YOUNG PEOPLE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

IMPLICATIONS OF A STUDY OF YOUTH ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES AND EDUCATION IN THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION FOR CURRICULUM REFORM DURING THE

UN DECADE OF EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABEL DEVELOPMENT

JOHN FIEN1 RMIT UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA2

Abstract National studies of environmental attitudes are increasingly becoming a part of the environmental policy mix, especially in countries in the North. There are now also many cross-cultural surveys. It is notable, however, that such research has mostly been confined to North America and Europe and has concentrated nearly exclusively on adult environmental attitudes. Two recently published books, Environment, Education and Society: Local Traditions and Global Discourses in the Asia Pacific (Yencken, Fien and Sykes 2000) and Young People and the Environment: An Asia-Pacific Perspective (Fien, Yencken and Sykes 2002), break this pattern with a focus on the Asia Pacific region and an emphasis on young people. These books report the efforts of a team of over forty researchers in twelve countries in Asia and the Pacific and involved a detailed analysis of cultural influences on youth environmental knowledge, beliefs and behaviour in each country and a series of focus group interviews and a questionnaire survey with approximately one thousand 16-17 year old students in a major city in each country. This paper uses the findings of this project to reflect upon the implications for curriculum reform in secondary schools in the Asia-Pacific region during the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. The cultural context Our region is a particularly important one for exploring the cultural aspects of environmental attitudes. The various countries in the research have different cultural traditions – and many subcultures – that affect the formation of environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. It comprises countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the USA with predominantly Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman traditions and attitudes to nature; countries such as China, Taiwan and Singapore with Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist traditions and in China's instance more recent Communist influences; countries such as Japan and Korea with their own distinct versions of these traditions; a country such as India with Hindu and Muslim traditions; a country such as Thailand with strong Buddhist traditions; countries such as Indonesia with a strong Muslim tradition; and other countries with mixes of traditions such as the Philippines (Catholic with other Christian, Muslim and indigenous) and Fiji (Melanesian, Hindu and Western). The region also includes the diverse cultures of the indigenous people of

1 This paper is a shortened version of Chapter 12 in Environment, Education and Society: Local Traditions and Global Discourses in

the Asia Pacific (Yencken, Fien and Sykes 2000). It also draws upon ideas I wrote for Chapter 3 of Environment and Society: Education and Public Awareness for Sustainability, Background Paper prepared for UNESCO International Conference, Thessaloniki (UNESCO 1997)

2 Email <john.fien@rmit.edu.au>

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countries in the region. The countries in the study were therefore representative of most of the main cultural and religious groupings in the world. There are long traditions of responsibility and care for the environment in every country involved in the research. For example, in India, although nature is approached through humanity, all living things are seen as sacred and to be worshipped. This is common across the three great Indian religious traditions, Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. The Islamic tradition, reflected in countries such as Brunei, in parts of India, Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries in the region, stresses a relationship of stewardship rather than mastery of nature with the Koran requiring people looked after and protect God’s creation. The same worldview is found in the environmental ethic of the many indigenous groups in the region. The main cultural traditions of China (Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism) advocate respect for nature. Christian religions also advocate stewardship of the environment and care for other living things. In all or nearly all these traditions there are, however, countervailing traditions. In Christianity, for example, the belief that God created people in his own image and gave humans dominion over the earth has often been discussed as a source of western disregard for the environment. There are similar tensions in other religions also and these give rise both to environmental respect and disregard on different occasions. The Confucian principles of reciprocity and balance mean that Chinese cultures have traditionally perceived the world as unity or balance of conflicting opposites. The research design The study had two central goals. The first goal was to explore the balance of global environmental thinking and local cultural influences on the environmental attitudes of young people. The second goal was to analyse the findings of the study in order to identify the implications for future curriculum development in the different countries of the region. However, both of these goals depended upon collecting data on the environmental attitudes of a representative sample of young people in each of the cities involved. The purpose of this paper is to share a summary of the findings and to identify implications that might guide ongoing curriculum development during the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. First of all, it must be noted that it is not an easy task to explore and compare environmental attitudes of young people in different countries. There are cultural, conceptual and methodological difficulties of some magnitude and many associated practical problems. A major issue for the research was that of cultural context. Each of the countries involved in the research had different cultural traditions – and many subcultures – that affect the formation of environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. There is furthermore vigorous theoretical debate about universal and relativist norms and values in different cultures, and especially across cultures. A related cultural issue concerned problems of cross-cultural comparison as terms used in one culture have different meanings in others. These problems of language and meaning are accentuated whenever translation is required. As a result, the first research task for project members in each country was to undertake an extensive trace the environmental, social, educational, economic, political and media influences that have contributed to environmental

