Sociocultural learning theories for social-ecological change

Abstract

A long history of theory exists to underpin our understanding of how to engage individuals and communities in more effective environmental conservation and sustainability practices. Yet rarely do we delve deeply into sociocultural theories of learning, which help demonstrate how learning and action are fundamentally intertwined in our interactions, our societies, and the world around us. To our detriment we ignore this compelling, well-grounded, and robust body of empirical and theoretical evidence. As climate change, biodiversity loss, and other pressing social-ecological issues intensify, the key to stemming and solving the greatest challenges of our time requires engaging individuals and communities. In this theoretical paper, we attend to the history and underpinnings of sociocultural theories of learning and their implications for environmental literacy, in particular, collective environmental literacy. We also discuss how such underpinnings are important to understand when pursuing carefully designed, actionable, and effective sustainability solutions.

Keywords:

• Sociocultural learning theory
• collective action
• environmental literacy
• community engagement
• environmental action

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS:

• SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities

Introduction

For more than half a century, calls for building an environmentally literate society and engaging people in environmental conservation have been part of policy and practice (Jadallah and Ballard 2021; Reid et al. 2021; UNESCO 1978). Often operationalized through the field of environmental education, the concept of ‘environmental literacy’ has provided an avenue for considering desired outcomes, such as ecological understanding, critical thinking skills, positive dispositions toward the environment, and civic engagement (Hollweg et al. 2011; McBride et al. 2013; Roth 1992; Wheaton et al. 2018). Although environmental literacy has been defined variously, common among those definitions is the notion that environmental literacy is an individual competence involving personal development of discrete outcomes, such as knowledge, skills, and behaviors (Ardoin et al. 2022; Hollweg et al. 2011). Education and communication programs designed to address environmental issues typically aim to cultivate and measure those outcomes at the individual level.

While an individual conception of environmental literacy has its merits, we argue that a collective understanding of environmental literacy, one that emphasizes the larger social-historical context, aligns more accurately with contemporary theoretical notions of how people learn, specifically the social and cultural nature of learning (Esmonde and Booker 2017; Nasir et al., 2006). These sociocultural learning theories are based on a view of learning in which people come to understand the world by engaging with, internalizing, and transforming others’ meanings of entities, tools, and objects that are rooted in cultural activities (Cole 1996; Rogoff 2003; Vygotsky 1978). For example, people come to understand what nature is, what words and mathematical symbols mean, or what physical objects symbolize through social processes. Researchers also suggest learning occurs through meaningful and relevant participation in activities, whether those are in a community of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991), social hobbies (Azevedo 2011), a community of inquiry (Bruce and Bloch 2013; Garrison, Anderson, and Archer 2000), or project-based learning (Roth and Lee 2002, 2004). When we examine environmental literacy, or any literacy, we must recognize not only the role of the individual, but also the larger social, cultural, and historical contexts in which people act and learn.

Applying a collective lens to literacy and learning is not a new idea. More than three decades ago, a field called The New Literacy Studies emerged that focused on reading and writing literacy (Gee 2015). Gee and colleagues (Barton 2007; Gee 1999, 2010; Street 1995) described literacy as a practice that people undertake and enact through societal interactions. Gee (2010, 2) proposed that ‘literacy is not solely, or even primarily, a mental phenomenon, but, rather, a sociocultural one’, suggesting the way that people read and write depends on the social, cultural, and institutional communities in which they participate. In this vein, Roth (2009, 23) described how scientific literacy should not be seen as a property of an individual, ‘Rather, we should think of scientific literacy as an emergent feature of collective praxis so that it can only be observed while people engage one another and as an effect of these interactions’. Drawing on these ‘literacy as social practice’ approaches, environmental literacy similarly can be viewed as differing depending on one’s social and cultural communities. People’s understandings of the environment and natural systems are similarly shaped by their participation in various social and cultural practices.

We, therefore, take the collective perspective because it is necessary for understanding literacy in general, but also because it is especially important to the study of environmental literacy, as environmental topics are collective by nature. Most environmental issues affect us at the level of our communities and societies and their solutions require collective action (Ardoin et al. 2022). A focus on individual-level environmental literacy is necessary, but insufficient, to understand the processes, practices, and challenges of environmental action within the larger community. We, along with others (Ardoin et al. 2022; Bey, McDougall, and Schoedinger 2020; Gibson et al. 2022), argue that environmental literacy–and indeed community-oriented literacy and action, writ large (cf, Dewey 1954; Shields 2003)–requires further conceptualization as a property of the collective in addition to that of an individual. We, then, must reframe the question according to sociocultural theories to better understand the relational nature of environmental learning. We, therefore, ask: If learning happens in activity that is imbued with cultural and historical meaning, how might we (re)conceptualize environmental literacy as a social endeavor rather than as an individual outcome?

