Cultivating Environmental Citizenship in Teacher Education
Source: Teaching Education, Volume 27, Issue 2, 2016, Pages 117-135
The goal of this study was to explore how participating in a political environmental action project influenced pre-service teachers’ environmental citizenship.
Following the steps of Project Citizen, an international civic education program, pre-service teachers learned about and proposed policy solutions to address excessive energy usage at their university.
Analysis revealed growth in the pre-service teachers’ environmental citizenry, including their self-efficacy, values awareness, and ecological and civics literacy. Through critical appraisal of their local energy-yielding system, the pre-service teachers recognized energy conservation as a cultural problem with local and global implications, furthering their commitment to action-oriented environmental education.