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thinking in their countries and to analyse how these may be impacting on the experiences of young people. The key conceptual issue related to the concept of attitude. What is meant by attitude? What are we measuring when we attempt to measure attitude? What might be the relationship between attitude and behaviour? How is behaviour measured? What influence does knowledge have on attitude and behaviour? If we are testing knowledge what kind of knowledge is significant? Much attention has been given in recent years to the nature and components of environmental attitudes. Attitude is a complex concept, characterised “by an embarrassing degree of ambiguity and confusion” (Fishbein & Ajzen 1975: 6). However, it is commonly held in the psychological literature that attitude has three structural dimensions: cognition, affect and conation. Cognition relates to knowledge and beliefs; affect concerns feelings; and conation concerns tendencies to act. While there is debate over the functional relationship between these three components and whether they can be measured in isolation from each other, this study concentrated upon these three components and sought to triangulate conclusions by having multiple measures of each and balancing the results of survey answers with focus group questions. The major methodological issue was to find ways of measuring environmental knowledge, beliefs and behaviour. A related concern was to identify samples from each country that would yield data that was comparable in terms of age, gender mix, socio-economic status and years of schooling. From our deliberations about these issues we concluded that the research needed to include a serious attempt to describe the cultural contexts in which environmental attitudes in individual country were being formed. We also used techniques for translating the questionnaires that ensured as far as possible that the meaning of the questions did not change significantly in translation. We concluded that notwithstanding our best efforts in these two regards there would remain important limitations on the authority that we could give to comparisons of the patterns of findings across the different countries involved in the research. This did not mean, however, that no valid analyses could be made. In particular, we could look to see where there were commonalities in findings and where there were significant differences. The commonalities might be reasonably interpreted as based on shared cross-cultural values. The differences, it might be inferred, could be based on local cultural or situational contexts, which, although they might be very difficult to source with authority, provided indicators of the influence of local and traditional values. We also concluded that we should focus on students in at least one large city in each country and that we should work with students in the last two years of high school and who were attending schools whose students results were so high that a very high proportion went on to university. This does not mean that we do not think that the views of rural youth, younger people or students of average academic ability are not important. Rather, these decisions are a reflection of the desire for comparability of data within the resources available for the study. One advantage of the chosen sample, however, is that we can claim that the sample represent the views of the young people who have a strong chance of going on to university and perhaps becoming the business, academic, political and military leaders of Asia in coming decades.

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Methodologically, we also concluded that one form of survey technique would not suffice given the great cultural, social and economic diversity in the region. We decided to balance quantitative and qualitative techniques by using both a questionnaire survey and focus group interviews. The two books, Environment, Education and Society: Local Traditions and Global Discourses in the Asia Pacific (Yencken, Fien and Sykes 2000) and Young People and the Environment: An Asia-Pacific Perspective (Fien, Yencken and Sykes 2002), provide detailed analyses of the findings. The former focuses on cultural themes such as the influence of religion, indigenous beliefs, political systems, etc. The latter provides an analysis on a country-by-country basis. Appendix 1 is a set of summary tables. Here, the focus is on a summary of the overall conclusions and the curriculum implications.

Overall conclusions

The richness and diversity of these traditions and the many ways in which they embody notions of stewardship of nature are very striking. However, despite the individual differences, the focus group interviews and surveys yielded remarkably consistent pattern in the findings about the environmental awareness, knowledge, beliefs and behaviour of young people across the region. These findings have important implications for environmental education policy and curriculum development. First, as might be expected, awareness and knowledge of individual environmental concepts vary considerably. Nevertheless it could be said that there is at least some awareness in every country of all the concepts discussed in the research. These concepts included: the carbon cycle, sustainable development, biodiversity, renewable resources, ecology, intergenerational equity, the precautionary principle, the greenhouse effect, ozone layer depletion and carrying capacity. Even the least known concepts, intergenerational equity and the precautionary principle, were known to at least 20% of students in all countries. However, those concepts that were less discipline-specific and more sustainable development related – the newer ones – were far less well known and understood perhaps a sign of curricula in most countries failing to keep up to date with developments in national policy Second, young people recognise environmental problems as real and significant and are knowledgeable and concerned about a wide range of local, national and global problems. However, questions can be asked about the depth of understanding that lies beneath these high levels of awareness. For example, in every country the destruction of the ozone layer was seen as the most important environmental issue facing the world. Yet, this is one of the very few global problems that international action seems to have solved, although recovery to pre-1980 levels is not expected until around 2050. Probing this situation might lead to several questions. Are students’ misunderstandings due to incomplete teaching, inadequate educational resources or, perhaps, the tendency for environmental courses to focus on problems rather than solutions and success stories? Third, environmental beliefs are widely shared by young people across all countries despite differences in local cultural traditions, environmental situations and education systems. The great majority of students in all the countries in the study expressed strongly environmentally supportive views and beliefs. It could therefore be said that young people in all countries have moved decisively towards the adoption of an environmental paradigm. Interestingly, the young people generally believed that while protecting the environment is more important than economic growth, it is possible to

