Embracing emotion in environmental education

Beth Grant is on a mission to better understand students’ emotional experiences in post-secondary environmental education.

“Studying climate change and the environmental issues we face today can bring on some big feelings,” says Grant. “We know these emotional experiences are happening, and we can either ignore or embrace them; research recommends the latter.”

Grant sought to determine what emotions students were experiencing in relation to the course content and teaching approaches utilized within their degrees. She also aimed to collect student recommendations for the emotional aspects of environmental education. Understanding, acknowledging, and supporting students’ emotions is a worthwhile pursuit that can help us improve student well-being, learning, and pro-environmental behaviour, which are frequently cited as goals of professors and university-level environmental programs.

Despite the potential for positive outcomes, common curricular and pedagogical practices within environmental education are informed by inaccurate theoretical foundations including the “rationality fallacy” and the “information-deficit model” which assume that humans are rational decision-makers and that insufficient knowledge is the limiting factor in pro-environmental behaviour.

While knowledge is fundamental to tackling environmental problems, social factors including emotions have proven to be significant obstacles to pro-environmental behaviour. These misconceptions often go unchallenged in environmental education, leading to missed opportunities for an improved student experience.

“To guide and inspire the next generation of engaged, environmental citizens, we need more than just facts, fear, and good intentions. Learning about environmental problems is qualitatively different than feeling capable of meaningfully and positively affecting change,” says Grant.

Grant shared some key messages already emerging from the affective and behavioural sciences literature to empower professors to meaningfully address climate emotions in the classroom:

• Creating opportunities for students to reflect on, discuss, and creatively engage with their climate emotions in lectures, readings, and class assignments is a great place to start.
• Having professors acknowledge, validate, and verbalize climate emotions can foster students’ “critical emotional awareness” and lead to further conversations on how to manage emotions using productive outlets that foster hope, action, and well-being.
• Professors can consider how to design their courses with climate action, community-building, and nature connection in mind to foster further positive emotional experiences for their students.

When it comes to student well-being, learning, and pro-environmental behaviour, an emotionally aware environmental education is an effective environmental education. Environmental educators are essential pieces to the puzzle in empowering students to weather the storm of climate emotions throughout their degrees and working lives.

Beth Grant's complete Master's of Environmental Studies thesis, "Learning with the Head and the Heart: Exploring Emotional Experiences in Post-Secondary Environmental Education" can be found on UW Space.

This research is funded by a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant granted to Drs. Sarah Wolfe (Royal Roads University/University of Waterloo), Christine Barbeau (University of Waterloo) and Mickie Noble (Royal Roads University) as well as a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship.