The Interdependences between Sustainability and Their Lifestyle That Pre-Service Teachers Establish When Addressing Socio-Ecological Problems

Abstract

In the training of pre-service teachers, promoting changes in everyday activities to favour environmental conservation is still a challenge. This paper discusses the main difficulties of pre-service teachers in the process of building relationships between sustainability and their lifestyle. For this purpose, a problem-based learning programme was designed, consisting of three socio-ecological problems. In each of them, we analysed three components which define these interdependences: pressures, importance and solutions for conservation. There were 72 participants in the whole programme and 1296 responses were assessed, by establishing three levels of sophistication for the relationships between sustainability and their lifestyle in each component. The pre-service teachers readily admitted the pressures on the environment exerted by certain everyday activities. In addition, they progressed on the identification of the importance of ecosystem services in their lives, and they pay attention to those services linked to socio-economic and cultural activities. The greatest difficulties lay in proposing solutions of conservation that involve changes in personal habits towards more-sustainable ones. These difficulties are discussed, as well as the educational implications that may be derived.

Socio-Ecological Controversies in the News as Trigger of a Model-Based Inquiry Instructional Sequence about the Effect of Global Warming on the Great Barrier Reef

“…In this regard, our results are in line with those reported by references [10,98], in which, despite the progression of the knowledge that students showed about the causes and consequences of different socio-ecological problems, there still exist important barriers to achieve the generation of commitments and changes towards individual pro-environmental behaviors; in other words, it does not directly mean that this progression could be translated into real individual actions. Reference [10] also concluded that students show some difficulties to recognize the social and economic dimensions of socio-ecological problems. Therefore, future uses of the sequence described here should emphasize the socio-economic importance of coral reefs, as well as the impacts of our individual and local actions on global and, sometimes, distant socio-ecological systems, since intentions of taking pro-environmental action may be activated "when students believe that things they value are in danger" [99] (p. 4).…”

“…Nonetheless, according to numerous authors, this improvement on their knowledge of natural phenomena and humans' impact on the environment is not enough to increase their individual responsibility and to act sustainably [96,97]. In this regard, our results are in line with those reported by references [10,98], in which, despite the progression of the knowledge that students showed about the causes and consequences of different socio-ecological problems, there still exist important barriers to achieve the generation of commitments and changes towards individual pro-environmental behaviors; in other words, it does not directly mean that this progression could be translated into real individual actions. Reference [10] also concluded that students show some difficulties to recognize the social and economic dimensions of socio-ecological problems.…”

“…Global warming (GW) is a complex problem [8], since the socio-economic and ecological drivers of this issue interact in a nonlinear fashion, characterized by their reinforcing mechanisms and time delays [9], which may represent an obstacle for an adequate understanding of the problem and, therefore, complicate the adoption of individual responsibilities [10].…”

“…to understand the relationships between the biosphere-atmosphere-hydrosphere-geosphere interface, given the need to develop systemic and dynamic thinking that allows us to overcome a static and fragmented vision of the interactions produced in this interface [58,59]; • to interpret large-scale spatial and temporal changes, since their effects on the environment, economy, and health are transboundary and usually occur at medium or long-term, hardly noticeably, as well as to understand changes on a molecular scale, such as those related to biogeochemical cycles [57,58,60]; and • to recognize the indirect cause-effect relationships between our individual and collective actions, and their consequences for global change [10,57].…”

“…Beyond the difficulties to recognize coral as living beings, these misconceptions suggest important obstacles to assess the vulnerability of coral reefs to global warming, and to value the relevance of this SES to maintain biodiversity and the ecosystem services associated with it. Moreover, in the cases they do, students tend to give them a strictly ecological value, a necessary perspective, but insufficient [10,72]. Then, their disappearance could be perceived as a completely distant problem from society, or the socio-economic consequences are not considered.…”