30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Paper
How Are Young People’s Growth Mindsets Associated with Their Climate Change Agency?
Inkeri Rissanen, Elina Kuusisto, Essi Aarnio-Linnanvuori
Tampere University, Finland
Presenting Author: Rissanen, Inkeri;
Aarnio-Linnanvuori, Essi
Urgent need for collective transformation in human activity is the baseline of critical approaches in sustainability education, climate change education and environmental education. Scholars in these fields emphasize the potential of education to challenge the prevailing cultural norms that maintain unsustainable lifestyles and systems. However, a major gap between scholarly ideals and their implementation in educational systems persists. Better understanding of learning processes through which social, behavioural and cultural change may occur, including the key factors that enable or inhibit these processes, is needed to underpin transformative climate change education. (Andreotti et al. 2018; Evans et al. 2017; Zilliacus & Wolf 2021).
Value-action gap is a construct used to describe the discontinuity between an individual’s personal, pro-environmental values and their behaviour: even though people are environmentally aware, they don’t always act in a pro-environmental manner (Grandin et al. 2021). In order to develop effective educational approaches to overcome the value-action gap, psychological barriers and enablers of pro-environmental behaviour and climate agency need to be well understood. In this paper, we present empirical research on an under-researcher topic in this area: the role of growth mindsets (i.e. lay theories of malleability) as enablers of young people’s climate change agency.
Fixed and growth mindsets are networks of core beliefs about the nature of humans and cultures. Beliefs concerning the extent to which individual and group traits are malleable or fixed shape people’s ways of making sense of the socio-cultural reality and influence their ways of thinking about and acting towards change. Fixed mindset indicates low belief in the ability of humans and human groups to change, whereas growth mindset is a construct that is used when referring to a tendency to hold high beliefs in the malleability of human qualities. In intergroup contexts, growth mindsets predict, for instance, less aggression and anxiety and more openness and willingness to work toward improvement. Relevance of the mindset-phenomenon for education is amplified by the fact that even brief mindset interventions, if carefully contextualized and adapted to target populations, have achieve powerful and long-lasting impact on people’s willingness to work towards both personal change and change in the world. (Dweck & Yeager 2019; Goldenberg et al. 2020; Rattan et al. 2017)
Research which connects mindsets with climate change agency is also emerging. According to these recent studies, growth mindset about the world is associated with attitudes towards climate change, beliefs about its mitigation as well as pro-environmental behaviour (Duchi et al. 2020; Soliman & Wilson 2017). However, research that would explore how some of the core mindset dimensions – beliefs about the malleability of persons as well as beliefs about the malleability of human groups – are associated with climate change agency, is missing. In this paper, we present empirical evidence of the association between mindsets and climate change agency among European young people. The study is part of European Consortium CCC-CATAPULT (Challenging the Climate Crisis: Children’s Agency to Tackle Policy Underpinned by Learning for Transformation), which researchers young people’s experiences of and learning around the climate crisis in four European cities: Bristol (UK), Tampere (Finland), Galway (Ireland) and Genoa (Italy).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedWe explored the association between mindsets and climate agency through the following research questions:
RQ1 What kind of mindsets do European young people have about a) persons and b) groups?
RQ2 What kind of climate change agency do young people have?
RQ3 How are fixed and growth mindsets associated with young people’s climate change agency?
Participants (N=1814) of the study were 15–18-year-old young people from four European cities, Tampere (Finland) (n=553), Genoa (Italy) (n=392), Galway (Ireland) (n=507) and Bristol (UK) (n=352). They were reached through schools and answered an online survey in a classroom, in the presence of either teacher or researcher.
The data was collected as part of the project CCC-Catapult, which utilizes a co-productive approach. Young people from the age group of the survey respondents were involved in the development of the survey as well as interpretation of its results. The research project was introduced to all respondents through a video recorded by the projects’ Youth Action Partnership group members.
The survey included two scales measuring mindsets: Levy et al.’s (1998) four items were utilized to study mindset about persons (implicit theories about persons, ITP) and Halperin et al.’s (2011) four items to measure mindset about groups (implicit theories about groups ,ITG). We used a Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 6=strongly agree), where lower scores indicated growth mindset tendencies and higher scores fixed mindset tendencies.