To consider this question, we draw on foundational sociocultural learning theories to better illuminate a collective approach to environmental literacy. After presenting a broad overview of sociocultural perspectives on learning, we focus on three core principles of learning from sociocultural theories: (1) learning occurs in activity (Engeström 2000, 2022; Rogoff 1995), (2) learning is distributed (Brown et al. 1993; Brown and Campione 1994; Hutchins 1995, 2000; Pea 1993), and (3) learning contributes to identity formation (Holland et al. 1998/2003; Holland and Lave 2009; Kempton and Holland 2003; Lave and Wenger 1991). We flesh out these perspectives with the goal of discussing a more holistic understanding of the learning that underpins environmental literacy and we conclude with implications for research and practice.

Sociocultural perspectives on learning

Learning is at the core of any literacy effort as people learn not only new information and skills by participating in social activities, but also how to use and transform the information and skills to shape the social activities. Learning processes, and the related outcome of literacy (Hanemann 2015), can be understood through many different theories and approaches (Cobb and Yackel 1996; Greeno, Collins, and Resnick 1996). In this paper, we examine collective environmental literacy through a sociocultural lens. Sociocultural learning does not represent a standalone theory; rather it is a collection of theories and approaches with historical roots tracing back to studies of cognition and learning during the mid-to-late twentieth century (Wertsch, del Río, and Alvarez 1995). Sociocultural learning theories, and specific theories within this overall perspective, focus on the complex, social nature of learning at multiple timescales and highlight the importance of the social, cultural, and historical context on behavior, cognition, and deep learning (Bell et al. 2012; Lave and Wenger 1991; Lemke 2001; Rogoff 2003; Vygotsky 1978; Wertsch, del Río, and Alvarez 1995). In addition, sociocultural theories help understand more than how people interact in social contexts; they emphasize how human cognition is shaped by symbols and tools of the social world and, as Esmonde (2017, 7) emphasized, ‘treat context as inseparable from cognition’. Through a sociocultural lens, we uncover how a learner understands the symbolic meaning of language, gestures, objects, and artifacts based on input from and contextualizing within the social world.

A sociocultural perspective is related to, but ontologically different from, other psychological perspectives that study the role of social context in learning and development (see for example, Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory). Bronfenbrenner’s (1974, 1976) theory separates the person and context into two distinct entities, with various aspects of the social/cultural context acting upon the individual. Sociocultural theories, on the other hand, blur this distinction between individual and context, emphasizing that individual learning and development ‘must be understood, and cannot be separated from its social and cultural-historical context’ (Rogoff 2003, 50). The individual and the context are not separate entities, but rather part of the bigger whole: the individual is an integral part of the system, and the system incorporates the individual, both undergoing change and transformation simultaneously. In other words, the cultural context is not a static entity that merely influences individuals; rather, the person and context are intertwined, with people actively contributing to the ongoing creation of the cultural context and processes, and cultural processes and practices shaping and defining individuals (Rogoff 2003). This perspective underscores the idea that people shape and are shaped by the cultures in which they participate, emphasizing the interactive and reciprocal nature of this relationship. It is therefore not meaningful to only study individuals separate from the social and cultural context in which they learn and act.

Contrasting, but related, views of learning are well-modeled in Rogoff’s (2003) multi-layered scenes of activity (sociocultural perspective) in comparison to Bronfenbrenner’s (1974, 1976, 1977) enlarging, concentric circles of social influence. The distinction lies in the unit of analysis. From Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems perspective, any study of development and learning will focus on the individual and how various circles of influence—from the micro to macro to chrono systems—act upon the individual learner. Contrary to this view, Rogoff (1995, 2003) suggested that the primary focus of the analysis should not be the individual, but the activity or process of which the individual is a part. Such a focus allows us to understand the activity from three layered perspectives: the personal, the interpersonal, and the cultural-historical. Individuals participating in the activity (personal); their social systems, interactions, and relationships (interpersonal); and the cultural-institutional values and practices (cultural) all work together to shape how participants learn and change over time and how the activity itself unfolds. While a study may zoom in on any one aspect of the activity (such as, on individuals and how they participate and learn), a sociocultural perspective necessitates situating it within the bigger picture, including social context, relationships, cultural values, institutional practices, and historical context. Essentially, individual ‘outcomes’ lack meaningful interpretation devoid of social, cultural, and historical information embedded in the context. Seen from this perspective, collective environmental literacy becomes a shared property of a community of individuals participating in collective activity centered around environmental goals and practices, rather than an aggregate of individual-level environmental outcomes.

Vygotsky’s work on symbolic meaning forms an important core of sociocultural theories and is critical to understanding the many ways people view the environment and natural world. Vygotsky (1978) theorized that interaction among people is mediated primarily by socially meaningful symbols and artifacts such as language, gestures, and tools. The meaning of symbols, sounds, or tools used by people is not inherently present in the artifact; instead, it emerges intersubjectively from social interactions. Take, for instance, Vygotsky’s (1978) example of a baby learning to gesture by pointing. Initially the baby extends their arm to grab an object, but is unsuccessful. When the caregivers notice the baby is reaching for the object, they help by bringing the object to the baby. This act by the caregivers changes the meaning of pointing for the baby, who now recognizes pointing can be used as a gesture to inform others of a need. Social interaction between a caregiver and baby assigns meaning to the gesture of pointing. This meaning is culturally formed.

