All Mixed Up? Instrumental and Emancipatory Learning Toward a More Sustainable World: Considerations for EE Policymakers

Abstract

World wide, policymakers are looking for ways to use education and communication strategies to create a world that is more sustainable than the one currently in prospect. They often find themselves trapped between instrumental (behavior change) and emancipatory (human development) uses of such strategies. This study sheds light on this apparent divide by investigating four exemplary cases representing both orientations and mixes thereof. One outcome of the study is that EE policymakers but also EE professionals first need to reflect on the kind of change challenge that is at stake. Only then are they able to determine what kind of education, participation, communication, or mix thereof is most appropriate, what kinds of results can best be pursued, and what monitoring and evaluation system can best be employed.

Practitioners’ perspectives on the purpose of environmental education

“…Sauve (1999) further argued that EE as a problem-solving/behavior change discourse aligned with the 1977 Tbilisi Declaration, reflecting modernist notions of technical/scientific education, whereas a 1980s socially critical movement focused on postmodern issues of justice, action, economics, politics, and culture as emancipatory. Similarly, Wals et al (2008) contrasted instrumental education for the environment that specified preferred behavior for a target group of 'receivers' towards individual and social change, with emancipatory education situated in shared power and individual empowerment.…”

“…They integrate modernist and postmodernist discourse in proposing a critical education for the environment such that educators work within communities to determine decisions about local practices (Scott and Oulton 1999). Wals et al (2008) describe how individual EE programs integrate aspects of instrumental and emancipatory approaches, and Sterling (2010) uses notions of individual and social-ecological systems resilience, multiple loop learning, and transformative learning to emphasize instrumental (problem-solving and first loop learning) and intrinsic (reflective second loop learning) EE. Although Schusler and Krasny's (2010) work on EE as a means for positive youth development might be seen as an additional layer onto the instrumental approach, it also reconciles the dominant EE worldviews so that youth development aligns with liberal education.…”

“…Scholars have attempted to address these seemingly irreconcilable differences through various frameworks (e.g. Lucas 1972;Disinger 1997;Sauve 2005;Wals et al 2008;Sterling 2010), some of which have fueled greater controversy (e.g. Jickling and Spork 1998;Fien 2000).…”

“…One explanation of this unexpected result is that the debates in the EE literature pitting EE as a means toward an environmental quality end, vs. EE as part of a tradition of liberal education, stem from the work of scholars, rather than from empirical studies of practitioners such as this one. In this regard, it is important to note that a paper by Wals et al (2008) describe four actual EE programs that integrate both orientations.…”

Educating with resilience in mind: Addressing climate change in post-Sandy New York City

“…This is because EE programs can foster SES resilience and psychological resilience simultaneously (cf. Wals, Geerlin-Eijiff, Hubeek, van der Kroon, & Vader, 2008;Sterling, 2010). Parallels among concepts from learning theory and SES resilience may contribute to badly needed cross-disciplinary approaches to address linked social and environmental problems.…”