Climate change agency was measured with several scales. Youth were asked to evaluate how often they discuss about climate change with their family, friends and teachers (Climate Justice Survey 2020, 2021). Six items were scored on a scale that varied from 1=never to 6=daily. Willingness to help to create a more sustainable world was measured with Adolescent Internal Environmental Locus of Control Scale (Colebrook-Claude, 2019). Six items were evaluated on a four-point scale 1=not at all important, 4=very important. Furthermore, barriers to act on climate change were studied with items adopted from Youth Climate Justice Survey 2020 (2021) (Likert scale 1=strongly disagree to 4 strongly agree).
Psychometric properties of the scales and all analyses were computed in SPSS. One-way analyses of variances (ANOVA) were utilized to study differences between the countries as well as the association between mindsets and different dimensions of climate change agency.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsAccording to the preliminary analysis of the data, European young people seem to be more inclined towards growth mindsets than fixed mindsets, with some statistically significant difference between the four countries participating in the study. Furthermore, young people who have stronger tendencies towards growth mindsets, report discussing climate change with other people more often, have higher willingness to help to create a more sustainable world and report less barriers to taking climate action.
Altogether, our findings indicate that two central dimensions of growth mindsets – belief in the malleability of humans as individuals, and particularly in the malleability of the “kind of persons” they are, as well as belief in the malleability human groups, can be beneficial for the development of climate agency. Our data is correlational, and the causality could be also interpreted to the other direction – engaging in climate action leading to enhanced belief in the malleability of humans. However, earlier research with experimental designs gives reasons to interpret that the core beliefs regarding the ability of humans to change might serve as enablers or barriers for taking action (Goldenberg et al. 2020).
There are important educational implications that relate to our findings. Mindset interventions that have taught about the malleability of the brain, or about historical examples of how major changes have happened in the thinking and behavior of human groups, have had powerful and long-lasting influence for their target groups’ mindsets, learning and behavior (Dweck & Yeager 2019). Low belief in the ability of people to change can be disheartening and decrease motivation to act to mitigate climate change, and be one important factor which maintains value-action gap. Therefore, learning from successful mindset interventions and integrating teaching about malleability of human qualities and human groups to climate change education is recommended.
ReferencesAndreotti, V., Stein, S., Sutherland, A., Pashby, K.L., Susa, R. & Amsler, S. (2018) Mobilising different conversations about global justice in education: toward alternative futures in uncertain times. Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review, 26. pp. 9-41.
Colebrook-Claude, C. (2019). Adolescent Internal Environmental Locus of Control Scale
(AINELOC) measurement tool. American Journal of Environmental Sciences, 15(2), 64-81.
doi: 10.3844/ajessp.2019.64.81
Dweck, C. S., & Yeager, D. S. (2019). Mindsets: A view from two eras. Perspectives on Psychological science14(3), 481-496.
Duchi, L., Lombardi, D., Paas, F., & Loyens, S. M. (2020). How a growth mindset can change the climate: The power of implicit beliefs in influencing people's view and action. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 70, 101461.
Evans, N. (Snowy), Stevenson, R.B., Lasen, M., Ferreira, J.A. & Davis, J. (2017). Approaches to
embedding sustainability in teacher education: A synthesis of the literature. Teaching and Teacher Education, 63, 405-417.
Goldenberg, Amit, J. J. Gross, and Eran Halperin. (2020). "The Group Malleability Intervention: Addressing Intergroup Conflicts by Changing Perceptions of Outgroup Malleability." Chap. 15 in Handbook of Wise Interventions: How Social Psychology Can Help People Change, edited by Gregory M. Walton and Alia J. Crum. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Grandin, A., Boon-Falleur, M., & Chevallier, C. (2021, preprint). The belief-action gap in environmental psychology: How wide? How irrational? PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/chqug
Halperin, E., Russell, A.G., Trzesniewski, K.H., Gross, J.J., Dweck, C.S. (2011). Promoting
the Middle East peace process by changing beliefs about group malleability. Science,
333(6050), 1767-1769.
Levy, S. R., Stroessner, S. J., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Stereotype formation and endorsement:
The role of implicit theories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6), 1421-
1436. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.6.1421
Rattan, A. & Georgeac, O.A.M. (2017). Understanding intergroup relations through the lens of implicit theories (mindsets) of malleability. Social & personality psychology compass 11(4): e12305.
Soliman, M., & Wilson, A. E. (2017). Seeing change and being change in the world: The relationship between lay theories about the world and environmental intentions. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 50, 104-111.