Similarly, in environmental learning, every tool for learning—whether it be an object, word, or gesture—is symbolically imbued. Those tools embody multiple symbolic meanings depending on the context of when, where, and how the tool is used. Take, for example, a single-use plastic water bottle. At its most basic, a plastic water bottle is a vessel for drinking; in a world without social meaning, its value is solely utilitarian. But no such world exists. Depending on the culture, use of a single-use plastic water bottle symbolizes the ability to afford clean water, prioritization of hydration and personal health, disregard for the environment or future generations, and so on. These attached symbolic meanings translate to the social significance of using a water bottle, in addition to the utilitarian value. So, while we may initially reach for a single-use water bottle for utilitarian purposes, the act is imbued with other meanings as well, and we learn to integrate those symbolic values into our decision-making processes. We may choose, or avoid choosing, a single-use plastic water bottle not only for its utility, but also for what it signals socially. In this way, individuals learn and form values from collective social meanings and, simultaneously, reproduce or change those meanings depending on how and in which social settings they use an object, a word, or an idea. Thus, the decision to use or avoid a single-use water bottle, although it may be an individual action, is shaped by shared social meanings, values, and the cultural context. An individual who chooses not to use a disposable water bottle in a community that actively discourages single-use plastic, for instance, is participating in the larger shared socio-cultural activity of reducing plastic waste. These ongoing, dialectic relationships between individuals and the cultural and historical symbols they use directly affect how groups of individuals come to understand objects, concepts, and ideas (Holland and Lave 2009). In addition, these relationships foreground why collective understandings and values of the values may differ widely from group to group (Lave and Wenger 1991).

The nature of symbolic meaning in tools, such as objects, actions, and language, is fundamental to the way sociocultural theorists see development, learning, and action (Cole and Wertsch 1996; Lave 1993; Leont’ev 1978; Luria, 1976; Rogoff 1990, 2003; Vygotsky 1978). At a system level, these symbolic meanings come from social-historical practices that are reproduced and changed by individuals and groups throughout time. At the individual level, learning is initiated in the social sphere, and people come to understand the world by internalizing symbolic meanings and using those meanings for their own purposes (Rogoff 2003; Vygotsky 1978). We are more than influenced by the social context; we are fundamentally shaped by it. In this way, we are always learning and making meaning through collective thought and practice.

Viewing collective environmental literacy through a sociocultural lens

Learning and literacy as developed in activity

A sociocultural approach to collective environmental literacy necessitates a shift in focus from conceiving environmental literacy as being a property of individuals to, instead, being a characteristic of situations in which people are interacting with the world (Rogoff 2003; Roth and Lee 2002, 2004). Environmental activity may range from community members’ participation in environmental advocacy groups (Kitchell et al. 2000) to students’ efforts to clean up a local creek (Roth and Lee 2002) or a family walk in the forest (Bang and Marin 2015). The sociocultural lens helps focus on the activity system, which typically includes people and their goals; the various tools, artifacts, and objects in the environment; and social, cultural, and historical practices. The study of activity encompasses the interactions and relationships between multiple components of such a system (Engeström 2000; Rogoff 1995). The activity perspective does not eliminate the individual; rather, it embraces the study of individuals interacting as part of a larger complex system that includes tools, artifacts, and other people (Engeström 2022). Collective environmental literacy, then, is a dynamic group process of learning, understanding, and valuing the environment while participating in goal-oriented activities.

The activity perspective allows the unit of analysis to change from the individual to the activity at hand. One may think that, because individual environmental literacy is conceptualized at the individual level (such as a person’s knowledge, skill set, attitudes, or behavioral intentions), collective environmental literacy could be envisioned as an aggregate of individuals’ knowledge, skill sets, or behaviors. Indeed, this aggregate perspective of collective literacy has been employed in other fields, predominantly health (Chinn 2011; Freedman et al. 2009; Guzys et al. 2015; Papen 2009). This aggregate conceptualization of a population’s health, scientific, or environmental literacy, which focuses on individuals as the study unit, albeit grouped together, can be helpful as, methodologically, it is easier to operationalize and study. An aggregate view, however, often fails to consider the complex, interacting social practices in and through which a population’s literacy develops (Ardoin et al. 2022). People embody a heterogeneity of experiences, cultural ways of thinking, and social practices. Therefore, to better understand collective environmental literacy, there is a need for a more encompassing framework focused not on individuals or even the aggregate of individuals, but rather on the activities in which people collectively participate.

