The role of environment clubs in promoting ecocentrism in secondary schools: student identity and relationship to the earth

Abstract

This qualitative study used a deep ecology lens and the New Environmental Paradigm to investigate anthropocentrism and ecocentrism in 30 secondary school environment club students from three schools in Victoria, Australia. The work repositions the deep ecology philosophy as a posthumanist/relational ideology, providing novel perspectives based on kinship with the earth. Open-ended interviews assessed the alignment of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors along a Deep Ecology Spectrum. Key aspects of deep ecology were confirmed through the study findings including biospherical egalitarianism, limits to growth, wildlife preservation, anti-consumerism, environmental activism, and ecological identity.

Keywords:

• anthropocentrism
• consumerism
• deep ecology
• ecocentrism
• ecological self
• education
• secondary

Acknowledgments

I thank Professor Annette Gough and Professor Amanda Berry for their numerous comments and suggestions on successive iterations of the arguments presented here. I also thank the editor, executive editor, and the anonymous reviewers at The Journal of Environmental Education for their helpful and considerate comments and suggestions on the original submission. All weaknesses in the argument are solely my responsibility. This research was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Research Award.

Notes

1 Etymologically, neos (new, young, fresh), and philia (liking, love).

2 Schools have been given pseudonyms for anonymity using the names of indigenous supernatural beings.

3 Studies of students in secondary schools require parental consent and rigorous vetting by school administrators and are often vetoed because of interruptions to school timetables.

4 For brevity, the following definition of existentialism was used: “Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence…. What does it mean to be a human being?” (Marino, 2004, pp. 15–16). This is also embodied in the existentialist theme: “What you are (your essence) is the result of your choices (your existence) rather than the reverse. Essence is not destiny. You are what you make yourself to be” (Flynn, 2006, p. 8).

5 Ontology is closely related to existentialism (and foundational to metaphysics), but it encompasses questions relating to what things (and beings that) exist, properties of things/humans (like love for nature), the events that happen and where they happen, in concrete terms and in the abstract (propositions, ideas) (Effingham, 2013). In this article, the author explores ontology because the research asks questions about the people (beings), and the properties of those people (as in their attitudes toward nature).

6 Luke and other students had studied how palm oil was produced at the expense of orangutan rainforest habitat.

7 The student’s response implied that “animals” referred to “wild animals” and did not recognize humans as “animals.”