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have both a healthy environment and a prosperous economy. However, they do not seem to have a sound understanding of the relationships between social, economic and institutional frameworks, and ecological degradation and sustainability. This may be because the young people in every country said that the media, particularly television, was their major source of environmental information, followed by schools, whose contribution was often regarded as more reliable but also more boring. Increased attention to the humanities (especially media literacy) and the social sciences (especially ecological economics) may be appropriate ways of developing the concepts and skills needed to address this problem. Fourth, individual actions to protect the environment vary greatly within and between countries. However there is a clear pattern on at least one point: in all countries other than Japan at least half of the students claim to have taken some action to protect the environment. Even in Japan a third of the students say that they have taken some action. The nature of the actions taken is also similar – domestic actions such as recycling predominate. The question that needs to be asked about this finding is ‘Why is the figure so low, especially when the young people said that they usually felt good when they took such actions?’ Perhaps, it is because the vast majority of students felt that they did not know much about what they could do and did not have faith in social institutions to support their actions. Indeed, the knowledge that young people seem to have about the environment is mainly propositional in nature, rather than procedural; ie it is ‘knowledge about the environment’ rather than ‘knowledge how to work for the environment’. This situation might help explain the ambivalence between the young people’s high levels of expressed concern and their general lack of willingness to change personal life-styles or take other actions to protect the environment. This gives rise to a fifth important conclusion from the research: school curricula need to change so that young people explore the many possible ways in which current systems can change to support sustainability, in which current lifestyles reflect these systems, and in which their own actions can contribute to a sustainable future. At the very least, a much better understanding of the nature of the problems and their likely solutions might be achieved and, in this way, some of the pessimism and negativity expressed by the young people might be dissipated. The next section addresses these curriculum implications in detail. Curriculum Implications for Attention during the DESD These findings point to the need for curriculum reform on at least three levels. Firstly, there is a need for many more subjects than biology and geography to focus on environmental issues. While much work has been done on the environmental dimensions of all subjects in other parts of the world, and on environmental studies and across-the-curriculum approaches to environmental education in primary schools, and teacher education in the Asia-Pacific region, little work has been done to develop an explicit focus on environmental education in secondary schools in this region. In all countries, we saw that students fared much better in understanding traditional concepts from biology and geography than they did in defining the concepts of sustainable development, biodiversity, carrying capacity, the precautionary principle and intergenerational equity. This second set require much greater exposure and discussion

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than they are receiving at the present time because of their significance in environmental thinking. However, few of these are yet to make their way into syllabuses in the countries of the region and there is an urgent need to begin to develop an understanding of the key concepts that can shape sustainable development. While only five such concepts were used in the survey, many others from the fields of political ecology and ecological economics could have been used. These include: ecological footprint, ecospace, natural resource accounting, life-cycle analysis, environmental assessment, eco-efficiency, sustainable consumption and so on. A fuller set of concepts such as these (and their definitions), and which could form the basis of a contemporary approach to environmental and sustainability learning, is provided in Box 1. Secondly, teachers and students need increased flexibility for choosing topics and issues to investigate so that they may concentrate on the life role relevance of schooling. However, this will require loosening the grip of discipline-based subjects and nationally or centrally determined examinations on the secondary school curriculum. These are enormous barriers to the reorientation of education towards sustainable development, barriers that cannot be addressed by the efforts of individual teachers or even schools, no matter how committed they might be. Effectively addressing barriers such as these requires an appreciation of the role of education in the processes of social continuity and change, the diverse and sometimes contradictory roles of governments, and the corresponding multiple purposes of education. Thus, thirdly, there is a need for a major philosophical reorientation of secondary education. Central to this is an understanding of the roles of schooling in social reproduction and the ways in which the structures of secondary education reproduce, albeit unintentionally perhaps, unsustainable development. These structures also provide the context for identifying opportunities and strategies to reorient education towards the development of a civil society based upon the values and practices of sustainability. Schools serve many purposes today beyond academic ones. Schools are generally public institutions and, in most cases, are subject to the directions of government and its policy-making processes. However, one point seems to be common in all countries. This is that governments have multiple and sometimes contradictory roles and these are manifested in diverse ways in educational policies and practices (Carnoy and Levin 1985; Schlechty 1990). For example, on one hand, governments need to ensure that education systems socialise and educate citizens in ways that will enable them to contribute to desired economic activities and goals. This includes vocational knowledge and skills, but also the attitudes of responsibility, diligence, punctuality and social cohesion that will maintain and promote these goals. This is the “reproductive” role of the state and education. On the other hand, governments particularly in democratic countries, need to take action to maintain their public legitimacy by anticipating trends that may challenge national well-being and by responding to public concerns about social problems, such as racism, poverty, public safety and, increasingly, the environment. Education is one way in which governments seek to achieve this goal, generally by developing educational policies that enhance the capacities of citizens to respond to anticipated challenges, to identify and articulate their concerns, and to contribute as active and informed citizens to solutions by participating in discussions about them and other public issues. This is the role of the state and education in “constructing civil society”.

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Box 1: A Suggested Set of Concepts for Reforming the

Content of Secondary Education

1. Carrying capacity: The capacity of ecosystems to support continued growth in population numbers, resource consumption, and waste production.

2. Steady-state economy: A non-growth economy in which the demands of resource consumption are in balance with resource supply and production.

3. Ecospace: The total amount of energy, land, water and other resources that can be used regionally or globally without environmental damage, disadvantaging the capacities of others to meet their basic needs or impinging on the rights of future generations.

4. Sustainable development: A process by which the needs of present generations can be satisfied without compromising the ability of future generations to satisfy their needs.

5. Ecological footprint: The area of land and water needed to support the total flow of energy and materials consumed by a community or population indefinitely.

6. Natural resource accounting: A strategy that helps a household, corporation or government calculate its real wealth, i.e. the value of total economic production minus the value of the natural and social capital consumed to achieve it.

7. Eco-efficiency: A strategy for maximising the productivity of material and energy inputs to a production process whilst also reducing resource consumption and waste production and generating cost savings and competitive advantage.

8. Life Cycle Analysis: A management tool for identifying the net flows of resource and energy used in the production, consumption and disposal of a product or service in order to leverage eco-efficiency gains.