A focus on activity systems highlights the goals of learning and doing, which in turn offers a lens to understand why, how, and what people learn and what they do with that learning. Although different theories of activity exist (e.g. cultural historical activity theory [CHAT], Engeström 2000, Roth 2004; social practice theory, Holland and Lave 2009), central tenets include the ideas of goal-oriented action and of thinking as occurring in relation to cultural and social activities (Holland and Lave 2009). Integral to an activity perspective is that environmental literacy emerges as an evolving feature of participation in a collective activity; in other words, groups of people participating in activities that are meaningful to them and their communities drive collective literacy (Roth 2009; Roth and Barton 2004). Thus, different groups will develop and manifest different literacies because the context and goals of their collective activities will be different. People learn much more than concepts when they participate in activity: they learn skills—such as how to act, solve problems, understand the roles of various participants, and decipher—and enact cultural norms and practices (Holland and Lave 2009).

A sociocultural activity framework also allows for examining how language, symbols, technologies, and other tools employed by members of a community–as well as the natural environment in which community members interact with these tools–can shape community members’ understanding of environmental problems and how to solve those problems. Indeed, ‘activity’ can refer to the way that people problem-solve, and ‘activity theory’ allows us to study not just where the problem/problem-solving occurs, but also the skills and purpose that the people solving the problems bring into the process. In nearly every situation, people bring more than one way of problem-solving to each activity and, during interactions, problem-solving occurs (Krasny and Roth 2010; Lave 1993). This means that, when people collaborate to solve problems, they draw on the tools in their tool kit for understanding, modify those tools as they think and work together, and, thus, influence and are influenced by the environment around them.

Another key element of an activity framework is the historical nature of those activities (Cole 1998; Engeström 2000; Rogoff 1995; Roth 2004; Vygotsky 1978). Gutiérrez specified, ‘Learning to “see” historically across multiple time scales is fundamental to understanding how ecologies come to be, how people come to see who they are and what they might become as part of those ecologies as well as what mediates their trajectories’ (2011, 190). Research that measures environmental literacy as a property of the individual (e.g. McBeth and Volk 2010; Tan 2004; Volk and Cheak 2003) often overlooks the historical events that shape communities’ environmental understandings, attitudes, and the diversity of perspectives people bring to consider and engage in environmental learning. Although environmental issues (such as biodiversity loss, toxic-chemical pollution, unsustainable energy production/use, or land management issues) are situated in the time and place in which we live, those challenges have been shaped by historical events. Furthermore, historical events impact communities differently (Gutiérrez 2011). Our understanding, attitudes, and even problem-solving abilities occur at specific points in time because of the historical events that created the conditions for those activities.

A narrow focus on individual actions and outcomes diminishes the complexity of the problems at hand and how they have been shaped by the surrounding historical and cultural context of the collective (Bang and Marin 2015). An activity framework, on the other hand, embraces complexity and uncovers the social aspects of interaction for, about, and around the environment, including collaborative efforts, power differentials, meaning-making, and shifting identities all located within specific historical contexts. Water pollution, for instance, like many other environmental issues, is not just an individual concern, but rather one that impacts a community at large. In studying water pollution in a community, one might ask: What historical conditions created it, and what led to a fight for the protection of streams, watersheds, and the health of the people in the community? Who historically has had decision-making power that shaped land, water, and resource management? Who are the people involved in conversations around environmental issues, and what diversity of perspectives, meanings, and skills do they bring? What objects and tools are used in studying water pollution and how do people use them? What do they collectively perceive as ‘the environment and related issues’, and how do they address problems collaboratively? As a real-world example, Shenk, Eells, and Almitra (2023) described a multisession, land conservation-focused learning circle involving women landowners in the United States. In this case study, Shenk et al. shared how the activity system of people, tools, and practices led to the development of a cognitive ecology that ultimately supported collaborative learning, knowledge exchange, and improved land stewardship. In general, an activity framework provides a holistic view of the issue at hand, the people involved, and the cultural-historical context, thus contributing to a broader view of the learning and literacy that support civic and collective action.

Learning and literacy as distributed

Our conception of collective environmental literacy also draws on theories of distributed learning where cognition, intelligence, and expertise, developed through activity, are seen as shared across members of a social group and the material environment in which people learn and act (Brown et al. 1993; Brown and Campione 1994; Hutchins 1995, 2000; Pea 1993). Cognitive tasks are embedded and dispersed not only in the individuals, but also in the tools and activities, and in coordinated efforts that build upon a group’s understanding and participation (Hutchins 2000). When a community tackles an environmental issue such as degraded water quality in a local creek, for example, not every community member needs to become an expert in water quality and environmental remediation. The community will be able to address the issue if the community includes one or more experts in the relevant knowledge areas or knows how to access needed expertise outside of the group (Ardoin et al. 2022). The critical process is making sure the knowledge is effectively distributed throughout the group as needed.