Youth Climate Justice Survey 2020. (2021). Eco-Unesco. https://ecounesco.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/YouthClimateJusticeSurveyReport.pdf
Zilliacus, H., & Wolff, L. (2021). Climate change and worldview transformation in Finnish education policy. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford University Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1676
30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Paper
Are Primary School Students Open-minded Enough to Enter a Pluralistic Approach in Sustainability Education?
Eli Munkebye1, Eldri Scheie2
1Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway; 2University of Oslo, Norway
Presenting Author: Scheie, Eldri
Sustainability challenges are complex, where values and knowledge form the basis for the decisions made (Block et al. 2019). In a teaching and learning perspective, sustainability education (SE) therefore includes more than a specific knowledge content. According to Vare and Scott (2007), SE must also be about developing students' skills, such as the ability to think critically and to test ideas and explore the dilemmas and contradictions that are built into sustainability issues.
A pluralistic approach to sustainability issues is emphasized as beneficial if the goal is to develop students' ability to relate critically and at the same time democratically to different perspectives on environmental and development issues (Öhman, 2004). In a pluralistic teaching tradition, students get the opportunity to actively participate in social discussions, and teaching focuses on a more democratic approach that involves examining and discussing different opinions and perspectives on issues (Sandell et al., 2005; Öhman & Öhman, 2013). The teaching focuses on illuminating different perspectives on sustainability issues, and that these are given room to be explored, discussed, and critically examined. Research has pointed to the potential of a pluralistic approach to SE in order to create a critical and exploratory classroom climate around fundamental contradictions about, for example, economic growth, economic development and environmental and social sustainable development (Berglund & Gericke, 2022).
To be able to participate in a pluralistic approach to SE, students must be open-minded to taking on different perspectives. Students' open-mindedness is therefore an important prerequisite for the success of pluralistic sustainability education.
According to Baehr (2011) an open-minded person is characterized by being able and willing to transcend cognitive standpoint in order to take up or take seriously the advantages of a cognitive standpoint that differs significantly from one's own. Baehr (2011) emphasizes that it is not enough to be able to show open-mindedness, but there must also be a willingness to do so. Riggs (2016) extends Baehr's (2011) definition. An open-minded person is aware that there are other points of view than his own when it is not expressed explicitly or is confrontational, which requires that an open-minded person is sensitive to various clues that indicate other points of view (Riggs, 2016). Furthermore, the person must be able to assess which points of view are worth opening up to, so that the person does not have a standard that is so high that no point of view is taken into account or that the person underestimates most points of view so that they are not seen as worth opening up to. This study builds on Riggs' (2016) definition of open-mindedness.
An approach for pluralistic teaching about complex sustainability issues can be deliberative or agonistic. Both approaches include tolerance and respect for alternative points of view but with a deliberative conversation the goal is to reach a common agreement through rational arguments. In an agonistic conversation, emotions are recognized and the goal here is to position oneself in relation to the others' perspective, without the goal being consensus. Both approaches presuppose students' open-mindedness to listen to and explore others' perspectives, and that they show willingness to critically evaluate their own perspectives.
Our question is: Are younger students (9-11 years) open to listening and taking in others' perspectives than their own? This leads to the following research questions:
RQ1: How do students (9-11 years old) respond to opinions that differ from their own?
This study was conducted within the project CriThiSE (https://www.ntnu.no/ilu/crithise), which is supported by The Research Council of Norway, project number 302774.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe study is an exploratory qualitative study based on a social constructivist stance, where meaning is co-constructed between researchers and our participants. Data was collected from semi-structured focus group interviews with 9-11years old students, from four different primary schools in Norway. The interviews were part of the pre-test that took place before the start of an intervention. The schools at which the study was conducted can be described as convenience samples. The focus groups consisted of 3-4 students who had consented to participate in the study, were put together based on grade level, and distribution between girls and boys. Based on the teachers' knowledge of the students the groups consist of both strong and weak students and with students who worked well together socially. Eight researchers conducted a total of 60 group interviews. All interviews were conducted in-person and lasted between 30-45 minutes in duration. This study focuses on the interview question: What do you think when others have different opinions than you? All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim.
