The effects of educator’s level of environmental literacy on their issue identification practices

Abstract

Research on environmental literacy in students and adults has often used ratings of high and low to indicate the extent of one’s environmental literacy. Such ratings miss the nuances that a continuum could provide. This study uses a contextual perspective on environmental literacy which includes such a continuum to examine the relationship between level of environmental literacy and patterns of environmental issue identification. Based on responses from the Teacher Environmental Literacy Assessment, informal educators and teachers were placed along a continuum from functional to critical. Interviews were analysed to discern differences and find patterns in issue identification at three levels. In general, educators with a cultural or critical literacy provided more complex explanations of issue identification and proposed system-level action more often. Implications of differences at each level and in transition zones are discussed.

Keywords:

• Environmental literacy
• educators
• situated learning
• practices
• identity

Availability of data and material (data transparency)

N/A

Authors’ contributions

First author completed data collection, analysis, and write-up. Second author served as dissertation advisor and supervised research.

Code availability (software application or custom code)

N/A

Disclaimer

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the following granting agencies for making this study: United States Department of Agriculture National Institutes of Food and Agriculture Hath Multistates Funds Program; National Science Foundation under Grant DRL-1503414.