9. Sustainable consumption: The use of services and related products to satisfy basic human needs and bring a better quality of life while minimising the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle of the service or product.

10. The 5 Rs: Reduce, reuse, renew, recycle and rethink! 11. Local-global links: The recognition that the consumption of a product or service in one

part of the world is dependent on flows of energy and materials in other parts of the world and that this creates potential opportunities and losses economically, socially and environmentally at all points in the local-global chain.

12. Interdependence: The relationships of mutual dependence between all elements and lifeforms, including humans, within natural systems.

13. Biodiversity: The diverse and interdependent composition of lifeforms in an ecosystem that is necessary for sustaining flows of energy and materials indefinitely.

14. Interspecies equity: A consideration of the need for humans to treat creatures decently, and protect them from cruelty and avoidable suffering.

15. Intragenerational equity: A consideration of the need to ensure that all individuals and societies have access to the resources required to satisfy basic human needs and rights

16. Intergenerational equity: A consideration of the need to live off net resource production rather than environmental capital in order to enable future generations access a world that is at least as diverse and productive as the one each generation inherits.

17. Human rights: The fundamental freedoms of conscience and religion, expression, peaceful assembly and association which ensure access to democratic participation and meeting basic human needs.

18. Basic human needs: The needs and right of all people and societies for fair and equitable access to flows of energy and materials for survival and a satisfying quality of life within the limits of the Earth.

19. Media literacy: An appreciation of the role of the public media and marketing and advertising industries in creating perceptions of needs and wants and the skill to identify the roles thee media may play in encouraging and undermining sustainable consumption

20. Democracy: The right of all people to access channels for community decision making.

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The curriculum is a product of both the “reproductive” and the “constructing civil society” roles of governments. Unfortunately, the press of short-term political and economic priorities has given ascendancy to the reproductive roles of secondary education. There are historically embedded reasons for this in Asia and the Pacific because many education systems developed to serve the economic needs of colonial empires for factory workers, technicians, clerks and administrators in the colonies. This has resulted in education systems characterised by hierarchical patterns of knowledge which privilege literacy, mathematics and abstract science; hierarchical relationships between teachers and students; teacher-centred processes of teaching and learning; and competitive assessment and credentialing practices that favour the social differentiation and the reproductive roles of schooling. Summarising the impact of influences such as these, Orr (1991) draws attention to the powerful influences of overtly academic teaching methods on the hidden curriculum and which undermine the values of a sustainable society:

Process is important for learning. Courses taught as lecture courses tend to induce passivity. Indoor classes create the illusion that learning only occurs inside four walls isolated from what the students call, without apparent irony, the "real world". Dissecting frogs in biology class teaches lessons about Nature that no one would verbally profess. Campus architecture is crystalised pedagogy that reinforces passivity, monologue, domination, and artificiality. (Orr 1991: 101)

Thus, the process of reorienting education towards sustainability is a broader and more pervasive task than that of revising syllabuses to include new sustainability concepts and devising new teaching and learning materials that incorporate principles and examples of sustainability - as necessary as these reforms are. Orr (1992: 83) notes on this point that the crisis of unsustainability “cannot be solved by the same kind of education that helped create the problems.... Schools, colleges and universities are part of the problem”. Changing Pedagogy The multiple roles of education in response to the range of national goals that a country may have were described above as a balance between the reproduction of politically-endorsed (and mostly economically motivated) values, practices and institutions and the empowerment of students to play an informed and active role as members of civil society. These are not mutually exclusive roles, and education is designed to promote both. However, without a whole-of-government commitment to sustainable development in most countries, schools have tended to reproduce an unsustainable culture that intensifies environment and development problems rather than one that empowers citizens to work towards their solution. This situation of unbalanced priorities calls for a reaffirmation of the role of formal education in building civil society by helping students: (i) develop criteria for determining what is best to conserve in their cultural, economic and natural heritage; (ii) discern values and strategies for creating sustainability in their local communities; and (iii) their understanding so formed, with others, to national and global contexts. This is the contemporary version of what Dewey (1916) called the "reconstructionist" tradition in education. This is not to say that the economic imperatives that underlie the

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reproductive functions of formal education are to be ignored. Economically sound, ecologically sustainable and socially just forms of development are to be encouraged; indeed, appropriate development is a core principle of a sustainable society. However, a reorientation of education towards sustainability calls attention to the problematical effects of inappropriate development and unfettered economic growth, and also to the ways that these are perpetuated through dominant patterns of schooling and the narrow and limited range of knowledge, attitudes and skills students learn as a result. Building upon students’ strong levels of awareness of, and concern for, environmental quality in this way can be a major contribution to building a politically literate civil society. Indeed, as Orr (1992: 84) argues, “I see no prospect whatsoever for building a sustainable society without an active, engaged, informed, and competent citizenry” and this requires “an unwavering commitment by educational institutions to foster widespread civic competence”. While a curriculum organised around sustainability concepts such as those suggested above could be described as more relevant to contemporary social and environmental needs, it would make little contribution to a curriculum for reconstructing civil society unless the methods of learning and teaching that are used in secondary schools are also reformed. Indeed, pedagogical choices that teachers make are a significant determinant of the outcomes of the learning experiences of students. That is, the nature of the learning experiences provided for students will influence the outcomes achieved irrespective of whatever sustainable development concepts, themes and topics are the focus of learning. As Whitty (1985) remarks, whether or not particular lessons are ultimately reproductive or transformative (i.e. contributing to empowerment for participation in civil society) is essentially a matter of how they are worked on pedagogically and how they are articulated with other issues in and beyond the school. Issues of pedagogy are therefore vital in the reorientation of education towards sustainability. Pedagogy involves more than the traditional concept of instructional practices; it also subsumes the teacher’s visions of what education is for and how society might be. Thus, the reconstructionist tradition in education involves two related processes of pedagogy: the organisation of knowledge around a range of critical concepts and values so that they can explore the ethical implications of the issues under investigation, and the participation of students in community affairs so that they might become active members of civil society. These two aspects of pedagogy relate to two remaining curriculum implications of the country studies - the development of (i) an ethic for living sustainably and (ii) the willingness and ability of students to practice civic responsibility. The development of an ethic for living sustainably As a focus for education, sustainable development not only requires new concepts for thinking about the world but also new attitudes and values for making ethical judgements about the state of the environment and alternative propositions for enhancing its sustainability. This directs attention to the need to identify an appropriate ethic for living sustainably that can be integrated into the curriculum to help ensure student learning is holistic and has a moral base.

