School teachers’ conceptions of environmental education: reinterpreting a typology through a thematic analysis

Abstract

This article reinterprets Sauvé’s typology of Environmental Education (EE) as an analytical framework to study the EE conceptions of 11 primary school teachers working in Monterrey, Mexico. Each teacher engaged in a sequence of three face-to-face semi-structured interviews that explored their ideas and teaching experiences in relation to EE. Sauvé’s typology was used in the thematic analysis, concentrating on aims of EE, concept of the environment, and examples of EE teaching and learning activities. The findings identify full and partial associations between the teachers’ ideas and Sauvé’s typology. This diversity shows that the conceptions of the teachers were complex and could not be fully represented by single EE types. Two teacher case studies are presented to convey the influence of culture and social contexts on their conceptions. Overall, the article presents an alternative take on the typology and provides recommendations for future research on EE conceptions.

Keywords:

• Environmental education
• thematic analysis
• environmental typology
• environmental ideology
• teacher cognition

Disclosure statement

There is no potential conflict of interest from any of the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported under a PhD scholarship (No. 359020) by México’s National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT).

Notes on contributors

Ana Ilse Benavides-Lahnstein

Dr. Benavides-Lahnstein is a Research Officer at Instituto de Investigación, Innovación y Estudios de Posgrado para la Educación (IIIEPE) Monterrey, México. Her research interests are environmental education and science education in basic education. She has studied project-based learning in science education curricula, innovative science education teaching practices, and more recently she has conducted research to understand community environmental education in sustainability school projects.

Jim Ryder

Jim Ryder is Professor of Science Education and Director of the Centre for Curriculum, Pedagogy and Policy, School of Education, University of Leeds, UK. His research explores the role of the teacher in improving educational outcomes for students. He has studied teachers' experiences of education policy reforms and their engagement with education research. He has a specific interest in the context of science teaching, but his work also explores the role of the teacher in other subject areas.