The theory of distributed cognition has focused on the social and material environment and has largely been used to study how people interact with tools and artifacts (e.g. technology). Perspectives in distributed cognition differ from those in conventional cognitive science in how they incorporate the social and environmental dimension of learning into the unit of analysis: while traditional studies on cognition focus on the individual as the unit of analysis, distributed cognition considers the whole system, which includes individuals, their social groups, and the tools and artifacts in their environment. In Hutchins’s (1995) foundational study of an airliner activity system, for example, rather than looking at individual pilots and their actions, Hutchins studied cognition as a property of the airliner’s cockpit system, which includes the crew and the aircraft systems. Hutchins stated, ‘Rather than trying to map the findings of cognitive psychological studies of individuals directly onto the individual pilots in the cockpit, we should map the conceptualization of the cognitive system onto a new unit of analysis: the cockpit as a whole’ (1995, 267). By studying the cockpit as a cognitive system, Hutchins demonstrated how the knowledge and expertise for flying a jet lies not in the minds of individual pilots, but rather in the entire aircraft system. Cognition, in this context, emerges as a property of the system as the crew interacts with each other and with the tools and technologies in the aircraft.

Distributed learning allows us to conceptualize collective environmental literacy similarly, as an emerging property of the social and material worlds in which people act. This is exemplified in Roth and Lee’s (2002) study of a community watershed restoration effort. In this case, a group of people with diverse expertise and a range of background experiences came together to restore a local watershed. The group included a person with a PhD in ecology, another with a BS in environmental studies, an activist and campaigner, a coordinator, a water technician, a local farmer, a report writer, and a local consultant. No one person in the group held all the information or expertise necessary to solve the problem at hand; rather, each person brought a unique set of understanding and interests. The group members interacted with each other, combined their understandings and expertise, and worked synergistically toward the shared goal of watershed restoration. Literacy, in this context, emerged from people’s interactions and conversations, as opposed to one person’s expert knowledge. According to Roth and Lee, ‘The scientific literacy that emerges as the thread of the conversation could not be predicted from the scientific literacy of the individual participant-fibers—scientific literacy in conversational interaction is an irreducibly social phenomenon’ (2002, 39). The social nature of cognition prominent in sociocultural theories helps shed light on such distributed expertise and appropriation of shared thinking during collective activity.

How we think about, and act on, environmental issues is shaped not only by our social groups, but also by our interactions with the material world such as the resources, tools, and technologies available to us. When people work together, learning involves access to shared resources and materials in ways that will serve the community’s broader goals. In Roth and Lee’s (2002) study, high school students who worked on the community’s watershed restoration used scientific tools and instruments to monitor water quality and collect data. Students did not use tools in whatever manner they wished; rather, adult community members guided them on how to use specific tools efficiently and appropriately. Tool use therefore ‘was mediated by the community in and for which the data were generated’ (Roth and Lee 2002, 45). The community’s collective knowledge, needs, and practices dictated the availability and use of tools, which in turn shaped the outcome of the activity itself. In distributed learning, people pull together and use conceptual and epistemic resources rather than carrying around fully formed concepts that they employ irrespective of context.

A distributed learning perspective incorporates the social, cultural, and material worlds into cognition thus shifting how we study environmental literacy, moving from the individual to the collective. Environmental ‘outcomes’ such as understanding, skill sets, and problem-solving do not reside in any one person; rather, they become emergent properties of the collective social, cultural, and material world. Such outcomes depend on the activity system in which they exist and different activities produce different systems of understanding and problem-solving. According to Hutchins (1995, xiii), ‘The emphasis on finding and describing “knowledge structures” that are somewhere inside” the individual encourages us to overlook the fact that human cognition is always situated in a complex sociocultural world and cannot be unaffected by it’. As a result, in addition to studying individual-level outcomes, we also need to focus on the relationships between thinking and the social world in which that thinking takes place. In doing so, we study the collective processes by which people make meaning of their environments, such as how people interact in their social groups, what resources and tools are available to them, and how social practices and the material resources within a community collectively shape environmental learning and literacy.

Learning and literacy as identity development

When speaking colloquially of identity, we often refer to a sense of self that defines who we are and guides who we want to be, aligning closely with psychologists’ study of personal identity (Erikson 1994/1959). Taking a sociocultural perspective, identity is frequently seen not as a single entity, but rather existing in multiple, if not countless, forms. While writing about language and discourse analysis, Gee (2011, p.3) defined identity as such:

I do not mean your core sense of self, who you take yourself ‘essentially’ to be. I mean different ways of being in the world at different times and places for different purposes; for example, ways of being a ‘good student’, an ‘avid bird watcher’, a ‘mainstream politician’, a ‘tough cop’, a video-game ‘gamer’, a ‘Native American’, and so on and so forth through a nearly endless list.