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As a sample set of values to encompass such an ethic, the principles in the Earth Charter have been endorsed by UNESCO as a basis for curriculum focus during the DESD, and include:

• To respect Earth and life in all its diversity; • To care for the community of life with understanding, compassion and love; • To build democratic societies that are just, sustainable, participatory and

peaceful; and • To secure Earth's bounty and beauty for present and future generations.

These four principles illustrate that the concept of sustainable development in the Earth Charter embraces the view that the problems of poverty, environmental degradation, ethnic and religious conflict, and social injustice are all interdependent, and that policies that address one problem can impact and improve other issues. However, ethics are not just a matter of attitudes and values. While these are important, ethics also involve moral reasoning and critical thinking, and it is this aspect of ethics that render them an essential concern of pedagogy. To have a set of values, however ethical, and teach them to students in an uncompromising way is indoctrination. However, it is possible to teach in a professionally ethical way with a commitment to sustainable development. This involves viewing pedagogy as a process of encouraging students to explore questions, issues and problems of sustainability, especially in contexts relevant to them and their communities, and the development of student-centred and interactive enquiry-based approaches to teaching and learning. Such approaches do not preclude the use of more teacher-centred methods such as exposition, narration and demonstration where appropriate. However, it does mean that, wherever possible, student learning will be based in the community, will use the environment and community as a resource for learning, and will involve such activities as debating controversial issues, role play, simulation games, values clarification and analysis, and discovery learning as well as a range of creative and experiential activities (see Fien, Heck and Ferreira 1997). Naish, Rawling and Hart identify the characteristics of such an enquiry-based pedagogy by describing it as an approach to teaching and learning which:

• identifies questions, issues and problems as the starting point for enquiry • involves students as active participants in a sequence of meaningful learning

through enquiry • provides opportunities for the development of a wide range of skills and abilities

(intellectual, social, practical and communication) • presents opportunities for fieldwork and classroom work to be closely integrated • provides possibilities for open-ended enquiries in which attitudes and values may

be clarified, and an open interchange of ideas and opinions can take place • provides scope for an effective balance of both teacher-directed work and more

independent student enquiry • assists in the development of political literacy such that students gain

understanding of the social world and how to participate in it. (Naish, Rawling and Hart, 1986: 46)

The focus on issues and problems in this enquiry-based approach to pedagogy may cause worry and concern for students if not handled well. However, as evident in our country studies, young people across all countries already are seriously concerned about the future of the environment and their place in it. Thus, in a discussion of the importance of action competence in developing students’ capacities for environmental

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citizenship, Jensen and Schnack (1997: 164) argue that, “It is not so much a question of creating anxiety during environmental education. The problem is more [one of] how to handle the anxiety and worry which students already feel”. Thus, they give primacy to the regular involvement of students in learning how to resolve problems, developing and evaluating visions of alternative futures, and actively working in and with the community on problems that are of significance to them. These three aspects of an action-focused pedagogy emphasise the importance of actively involving students in projects to build sustainability in their local communities which are discussed in he next section. Without regular experiences such as these, the reorientation of objectives, curriculum themes, and concepts for sustainability will be in vain. Empowerment to work for sustainability is the raison d’etre of reorienting formal education towards sustainable development. The willingness and ability of students to practice civic responsibility A key finding of the study that was common across all countries and, perhaps, was the most disheartening was the relatively strong sense of ambivalence (Connell 1997) that the young people showed towards making life style changes and practising civic responsibility in accord with their high levels of expressed interest in, and concern for, environmental matters. While young people in every country expressed a strong desire to improve the environment, few students described a past record of active environmental citizenship or a willingness to work for environmental protection in the future. While recycling and reusing, choosing household products that are better for the environment, and reducing water consumption were cited as regular activities, and some young people said that they had taken part in tree planting and clean-up campaigns, only a very small minority of young people in any of the countries said that they had written letters, signed petitions, attended meetings or made formal complaints. These are also the actions that most said that that they would not consider taking in the future also. This record of ambivalence exists despite the fact that a large majority of respondents (between 70% and 94%) in all countries stated that they felt “positive” or “really good” when they took pro-environmental actions and that they generally experienced favourable reactions and support for such actions from others involved, their teachers and their immediate families. This paradox cannot be explained easily. Indeed, there are many cultural and political prohibitions on western styles of active citizenship in several counties in the Asia-Pacific Region. However, there is a strong indication in the survey findings that the nature of common educational experiences plays an influential role also. For example, most young people said that they had poor skills and knowledge for bringing about environmental improvements, even if in only a small way. When they were asked to rate their knowledge and skills in this area, the highest response in all countries was only a medium ranking. Indeed, students in all the countries studied said that the two most common reasons for not acting in an environmentally-friendly way were a belief that their actions would not make a difference and that they felt that there was no practical alternative even when they knew that what they did was wrong. This reflects not only a lack of knowledge of possible alternatives but also a failure of schools to provide students with experiences that teach such knowledge and skills. It also indicates that students have rarely had the opportunity to work with others on practical environmental projects and develop confidence in their individual and collective abilities to successfully bring about change.