The data was inductively analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, guided by the steps outlined by Braun and Clarke (2021) and Terry et al. (2017), and with consideration of our research questions. This approach was chosen as it enabled the identification of patterns across our entire data set, while also allowing a theoretically informed interpretation of the data. The first step involved familiarization with the data, where the authors immersed themselves in the data, re-reading and making notes on the content of the interviews. The data was then coded inductively, to highlight relevant passages of texts with a descriptive code. The authors coded independently, generating a diversity of codes, and thereafter met regularly to review and discuss codes. The dataset was encoded with an initial open coding, and then the initial codes were grouped, and new categories were developed. Through repeated, systematic reviews of the dataset considering the categories and codes, themes were gradually developed that represented the content of the dataset. The regular meetings were important for reflexive engagement to challenge interpretations that could arise from potential biases and to examine data from multiple perspectives.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsPreliminary results show that 25 % of the utterances expressed open-mindedness to opinions of others. Quotes like “accepting the opinion of others”, “both are right, I am right or the other is right. It makes it difficult” were categorized in this group.
A large part of the utterances (41 %) expressed anger, frustration or irritation. Quotes like “I just say against them”, “I start talking very very loudly” were categorized in this group.
Our findings advocate that many students react with negative feelings to the fact that others have opinions that are different from their own. Some utterances also reflect a passive resistance in that students pretend to be listening to others, without being so. They also defend their opinions to a large extent by trying to convince for their own views. Our results indicate that a pluralistic sustainability education must take into account that there may be a lack of open-mindedness to opinions that deviate from the individual student's opinion among students in primary school.
There will therefore be a need for the teaching to initially focus on the students' open-mindedness to other perspectives, as well as helping students to listen and look at both their own and other people's opinions in an open, respectful, but also critical way.
ReferencesBaehr, J. (2011). The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology. Oxford University Press.
Berglund, T. & Gericke, N. (2022). Diversity in views as a resource for learning? Student perspectives on the interconnectedness of sustainable development dimensions. Environmental Education Research, 28(3), 354–381. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2021.1980501
Block, T., Van Poeck, K., & Östman, L. (2019). Tackling wicked problems in teaching and learning. Sustainability issues as knowledge, ethical and political challenges. In Sustainable Development Teaching (pp. 28-39). Routledge.
Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2021). Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide. SAGE.
Riggs, W. (2015). Open-mindedness, insight, and understanding. In J. Baehr (Ed.), Intellectual virtues and education (pp. 18–37). Routledge.
Sandell, K., Öhman, J., & Östman, L. (2005). Education for Sustainable Development - Nature, School and Democracy. Sweden: Studentlitteratur.
Terry, G., Hayfield, N., Clarke, V., & Braun, V. (2017). Thematic analysis. In C. Willig, W. Stainton-Rogers (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research in psychology. pp. 17–37. 2nd ed. SAGE.
Vare, P. & Scott, W. (2007). Learning for a change: Exploring the relationship between education and sustainable development. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 1(2), 191–198. https://doi.org/10.1177/097340820700100209
Öhman, J. (2004). Moral perspectives in selective traditions of environmental education: Conditions for environmental moral meaning-making and students’ constitution as democratic citizens. I P. Wickenberg, H. Axelsson, L. Fritzén & J. Öhman (red.), Learning to change our world? Swedish research on education & sustainable development (s. 33–57). Studentlitteratur.
Öhman, J., & Öhman, M. (2013). Participatory approach in practice: An analysis of student discussions about climate change. Environmental Education Research, 19(3), 324-341.
30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)
Paper
Valuepremises in Sustainability Education Research
Anders Urbas1, Claes Malmberg1, Susanne Rafolt2, Mikael Thelin1
1Halmstad University, Sweden, Sweden; 2Universtiy of Innsbruck, Austria
Presenting Author: Urbas, Anders
The aim of the study is to analyse how researchers handle value-premises in environmental and sustainability education research. The theoretical perspective that is used consists of three ways of dealing with value-premises:
1. Value-premises are explicitly stated and argued for,
2. Values-premises are explicitly stated but not argued for, and
3. Values-premises implicitly incorporated without discussion and seen as given and unproblematic.
We will, furthermore, argue that it is crucial that researchers critically reflect on and argue for the choice of values-premises – as opposed to other value-premises (and values) – and discuss the possible consequences of not doing so.
Scientific research is traditionally based upon observation and empirical knowledge; it describes and explains and has the observable world in its focus. Scientific research thus differs from religion, ideology, and politics as these are built on opinions in which people’s values and norms are blended with descriptions and explanations (Myrdal 1970).