Connecting identity to sociocultural activities, Holland et al. (1998/2003, 5) described identity as both a ‘social product’ and ‘psychohistorical formation’. Using Holland’s ethnographic work with environmental groups, Holland and Lave (2009) applied social practice theory to explain how environmental identities are formed as people identify with a particular sociocultural world and subsequently follow its norms. This draws and builds on Lave and Wenger’s work on identities as central in communities of practice (Lave 1993; Lave and Wenger 1991). Other researchers exploring environmental identity have also employed a sociocultural lens. Using data from interviews with members of environmental groups, for example, Kitchell et al. (2000) argued that, rather than people joining groups based on common identities, group members’ identities converge because of shared participation in activities. Kitchell et al. (2000) used the term ‘reformulations’ to refer to identity development occurring through interactions with the social world, emphasizing the mutability of identity.

Building on Kempton and Holland’s (2003) concept of a social environmental identity, Stapleton (2015) explored the development of environmental identity in a group of young people participating in a climate change education program. Findings from this work highlight the critical role of social interactions in environmental identity development, specifically calling attention to the influence of social recognition and interactions with diverse groups of people. Williams and Chawla (2016) and Mateer et al. (2021) used social practice theory to examine environmental identity development associated with participation in outdoor environmental education. This emphasis on the social world contrasts with research on environmental identity that has focused on a person’s connection to the natural world (Clayton and Opotow 2003; Hinds and Sparks 2009). Both the natural and social worlds play a role in environmental identity development (Clayton and Opotow 2003; Prévot, Clayton, and Mathevet 2018; Williams and Chawla 2016), highlighting a connection between sociocultural and biophysical influences on environmental identity, and offering insight into how sociocultural learning theories can combine with other theoretical perspectives (e.g. sense of place theory; Masterson et al. 2017) to explain ideas of environmental identity and action.

Identities develop at multiple scales, spanning from, for example, personal identities to collective identities to cultural identities (Hall and Du Gay 1996). Collective identity, frequently associated with the study of social movements, is the ‘shared definition of a group that derives from its members’ common interests, experiences, and solidarities’ (Whooley 2011, 70). Rather than being a sum or average of individual identities, collective identity is more than an aggregate. It is a constantly evolving ‘shared and interactive sense of “we-ness” and “collective agency”’ (Snow 2001, 3). Describing collective identity as ‘a dynamic force for change’ that group members ‘identify with and are inspired to support in their own actions’ (p. 97), Holland, Fox, and Daro (2008) emphasized the place-based nature of a group identity that arises from shared dialogue and social practice.

While collective identity is a well-established construct (Hund and Benford 2004), collective environmental identity has received less attention when compared to individual environmental identity (Fraser et al. 2009). This oversight may change as researchers explore and leverage a connection between collective identity and collective environmental action (Carmona-Moya, Calvo-Salguero, and Aguilar-Luzón 2021). Collective environmental identity involves a group of people with a shared identity working together in environmental learning activities (e.g. attending educational programs, exploring ways to address an issue, meeting with local officials, collecting data, removing invasive plants) toward a common environmental goal, such as improved water quality or mitigating climate change. A collective environmental identity may emerge from a group with similar individual identities such as, for example, when people participate in a local Sierra Club group. Group members may initially be drawn together because they identify as environmentalists, but, through meetings, conversations, events, and other shared practices, a collective identity emerges that is particular to that group in that time and place.

Groups form different environmental identities in response to what is meaningful to them, and their efforts result in a greater effect when compared with individuals working alone. Based on her ethnographic work in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, Satterfield (2002) presented details about the identity formation of two groups involved in the management of old-growth, temperate rain forests: loggers and environmentalists. Satterfield’s (2002) findings centered on the opposing groups’ collective identities that emerge in the same place, but from different dialogues and cultures. When developing a collective identity, people may present very different identities, such as the case of a rancher, environmentalist, and conservationist coming together to achieve better land management. Alone, they may not effectively address the issue but, as a group, despite or because of their different individual identities, they can work together towards meaningful change as they participate in activities with a shared goal. Building on Gee’s (2011) definition of identity, referenced at the beginning of this section, we suggest collective environmental literacy provides space for people to present multiple identities that may sometimes clash with other people’s identities. Through the process of collective environmental literacy, group members have the chance to shape a new, shared identity while simultaneously holding onto various forms of their individual identities. The overarching shared goal, grounded in a collective environmental identity, then becomes finding a decision that most effectively addresses community needs, even when different community members may have diverse individual goals and identities.