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Implications for Teacher Education Reforms to curriculum and pedagogy such as those outlined above can help empower teachers to take responsibility for planning learning experiences that can enhance the capacities of students to participate effectively as member of civil society in the interests of sustainable development. However, successfully inducting teachers into the new roles envisioned for them requires a recognition that educational change is multidimensional. Thus, effective changes to classroom practice require change in at least three areas: (i) the preparation and adoption of new curriculum guidelines, syllabuses, teaching activities and educational and materials, (ii) changes in teachers’ familiarity with, and use of, new forms of pedagogy and assessment, and (iii) the reflective development of teachers’ beliefs or practical theories of education (Fullan with Stiegelbauer 1991). The clarification of teachers’ commitments to education for sustainability, together with the development of their willingness and capacities to adopt new roles as curriculum developers, facilitators of student learning and assessors, make teacher education, at both the pre-service and the in-service levels, a vital aspect of the reorientation of education for sustainability (see Fien and Tilbury 1996). The UNESCO multimedia teacher education programme, Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future was developed to help satisfy this need. Conclusion Reorienting education towards sustainability is a process of educational reform and innovation. Individual countries, education systems, schools and teachers will need to reflect critically on the suggestions for curriculum and pedagogical reform and the more significant second-order changes to national priorities, educational goals and approaches to curriculum development, implementation and evaluation outlined in this chapter and to interpret and focus them for action in national and local contexts. It is possible that pre-Earth Summit forms of education could be considered a “failed innovation” despite the initiatives that could be cited. As Fullan with Stiegelbauer (1991: 354) lament, “We have a huge negative legacy of failed reform that simply cannot be overcome simply through good intentions and powerful rhetoric”. Reorienting environmental education for sustainability is powerful rhetoric and a wonderful aspiration. However, there is much to be learnt about the processes of educational innovation and change. Learning from the successful experiences of other educational reform movements and interpreting their lessons to education for sustainability and local cultural and educational contexts must become the new priority of priorities for environmental education and all those who, like Orr (1992), view “The crisis of sustainability, the fit between humanity and its habitat” not only as “a permanent feature on the public agenda” but “as the agenda” concludes therefore that:

No other issue of politics, economics and public policy will remain unaffected by the crisis of resources, population, climate change, species extinction, acid rain, deforestation, ozone depletion, and soil loss. Sustainability is about the terms and conditions of human survival .... Those presuming to educate should not stand aloof from the decisions about how and whether life will be lived in the twenty-first century. To do so would be to miss the Mount Everest issues on the historical topography of our age, and condemn ourselves to irrelevance. (83; 145)

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University Press, Stanford. Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education, Macmillan, New York. Fien, J., Heck, D. and Ferreira, J., eds. (1997 forthcoming) Learning for a Sustainable

Environment: A Workshop Manual for Teacher Educators, UNESCO-ACEID, Bangkok.

Fien, J. and Tilbury, D. (1996) Learning for a Sustainable Environment: An Agenda for Teacher Education in Asia and the Pacific, UNESCO-ACEID, Bangkok, pp. 58-59.

Fien, J., Sykes, H. and Yencken, D. eds. (2002) Young People and the Environment in Asia and the Pacific, Kluwer, Dortrecht and New York.

Fullan, M. with Stiegelbauer, S. (1991) The New Meaning of Educational Change, Cassell Educational Limited, London, p. 21.

Jensen, B. B. and Schnack, K. (1997) The action competence approach in environmental education, Environmental Education Research, 3 (2), 163-178.

Naish, M., Rawling, E. and Hart, C. (1986) Geography 16-19: The Contribution of a Curriculum Project to 16-19 Education, Longman, Harlow, p. 46.

Orr, D. (1992) Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World, State University of New York Press, Albany.

Orr, D. (1991) What is education for?, The Trumpeter, 8, p. 101. Schlechty, P. (199O) Schools for the 21st Century, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. UNESCO-EPD (1997) Environment and Society: Education and Public Awareness for

Sustainability, Background Paper prepared for UNESCO International Conference, Thessaloniki.

Whitty, G. (1985) Sociology and School Knowledge: Curriculum Theory, Research and Politics, Methuen, London.

Yencken, D., Fien, J. and Sykes, H. eds. (2000) Environment, Education and Society in the Asia-Pacific: Local Traditions and Global Discourses, London, Routledge.

