John Fien

Advancing sustainability in higher education: Issues and opportunities for research

This article explores issues related to the choice of goals and approaches for advancing sustainability in higher education through research. The paper argues that diverse nature of the questions, issues and problems facing advocates of sustainability in higher education requires a willingness to adopt an eclectic approach to the choice of research methodologies or paradigms. The views of reality and knowledge embedded in alternative research paradigms—empirical–analytical, interpretive, critical, and poststructural paradigms—are summarised briefly. The relevance of the four paradigms is illustrated by taking two issues of sustainability in higher education and exploring how they would be addressed by each one. The two issues are: campus catering services and integrating the principles of the Earth Charter into an engineering degree program. The paper concludes by reviewing the debate over whether this eclectic position is consistent with the goals of advancing sustainability in higher education.

If It Doesn't Directly Affect You, You Don't Think About It’: a qualitative study of young people's environmental attitudes in two Australian cities

SUMMARY This article presents a range of findbigs from a qualitative study of the environmental attitudes of young people across their final 2 years of secondary school in the two Australian cities of Melbourne and Brisbane. Focus groups comprising the same 16‐ to 17‐year‐old students in 12 schools were interviewed twice, 12 months apart. Several minor differences were found in the attitudes of students between the two cities, but these pale alongside the common, indeed, overwhelming feelings of environmental concern mixed with frustration, cynicism and action paralysis that were reported. The ambivalence towards the environment that results, together with the individualistic frameworks for explaining environmental issues that were displayed, point to areas for renewed curriculum attention in secondary schools and directions for future research.

Students as Catalysts of Environmental Change: A Framework for Researching Intergenerational Influence through Environmental Education.

Many environmental problems are desperately in need of attention. Educating both adults and young people is seen as part of the solution to such problems. Given this situation, and the already considerable investment in environmental education in schools, the notion of encouraging students to initiate environmental discussions with adults at home and in the community seems attractive and worthy of investigation. To this end, this paper critically reviews education and social science literature concerning intergenerational influence. An approach is outlined to guide future efforts in research and programme development aimed at encouraging students’ to act as catalysts of environmental communication and learning beyond school boundaries.

Environment, education, and society in the Asia-Pacific: Local traditions and global discourses

Preface Rupert Maclean, UNESCO Office for Asia and the Pacific Introduction David Yencken, John Fien and Helen Sykes 1. Attitudes to nature in the East and West David Yencken 2. The research David Yencken, John Fien and Helen Sykes 3. One country two perspectives: South China Philip Stimpson 4. Oya-Shima-Kuni: Japan Brendan Barrett, Osamu Abe, Eiichiro Harako and Satoshi Ichikawa 5. Living traditions: India M.J. Ravindranath and Usha Iyer-Raniga 6. Unity and Diversity: Southeast Asia Lily Kong with Irene Teh-Cheong Poh Ai, Panji Tisna, Purisima Remorin, Rapeepun Suwannatachote and Wisat Lee 7. Songlines and the Gondwanan inheritance: Australia David Yencken and John Fien 8. Voices from the South-West Pacific John Fien with Gewa Au, Paul Keown, Premila Kumar and Sereana Takivakatini 9. Environmental attitudes, knowledge and behaviour of young people in the Asia-Pacific region Helen Sykes, David Yencken, John Fien and Florence Choo 10. Young people and the environment: the implications for environmentalism David Yencken 11. Listening to the voices of youth: Implications for educational reform John Fien

Reflective Practice: A Case Study of Professional Development for Environmental Education

Abstract A case study is presented of a professional development program for environmental education in Australia that applies the principles of participatory research and critical reflection. These two principles are embodied in the concept of reflective practice. Reflective practice involves using ethical and contextual considerations in professional decisionmaking rather than making such decisions on the basis of habit, intuition, impulse, and tradition. The education of “reflective practitioners” of this type is the goal of the Master of Environmental Education program at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. After an introduction to the program and the concept of reflective practice, a case study of the experiences of students in one of the subjects of that program is presented. The case study revealed that students derived a number of benefits from developing their reflective practice skills, including heightened political awareness, a strong sense of influences and limitations of social con...