A major motivation for studying the development of individual and collective environmental identities is the connection between identity and pro-environmental behavior, which is also a driving force behind the study of collective environmental literacy. Identity is a motivator for action or, as Kempton and Holland (2003, 317) claimed through their work on environmental identity, ‘Our perspective is that an equally or greater causal factor [than values and beliefs] is the individual’s identity, which leads to behavior consistent with that identity’. These changes in behavior can lead to transformations: ‘Identities are a key means through which people care about and care for what is going on around them. They are important bases from which people create new activities, new worlds, and new ways of being’ (Holland et al. 1998/2003, 5). Based on analysis of national survey data in New Zealand, Milfont et al. (2020) reported a link between national environmental identity, individual environmental behavior, and collective environmental action. In their examination of contrasting community responses to environmental contamination in the United States, Messer, Shriver, and Adams (2015) highlighted how a mix of cultural factors, collective memory, and community identity were involved in whether a community engaged in collective action to address local environmental contamination or whether they remained quiet. This link between identity and action has important implications for collective environmental literacy and the quest to create social and cultural change (Holland and Lachicotte 2007); we delve into those implications in the next section.

Bringing it together: what these perspectives mean for collective environmental literacy

In the sections above, we discussed three aspects of sociocultural learning theories that support the conceptualization of environmental literacy at a collective level: learning in activity, learning as distributed, and learning as identity development. Based on this sociocultural perspective, we suggest learning can be viewed as transactional (Pyysiäinen 2021) in a way that acknowledges the dynamic entwinement of learning and identity (Wortham 2006), learning and activity (Holland and Lave 2009), and activity and identity (Kempton and Holland 2003).

In the context of collective environmental literacy, this cycle suggests learning takes place in activities such as collecting data during a community science project, visiting a national park, discussing local water quality, or protesting in response to an environmental justice concern. Through these and myriad other learning activities, environmental identities are formed or strengthened, leading to increased pro-environmental behavior and actions that persist. In turn, these new actions lead to new learning, and the cycle continues. Clayton and Opotow (2003, 16) described such an interaction by quoting a local activist as saying, ‘We don’t know if we’re organizing communities to plant trees, or planting trees to organize communities.’

The sociocultural perspective on learning and literacy (Esmonde 2017; Gee 2015) fundamentally changes the way we conceptualize environmental literacy. Instead of residing in individual minds, environmental literacy becomes a property of the collective. Environmental literacy thus develops in activity, as people within a community interact with each other while drawing on shared resources and working toward a common goal. From an environmental literacy lens, the ‘activity’ at hand would be an environmental issue, goal, or problem relevant to the community. Environmental literacy will vary based on context and community, as different activities will produce different systems of understanding and problem-solving.

Recognizing the existence of different environmental literacies may ultimately help coalesce fractured understanding and enhance opportunities for partnership and co-production. In many cases, coming together to discuss and negotiate ideas related to resource management results in initial conflict and controversy (Satterfield 2002). Disagreements are a given as not all groups (or individuals) will always agree on a single ‘best’ pathway forward–nor should they be expected to do so. Being able to reach a negotiated, informed consensus that is effective and appropriate within the social context is something that could emanate from a community that demonstrates robust, dynamic collective environmental literacy.

Relatedly, given that people learn and act in multiple and varied settings and with different groups of people, we must also consider that there is no one collective environmental literacy. Collective environmental literacies develop in multiple spaces and activities, and this brings us to one of the strengths of a collective environmental literacy: the acknowledgement of the value of diversity in environmental thought. This appreciation springs from collective environmental literacy’s reliance on diversity. The more people who contribute and the more those people differ in backgrounds, experiences, knowledge, skills, and ways of thinking, the stronger their collective environmental literacies will become (Lee 2008; 2017). Viewing environmental literacy through a sociocultural lens is ideal for honoring and communicating how people from diverse lived experiences are essential to addressing environmental problems.

In addition to seeing individuals (as well as groups) as a source of diversity, the lens of collectivity values each person as an agent of change. People shape, and are shaped by, their learning by setting goals, making choices, and actively participating. Through agency, learning shapes not only the individual, but also the sociocultural contexts that surround them. Moje and Lewis (2007, 18) described agency as ‘the strategic making and remaking of selves, identities, activities, relationships, cultural tools and resources, and histories, as embedded within relations of power’ and further elaborated: ‘At times, but not always, the relations of power themselves are disrupted and re-made’. Individual agency can thus be viewed as one of the many shared resources that underpin collective environmental literacy; it holds the potential to become transformative agency (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2015), offering an opportunity to blend sociocultural theories with transformative learning theory (Mezirow 1997; Ruiz-Mallén et al. 2022). Practitioners working to create change in individual knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors can be seen as supporting individual agency and social agency (Silver et al. 2021). (See Figure 1 for representation of this practical implication along with several other implications for research and practice discussed in this section.)

Figure 1. Implications of applying sociocultural learning theories to the construct of environmental literacy.

An activity perspective shifts the questions researchers may need to ask about environmental literacy. Rather than studying individual environmental literacy components, such as knowledge, skills, and behaviors, we start by considering the collective activity or practice and the goals of that activity. Knowing that community members take on different roles and participate in ways that are meaningful to them and their communities, we might ask questions such as: what environmental issues are relevant to a community? In what types of activities and practices do people engage? What roles do community members play, and how do their roles change over time? How do individual members of the community participate and contribute toward the shared goal, and what are people’s learning trajectories over time?

