Fostering students’ willingness to act pro-environmentally through an identity-oriented socio-scientific exhibition on the energy transition

Abstract

Successfully communicating the importance of a global energy transition toward carbon-free energy sources and increasing participation in it depends on society as a whole, including the socio-cultural identities and personal values of all involved. Since a person’s willingness to engage in the energy transition is strongly influenced by their social environmental identity, we argue that interventions offering students opportunities to develop this part of themselves should foster their overall willingness to do so. We argue that modern museum exhibitions on socio-scientific issues addressing visitors as individual, social or political actors, represent particularly suitable sites for such an approach. We investigated the extent to which students’ overall willingness to act pro-environmentally changed after visiting a socio-scientific exhibition on the energy transition and the extent to which students’ subsequent overall willingness to act was influenced by their prior conceptual knowledge about energy and topic-related interest. Data for the study was collected in a pre-post design, with students (N = 185) visiting the exhibition for 90 min in between. We found that students’ overall willingness to act changed significantly from prior to after their exhibition visit, and we found that students’ prior energy knowledge but not their interest impacted their willingness to act after the visit to the exhibition. Based on these findings, we discuss that providing a broad range of opportunities for identity work to students outside of the school context fosters their willingness to act on a global scale – and that modern socio-scientific museum exhibitions are thus a useful way to complement formal education.

Challenges and Strategies to Develop Pro Environment Behaviours Among Middle School Students: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Similarity with several studies: lack of awareness among middle school students due to lack of knowledge about the environment and its related issues (Kellberg et al 2023;Baierl et al 2021;Liang et al 2018), conserving water, protecting the ecosystem from pollution, and protecting the forest from fires (El Batri et al 2019) and climate change (Brumann et al 2022;Eze, 2020). School ( Liang et al 2022;Zhang et al 2023;Dela Peña et al 2018) and multiculturalism (List et al 2020) are two issues that affect pupils to have awareness.…”

“…Increasing children's awareness in chaotic situations is important because, despite the challenges, schools as well as teachers may still help kids develop pro-environmental habits and behaviours (Liang et al 2022). Motivational concerns are also an outcome of high school pupils' disinterest in studying local and global environmental issues (Brumann et al 2022;El Batri et al 2019;Janakiraman et al 2022;Keith et al 2021;Kellberg et al 2023;S. W. Liang et al 2018;Maurer et al 2020;Schüßler et al 2019;Sieg & Dreesmann, 2021).…”

“…Other than that, strengthen the teaching strategies, go into teaching resources with appropriate additional materials, and of course provide the teachers environmental issues training (El Batri et al 2019;Jančius et al 2021;Canlas et al 2021;Millaku et al 2023;Huoponen, 2023). In additional, from the analysis of 33 studies, 11 studies used outdoor program education ( Schneiderhan et al 2020) or outdoor classroom activities such as modern socio-scientific museum exhibitions (Kellberg et al 2023), that emphasize "critical" or "agential" exhibitions. The major goals of "critical" exhibitions are to promote discussion, decision-making, and an awareness of socio-scientific concerns.…”

Igniting University Communities: Building Strategies that Empower an Energy Transition through Solar Energy Communities

“…4) Promoting education on energy transition : [14][15][16][17] through their schools and universities, the public sector can integrate inclusive education on green and sustainable energy habits into formal curricula. This collaboration can help educate future generations about the importance of sustainable energy practices and empower them to become active contributors to the energy transition.…”