Learning to care : education and compassion

In 1993, John Fien wrote Education for the Environment: Critical Curriculum Theorizing and Environmental Education. Applying a critical perspective to his own ideas, he concluded the book with an examination of three criticisms that deep ecologists would make of critical environmental education. Acknowledging the validity of much of their case, he concluded that the critical curriculum theory of education for the environment proposed in the book was an incomplete one, and that “more theorizing, reflection, action, and more reflection again” would be necessary to develop the ideas more fully than they were. In this paper, which was the Professorial Lecture he presented on 14 May 2003, he returned to this task seeking to broaden the theoretical frameworks of environmental education to encompass deep and wide caring for human and non-human nature.

Teacher education for sustainability II: Two teacher education projects from Asia and the Pacific

Our schools and educators face a compelling responsibility to serve society by fostering the transformations needed to set us on a path to sustainable development in the 21st century. Education for sustainability is a new paradigm for a life long learning process that leads to an informed and involved citizenry having the creative problem solving skills, scientific, technological, and social literacy, and commitment to engage in responsible actions that will help ensure an environmentally sound, socially just, and economically prosperous future for all. This paper and the preceding paper, from a soon to be published book, Education for a Sustainable Future: A Paradigm of Hope, edited by Keith A. Wheeler, focus on the need to have science imbedded at the core of the education for sustainability paradigm and the need to increase and enhance teacher education to better be able to develop the necessary interdisciplinary thinking and transformative learning for the new millenium.

Young People and the Environment in Australia: Beliefs, Knowledge, Commitment and Educational Implications.

There is a paucity of research in Australia on the nature of young peoples attitudes, knowledge and actions. This paper reports on the findings from one such study of Australian high school students. The research was based on a survey of 5688 students from Melbourne and Brisbane. These young people identified protection of the environment as the most important problem In Australia and strongly supported the belief systems characteristic of an ‘environmental paradigm’. Despite this, the majority displayed relatively low levels of knowledge of key environmental concepts, and were involved in little environmental action-taking outside of household activities. Differences are reported between: students from Melbourne and Brisbane; girls and boys; high performing and general schools; and teachers and students. The paper concludes with a discussion of some implications for environmental education in Australia.

Youth environmental attitudes in Australia and Brunei: implications for education

This paper explores similarities and differences in the knowledge, beliefs and actions that comprise the environmental attitudes of senior secondary school students in Australia and Brunei. Utilising data from a wider international study in Asia and the Pacific (Yencken et al. , 2000), the paper uses findings from these two countries to illustrate the pervasiveness of global environmental concerns over local cultural influences in the construction of youth environmental attitudes in Australia and Brunei. Thus, young people in these countries, as they do in all parts of the Asia-Pacific region, have very similar levels of environmental awareness and knowledge, sources of environmental, beliefs, systems or world views about the environment, and levels of perceived control over environmental trends. They also have a shared desire for schools to do more in the area of environmental education. The paper concludes that much more effort needs to be made in certain areas. The first is to encourage teachers and others who have influence over young people to develop their own knowledge and skills to be able to teach environmental education effectively. The second is in the area of curriculum and pedagogical reform 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.

Factors contributing to intergenerational communication regarding environmental programs: preliminary research findings

Given the increasing recognition of the potential for school students to act as catalysts of environmental change, research is needed to determine the extent to which school environmental education programs can facilitate intergenerational communication and learning in the home and wider community. The present paper reports on preliminary findings from a pilot study based on two environmental education programs. Four factors were investigated in terms of their influence upon the extent to which school students discussed the programs at home: student response to the program; student environmental orientation; parent environmental orientation; and family communication properties. In this study, program and family communication factors exerted the greatest influence on the frequency of discussions concerning environmental education programs experienced by students. Suggestions are made for ways in I which environmental education programs can be designed in order to facilitate student-parent communication about environmental issues.