14

Appendix 1: Summary of Findings

Table 1: Most important environmental issues – nationally and globally (% of students)

Population Ozone layer

Forests Household rubbish

Greenhouse Effect

Air pollution

Country

N G N G N G N G N G N G Australia 3 16 18 28 16 17 7 3 6 9 7 6

Brunei 3 16 7 37 14 13 34 6 2 13 9 10

China Guangzhou

46 11 2 25 9 12 2 <1 <1 6 7 10

China Hong Kong

26 6 7 39 1 16 11 1 1 19 21 5

Fiji 3 8 0 11 2 17 20 0 0 10 10 0

India 61 12 2 28 11 11 6 6 1 10 6 7

Japan 2 9 3 38 10 28 44 1 2 11 11 3

New Zealand

4 16 24 23 12 9 11 5 4 6 4 6

Singapore 8 6 11 55 3 17 35 1 3 8 12 2

Thailand 10 13 6 31 32 17 6 3 3 11 10 7

USA 15 31 19 22 12 10 4 2 3 5 17 9

NI = National Issue – students concerned about this problem at a national level

GI = Global Issue – students concerned about this problem at a global level

Numbers refer to the order of priority of issues for the country concerned. Figures in brackets show the percentage of students choosing that option.)

15

Table 2: Environmental concepts: Relatively high level of awareness and class discussion (% of students)

Green House Effect

Ozone Layer

Renewable Resources

Ecology Carbon Cycle

Inter-depen-dence

Australia - Heard of - Discussed

99 81

99 81

94 60

91 31

66 31

65 22

Brunei - Heard of - Discussed

98 58

99 57

98 58

90 51

91 73

71 20

China – Guangzhou - Heard of - Discussed

92 46

97 49

98 67

94 46

56 26

94 33

China – Hong Kong - Heard of - Discussed

98 59

96 47

98 56

73 35

47 18

78 25

Fiji - Heard of - Discussed

36 40

62 45

70 65

87 83

80 78

- -

India - Heard of - Discussed

99 95

97 93

99 95

99 73

99 95

97 85

Japan - Heard of - Discussed

86 33

92 58

32 6

92 18

52 18

50 8

New Zealand - Heard of - Discussed

95 64

97 67

91 60

78 38

75 50

79 45

Singapore - Heard of - Discussed

99 91

99 88

99 77

97 71

91 73

84 45

Thailand - Heard of - Discussed

99 70

99 69

87 36

99 69

70 27

98 32

USA - Heard of - Discussed

99 38

99 31

90 50

95 59

80 73

61 45

USA data refers to the discussion of the concepts both in class and at home

16

Table 3: Environmental concepts: Relatively low level of awareness and class discussion (% of students)

Sustainable Development

Carrying Capacity

Biodiversity Inter-generational

Equity

Precautionary Principle

Australia - Heard of - Discussed

54 16

50 16

49 15

35 6

22 3

Brunei - Heard of - Discussed

54 7

50 9

57 33

25 3

37 3

China – Guangzhou - Heard of - Discussed

87 11

72 22

90 43

62 11

66 15

China – Hong Kong - Heard of - Discussed

48 9

52 16

41 12

44 9

38 8

Fiji - Heard of - Discussed

19 25

48 32

20 17

76 43

15 10

India - Heard of - Discussed

68 38

48 26

86 72

35 17

26 14

Japan - Heard of - Discussed

43 13

43 10

67 12

36 4

26 3

New Zealand - Heard of - Discussed

47 12

54 13

50 13

40 8

31 6

Singapore - Heard of - Discussed

45 10

62 25

53 19

30 4

28 4

Thailand - Heard of - Discussed

66 6

95 55

90 39

94 25

96 25

USA - Heard of - Discussed

43 37

81 56

76 61

23 18

23 20

USA data refers to the discussion of the concepts both in class and at home

17

Table 4: Environmental concepts: Relatively high level of correct definitions (% correct) Green

House Effect

Ozone Layer

Renewable Resources

Ecology Carbon Cycle

Australia 71 38 60 443 45 Brunei 63 37 56 44 60 China – Guangzhou 45 54 58 44 40 China – Hong Kong 67 25 39 55 40 Fiji 29 45 34 42 36 India 67 57 32 73 50 Japan 48 82 8 14 26 New Zealand 55 32 48 `24 39 Singapore 94 75 57 59 78 Thailand 15 39 63 82 54 USA 73 44 54 57 54

Table 5: Environmental concepts: Relatively low level of correct definitions (% correct)

Sustainable

Development Carrying Capacity

Biodiversity Inter- generational

Equity

Precautionary Principle

Australia 26 78 81 63 20 Brunei 9 40 69 50 25 China – Guangzhou 53 65 59 73 55 China – Hong Kong 24 66 52 59 25 Fiji 34 49 41 46 25 India 25 39 46 71 19 Japan 24 55 24 51 20 New Zealand 20 58 58 3 19 Singapore 19 22 86 66 32 Thailand 60 70 68 64 14 USA 24 84 83 63 24

Table 6 Knowledge of environmental concepts (%) Country Correct responses Country Correct responses Australia 53 Japan 33 Brunei 53 New Zealand 42 China Guangzhou 59 Singapore 59 China Hong Kong 43 Thailand 53 India 50 USA 55

18

Table 7: Importance and reliability of sources of environmental information (% of students)

