be listened to. Protectionist narratives seek to shelter children from adult matters, suggesting strikers were brainwashed and raising welfare concerns. Neither of these narratives regard children as citizens capable of political voice, despite these children acting prefiguratively to create a world in which their civic participation is valued. Social movement theories of prefiguration are also explored in this paper, providing a counter argument to suggestions that children have no political agency and should be excluded from activism and discussions regarding climate change.

Global initiatives and a rapidly expanding academic literature identify the responsibility that universities have to incorporate sustainability education into their curricula. This study had two aims: first, to investigate the extent to which Australian undergraduate management curricula explicitly identified a focus on sustainability and, second, to examine the changes that had occurred between 2009 and 2014. A web-based content analysis was undertaken to gain a snapshot view of the emphasis placed on sustainability in all 40 Australian universities’ business/management courses. Our findings showed that in 2014, three-quarters of the courses identified failed to include even one subject that all students must study that mentioned sustainability. This finding was only marginally different from the 2009 findings, suggesting that there is a long way to go before sustainability education in Australian universities’ undergraduate management curricula could be claimed to be fulfilling the needs of students, businesses, and the broader society.

One thing about which there is widespread consensus is that the earth and its inhabitants are in social and environmental peril. This is where the consensus ends, however, for there is equally widespread disagreement as to the nature and causes of the problems (more social or more environmental), the severity of the problems (for whom are they recognised and felt as problems), and the most appropriate and effective solutions necessary to deal with them. This paper argues for the adoption of a critical, feminist perspective in examining the area of Environmental Education (EE) as an ‘appropriate response’ to this globally perceived socio-environmental crisis.

Historically, environmental education emerged out of the early 1970's during the time when the environmental movement was gaining momentum and vitality on a worldwide scale (Disinger, 1983; Robottom, 1985a; Stapp, 1970). It was envisioned by the international participants at the three major UNESCO-UNEP Environment Conferences held that decade, that EE was the most appropriate and hopeful educational response to the crisis situation of the deterioration of quality of life and the environment (Fensham, 1978).

The aims of EE that emerged from the UN conference in Tbilisi, USSR in 1977 were particularly ambitious in that they transcended a concern with the roles, objectives and guiding principles of EE and spelled out the need for an understanding of:

In the 1998 Taiwanese national curriculum revision, environmental education was one of six new “Important Issues”. To some early observers, the generic “framework” sections of this 1998 curriculum (Aims, Goals, Core Competences) resonated well with the integrative and transdisciplinary nature of environmental education. This synergy held out promise for the successful introduction of environmental education to Taiwan, despite it not being one of the seven new Learning Areas (or subjects). However, this study suggests that a pervasive nation-wide exam-driven, subject-dominated educational climate resulted in a somewhat truncated “Taiwan-ness” in the environmental education that emerged. In three Junior High Schools preparing for curriculum implementation, there was little early focus on, either the national curriculum's framework aspects or the intended integrative nature of environmental education. Rather, by 2004 curriculum integration had become offcially non-compulsory, and environmental education was conceived as a minor priority, to be wedged where possible into spaces within the traditional subjects.

In this article, we consider the climate strikes in the context of intergenerational narratives that de/limit young people’s political subjectivities and imaginaries concerning climate change. Considering the strikes alongside other youth-led responses to the crisis, we reconsider the question of young people’s climate change ‘literacy’ and posit that young people’s literacies are characteristically transformative. Despite their broadly transformative nature, however, the climate change literacies of young people remain bound up in a complex, adult-centred discursive framework that limits young people in various ways, including positioning them as objects of care or otherwise objectivising their activism. We advocate interdisciplinary thinking in support of creative and transformative pedagogies arising from and informed by the climate strikes, arguing that young people’s political subjectivities are indivisible from their cultural imaginaries. We advocate a step change in the way educators respond to the educational dimensions of climate strikes, as well as the educational opportunities this movement provides. Vitally, we include young people themselves in the category of educators and consider the ways the climate strikes represent an educational opportunity in which young people share, support and collaborate as educators and learners.

In recent years discussions surrounding early childhood curriculum has focused on the movement from developmental to sociocultural theory. A further area worthy of investigation involves the role of content in early childhood education, specifically the relationship between content, context and pedagogy. The paper draws on teacher vignettes to consider how environmental education can be represented as a content area in early years education. Issues associated with environmental education as an emerging area of importance in early childhood education are also discussed.

This study aimed to explore the relationships between situational and psychological factors and Hong Kong citizens’ plastic waste management (PWM) intentions based on an extended theory of planned behaviour model with situational factors. A total of 996 Hong Kong permanent residents were surveyed, and data were analysed using structural equation modelling. The results revealed that situational factors had a direct and positive effect on PWM intention, but also affected PWM intention indirectly through their significant effects on attitude and perceived behavioural control regarding PWM. The implications for environmental education and policy are discussed.