Abstract
Introductory environmental studies and sciences (ESS) classes can be powerful and formative experiences for undergraduates. Indeed, instructors likely aspire towards influencing and enhancing the perspectives, analytical tools, and critical-thinking skills their graduates carry forward into careers in and beyond environment-related fields. This task, however, is doubly challenging: not only to meaningfully engage students with environmental issues but ideally also to think critically about the at-times competing ideologies and perspectives in ESS. This requires that courses be taught in ways that further critical thinking, develop metacognitive skills, and introduce students to a diversity of environmental discourses. In this paper, we present the results of a brief empirical survey of a small sample of North American ESS undergraduate programs. Using discussions of climate change as an example, we pay particular attention to the explicit goals, diversity of literature presented, and organization of the courses, using typologies e.g., Nisbet (Wiley Interdiscip Rev Clim Chang 5(6):809-823, 2014) to highlight the prevalence of particular environmental discourses and not others. We highlight a handful of promising practices and potential blind spots in the pedagogical design of these courses, while arguing for the importance of instructor reflection, iterative improvement, and further research into potential common weaknesses in ESS instruction.
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Notes
These included writings by Vandana Shiva (on water privatization), Wangari Maathai (on reforestation), and Nancy Langston (on toxics).
Kolbert presents Pacala and Socolow (2004)’s stabilization wedges, which describe currently available low-carbon energy technologies (see footnote 15).
Kolbert discusses the growing grassroots climate movement in Burlington, Vermont, while Jones advocates building a movement to simultaneously create jobs and improve home energy efficiency.
These classes mentioned Hardin in the context of common property resources. Some others mentioned him in the context of population growth and climate change but in these cases, it does not make sense to balance it with Ostrom.
These perspectives involve, for instance, a strong recognition of human populations’ economic dependence on natural areas (Kareiva and Marvier 2012).
George Monbiot is a leading critic of ecosystem valuation (see Conniff 2012).
Food policy is another issue whose pedagogy in classes is worth studying in further research. Of the 11 classes that specified the readings that they assigned on food and agriculture issues, five assigned excerpts from or the complete text of Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” without accompanying it with contrasting perspectives. Further research could seek to understand exactly what points Pollan’s book is being used to illustrate in classes, as well as characterize the diversity of perspectives around food policy in the same way that Nisbet (2014) has done for climate change.
Note this does not include classes that discussed the Kyoto Protocol. These classes may or may not have touched on the adaptation finance mechanisms under the Protocol.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to extend their thanks to Jim Proctor, Jennifer Bernstein, and Richard Wallace for the opportunity to participate in this special issue, and to our three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. We are especially grateful to Jim Proctor for his extensive commenting, tireless assistance, and thoughtful advising throughout the project. Finally, thank to those who provided feedback on the manuscripts and the ideas within, including Seigi Karasaki, Jenna Vikse, and Arthur Yip
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Kennedy, E.B., Ho, J. Discursive diversity in introductory environmental studies. J Environ Stud Sci 5, 200–206 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-015-0245-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-015-0245-9