Television News papers

Radio School Friends and

Family

Govern-ment

NGOs Country

I R I R I R I R I R I R I R Australia 45 20 35 23 7 9 42 31 21 18 6 23 19 41

Brunei 61 51 49 35 12 16 46 37 30 23 11 21 18 30

China Guangzhou

68 27 29 11 23 18 36 28 26 24 15 35 12 35

China Hong Kong

37 18 30 20 10 11 31 32 11 14 18 46 31 54

India 44 39 48 45 14 8 71 58 44 39 8 16 12 17

Japan 49 22 26 22 5 12 17 16 16 22 3 12 6 29

New Zealand 37 26 32 27 10 15 36 27 21 20 8 21 27 45

Singapore 47 35 57 47 7 10 53 27 13 20 13 39 10 46

Thailand 72 37 27 13 10 10 30 27 20 20 14 39 10 41

USA 29 18 25 38 5 8 56 49 17 20 5 40 13 53

I = Most important a source of environmental information R = Very reliable source of environmental information

Totals exceed 100 because multiples answers were possible.

Table 8 Attitudes to economic growth vs environmental protection (% of students) Country Concentrate on

economic growth Concentrate on protecting the environment

Not sure

Australia 16 66 18 Brunei 25 59 14 China, Guangzhou 20 68 11 China, Hong Kong 32 59 9 India 8 81 9 Japan 4 83 13 New Zealand 13 64 22 Singapore 10 78 12 Thailand 20 71 9 USA 10 64 26

19

Table 9 Does economic growth have to be at the expense of the environment? (% of students) Country Economic growth

must be at expense of

environment

It is possible to have both

Not sure

Australia, Brisbane 17 78 5 Brunei 13 82 3 China, Guangzhou 17 81 1 China, Hong Kong 18 75 7 India 11 85 2 Japan 45 43 12 New Zealand 14 73 12 Singapore 22 76 3 Thailand 9 89 2 USA 17 75 8 Table 10 Environmental beliefs systems (% of students) Country Technological

Belief System Neutral Environmental

Belief System Australia 18 25 57 Brunei 20 31 49 China Guangzhou 27 23 51 China Hong Kong 21 26 53 Japan 15 25 61 New Zealand 20 28 52 Singapore 16 24 60 Thailand 16 30 55 USA 21 26 53 Table 11 Desire to improve the environment (% of students) Country Strong -

Very Strong Medium Weak -

Very Weak Australia 55 35 9 Brunei 66 27 3 China Guangzhou 87 12 2 China Hong Kong 54 40 7 Fiji 61 32 15 India 72 25 2 Japan 80 12 8 New Zealand 47 37 11 Singapore 59 36 4 Thailand 75 23 2 USA 61 32 8

20

Table 12 Actions to improve the environment in the last year (% of students)

Country Choosing environmental

household products

Writing letter, signing petition going to meeting

Deciding to reuse or recycle

Encouraging someone else

to change behaviour

Taking part in clean up campaign

Australia 60 29 74 42 19 Brunei 34 11 44 37 48 China Guangzhou

48 8 58 40 44

China Hong Kong

37 11 58 35 27

India 19 18 35 36 15 Japan 41 6 62 15 14 New Zealand 45 21 48 31 21 Singapore 65 7 75 46 28 Thailand 52 4 55 38 44 USA 47 12 86 44 23 Totals exceed 100 because multiples answers were possible. Table 13 Actions to improve the environment in the last year (% of students)

Country Making a report or complaint

Reducing water use

Trying to get information

for own interest

Taking part in tree

planting

Making a gift

Australia 10 45 19 23 24 Brunei 13 26 26 21 16 China Guangzhou 13 44 35 33 8 China Hong Kong 11 36 16 17 21 India 15 28 32 31 13 Japan 6 47 13 2 10 New Zealand 12 27 17 17 18 Singapore 6 60 27 4 27 Thailand 15 64 10 49 18 USA 8 36 17 20 12 Totals exceed 100 because multiples answers were possible.

21

Table 14 Reasons for environmentally unfriendly actions (% of students)

Country I don’t understand

Cost I’m not interested

I don’t have time

It’s more convenient

not to worry

My actions won’t make a difference

Australia 33 30 13 38 33 45 Brunei 8 10 5 12 7 19 China Guangzhou 12 23 8 22 18 33 China Hong Kong 29 30 24 35 26 39 India 29 11 10 33 10 67 Japan 50 34 34 48 24 59 N. Z. 32 31 16 35 29 44 Singapore 8 10 5 12 14 16 Thailand 25 35 10 34 34 44 USA 43 47 20 60 52 61 Totals exceed 100 because multiples answers were possible. Table 15 Reasons for environmentally unfriendly actions (% of students)

Country I don’t believe what people say about

damage to the environment

I don’t like being told what to do

I don’t want to do things

different from my friends

Although I know what I do is wrong, there is no practical

alternative

Other reasons

Australia 13 13 8 48 33 Brunei 4 5 3 16 13 China Guangzhou 9 15 15 44 35 China Hong Kong 9 9 17 45 22 India 22 16 23 71 35 Japan 7 17 11 9 30 New Zealand 13 17 13 35 32 Singapore 2 2 4 19 8 Thailand 15 26 28 73 33 USA 16 14 11 39 35 Totals exceed 100 because multiples answers were possible.