A collective perspective means we need to rethink our current methodological paradigms and tools for how we ‘measure’ environmental literacy (Ardoin et al. 2022; Gibson et al. 2022). If environmental literacy is a characteristic of situations rather than of individuals, then measures of collective environmental literacy should capture people’s participation in environment-related activities and how people solve problems collectively. As the unit of analysis changes, from the individual to the social group, we need valid, reliable, and trustworthy measures that capture and conceptualize group practices and interactions. Given the dynamic nature of collective environmental literacy, we also need measures that accommodate change occurring over time. To this end, it is important to draw on a range of qualitative and quantitative methods including case studies, participant and non-participant observations, naturalistic inquiry, and video and audio analyses, among others.

Throughout this article, we have worked to broaden notions of environmental literacy. For practitioners in environmental conservation and education, we encourage moving away from teaching environmental (science) concepts in a disembodied, stair-stepped way and moving toward a situated, socially embedded approach that emphasizes interactional processes. Such a re-envisioning foregrounds the context and, in the process, brings about social justice and civic engagement, encouraging participation. In the same way that science education has focused over the past two decades on broadening what counts as science, we call for a broadening of what counts as ‘environment,’ as well as the practices that we recognize as ‘being environmental.’ Discussions about science and scientific literacy (Schwartz, Lederman, and Enderle 2023) offer useful ideas for reconceptualizing environmental literacy as a collective construct. For example, in the previous section on distributed learning, we drew upon Roth and Lee’s (2002) work on scientific literacy and its application in an environmental context. Researchers in science education have argued for linking science literacy to public engagement (Feinstein 2011) and good citizenship (Lee and Roth 2003) and have promoted the idea of community-level science literacy (Spitzer and Fraser 2020; Taragin-Zeller, Rozenblum, and Baram-Tsabari 2022). Analogous to our argument about how environmental learning can be leveraged to spur collective action, Feinstein and Waddington (2020, 155) have asked, ‘How can science education help people work together to make appropriate use of science in social context?’

While emphasizing the collective, we are not arguing for a rejection of an individual perspective when studying and pursuing environmental literacy and action. Indeed, sociocultural theories examine how individuals learn within social practices and how social practices are shaped by individuals’ contribution. Individual and collective learning are inseparable. However, given that the social processes of learning are not often emphasized in environmental literacy and action, we highlight the importance of understanding collective environmental literacy through examining the shared activity in which individuals partake, and not just the individuals themselves. In this theoretical paper, we have focused on sociocultural perspectives on learning as an individual approach has been centered in past efforts to create change. Ultimately, we need empirical efforts that undertake comparative studies of both approaches, as well as approaches combining the two, to better understand opportunities for synergy between individual and collective action (Shi et al. 2023).

We can look back to the framing embedded in the 1977 UNESCO/UNEP Tbilisi Declaration for inspiration, as that prescient document did not separate everyday life from opportunities for environmental learning but, rather, presented a holistic view of environmental learning and environmental practices, emphasizing the importance of creating ‘new patterns of behavior of individuals, groups, and society as a whole towards the environment’ (UNESCO 1978). Practitioners can discover valuable resources to implement these approaches in a community context, drawing inspiration from areas such as community science, environmental justice, and youth development programs (e.g. Anguelovski 2013; Ballard, Dixon, and Harris 2017; Brickle and Evans-Agnew 2017; McKinley et al. 2017; Reddy 2021). In environmental education, additional resources address related concepts such as collective impact (e.g. Biggar et al. 2017), collective outcomes (e.g. Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education 2019; Gibson 2023), and collective evaluation (e.g. North American Association of Environmental Education, n.d.).

Conclusion

We have drawn on general sociocultural theory, as well as specific sociocultural theories (e.g. CHAT, social practice theory), to make the case that, in addition to individual environmental literacy, we need to understand and support collective environmental literacy. Collective environmental literacy occurs when a group of people with a common motive engage together in a meaning-making process to take action toward a shared environmental goal. Collective environmental literacy will look different in the context of different issues, undertaken and enacted by different collectives of people and at different points in history. The term and definition of ‘collective environmental literacy’ itself is less important (indeed, we are often in conversations about abandoning the term of ‘collective environmental literacy’ in favor of ‘collective environmental action’ or some yet-unthought-of construct). Rather it is the idea that, to solve the most pressing environmental problems, we must acknowledge the need for people to come together, to pool their knowledge resources, and engage in a cycle of learning, developing shared identities, and taking action. While developing individual knowledge, skills, and attitudes represents a piece of the solution, all of us working in and through shared activity represents a much more powerful, effective, and hopeful perspective toward addressing today’s pressing environmental challenges.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to those colleagues whose insights have motivated and helped shape this article including, but not limited to, Anna Lee, Megan Luce, Jason Morris, Alan Reid, and Arjen Wals.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Pisces Foundation.