An implication of the focus on the observable world in science is that values – normally thought of as goals – in themselves are beyond the reach of scientists in their scientific – empirical – endeavour. Scientific research is characterized by scientific value relativism meaning that a value in itself cannot be empirically proved to be better or more correct than another value.
Our point is that scientific research, in the sense of observation of observable reality, cannot prove that specific values are inherently superior and more important than other values (Brecht 1959). For example, if one considers the Covid-19 pandemic and the issue of the lock-down and its effects or consequences, there is no way for scientists to prove, through observations, that saving human life in itself is superior to, for example economic growth, human freedom, physical health, young people's education or the absence of domestic violence. Scientific research can, of course, by observation identify what values individuals, groups of citizens, politicians or policy makers prefer. But this is something different than choosing and deciding between conflicting values.
It is important to acknowledge that scientific research and scientific value relativism are bound together due to science focus on observation of reality. However, the claim is not unproblematic. Scientific research is performed by humans and is therefore, to a high extent, impregnated by values. Scientific research is characterized by value-based choices in all its parts, from the selection of a problem and theory, the operationalization, the collection of data to the analysis and the conclusions. But science is also in many cases driven by a chosen value-premise or, differently expressed, a chosen goal that the scientist desire and wants to be achieved. If we turn it around; there are few scientists who believe that scientific research is totally free from values. The key point, however, is that value-premises and values can be handled in a least three different ways: (1) Value-premises are explicitly stated and argued for, (2) Values-premises are explicitly stated but not argued for, and (3) Values-premises are implicitly incorporated without discussion and seen as given and unproblematic (Myrdal 1970).
This study analyses environmental and sustainability education research from the three ways in which value-premises can be handled. It furthermore discusses why it is important that researchers critically reflect on and argue for the choice of values-premises.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe study is based on a qualitative text analysis (Lindberg 2017). In order to analyze how researchers, handle value-premises in environmental and sustainability education research a systematic reading of scientific articles from three journals published during 2022 will be done. The analysis consists both of systematizing and critical scrutiny of the content in the articles. The theoretical perspective used in the analysis is whether value-premises are (1) explicitly stated and argued for, (2) explicitly stated but not argued for, or (3) implicitly incorporated without discussion and seen as given and unproblematic.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsBased on an ongoing study (Rafolt et.al, forthcoming) and previous studies and knowledge within the field (Urbas 2009) the expected findings are that value-premises to a large extent are present in the research on education for sustainable development. Furthermore, the expected findings are that value-premises and values are predominantly within categories 2 and 3, i.e. they are either stated but not critically discussed or implicitly incorporated without discussion and seen as given and unproblematic.
The implications of the expected findings are several. Firstly, a lack of clarity regarding the difference between a) value-statements, (e.g., desired end states or goals), b) descriptive statements (e.g., descriptions and explanations) and c) prescriptive statements (e.g., norms and recommendations) (Lindberg 2017) contributes to a problematic confusion. The problem is a confusion of, on one hand, what scientific research is characterized by and what scientists as scientists can achieve knowledge about and, on the other hand, political activism. For example; there is a difference between a) empirically establishing that having one less child significantly reduce the individuals carbon footprint (Wynes & Nicholas 2017) and b) arguing that the government should prohibit citizens from having more than one child. Secondly, a lack of clarity regarding the fact that value-premises are chosen by the scientist (based on, for example, political ideology), might lead to the effect that citizens believe that the chosen values are scientifically proven.
These implications can undermine both scientific research and democratic politics.
ReferencesBrecht, A. (1959). Political theory: the foundations of twentieth-century political thought. Princeton, N.J.:
Lindberg, M (2017). Qualitative Analysis of Ideas and Ideological Content, in Boréus, K and Bergström, G (ed.). Analyzing text and discourse: eight approaches for the social sciences. London: SAGE.
Myrdal, G. (1970). Objectivity in social research. London: Duckworth.
Rafolt, C et.al. (fortcoming). Values, descriptions and norms in research on environmental education and education for sustainable development.
Urbas, A. (2009). Den svenska valforskningen: vetenskapande, demokrati och medborgerlig upplysning. Diss. Örebro : Örebro universitet, 2009. Örebro.
Wynes, S & Nicholas, K (2017). The climate mitigation gap: education and
government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions, in Environmental Research Letters, 12, issue 7.
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