The effect of information source on higher education students’ sustainability knowledge

Abstract

When it comes to what higher education students know about sustainability, where they learn matters. In this study, we explore the extent to which students’ level of sustainability knowledge differed according to where they previously learned about the environment. In an online survey administered to undergraduate students enrolled at Michigan State University, a large university in the Midwestern region of the United States, we found a significant relationship between students’ level of sustainability knowledge and their environmental learning source. Environmental knowledge gained in the classroom, both at the secondary and postsecondary levels, had the strongest (positive) influence on students’ present sustainability knowledge, while there was a significant (negative) relationship between how frequently students gathered knowledge from their parents and their level of knowledge. Results from this study suggest that instructors need to be intentional about the types of prior knowledge they use as a springboard when teaching students about sustainability.

Keywords:

• Sustainability knowledge
• informal learning
• prior knowledge
• information source

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica Ostrow Michel

Michel is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Jessica’s scholarship assesses higher education students’ learning around sustainability and environmental justice. She received her Ed.D., Ed.M., and M.A. in Higher and Postsecondary Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and her B.A. from the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz.Zwickle conducts interdisciplinary social science research centered on communicating environmental risks and encouraging sustainable behaviors. Drawing from the fields of social psychology and risk communication, his work integrates theories of individual perception and message framing to aide communication practitioners. Specifically, his goal is to better communicate environmental risks in ways that reduce the amount that their long term impacts are discounted. He is also active in sustainability issues at the university level. He has worked with colleagues to develop a valid assessment of sustainability knowledge targeted at undergraduate students, partnered with university sustainability offices to increase conservation behaviors among students, and believes in using campuses as living laboratories to produce both theoretical and practical research as well as tangible local impacts. Adam holds joint appointments with the Department of Community Sustainability, the Environmental Science and Policy Program and the School of Criminal Justice.