Forest education as contribution to education for environmental citizenship and non-anthropocentric perspectives

Abstract

Forest ecosystems play a fundamental role in mitigating global environmental changes. The development of environmentally sound behavior, and inter- and intragenerational equity can help counteract these global changes. One type of formal and non-formal environmental education is forest education, which aims to promote the achievement of sustainable development in forest-related ecosystems. We conducted an empirical study among forest educators in Austria, using a mixed-method approach, to investigate the potential of forest education to promote education for environmental citizenship. Our findings suggest that forest education and encounters with nature can lead to increased self-responsibility and contribute to critically reflect experience-based changes in behaviour. In conclusion, forest education is a useful tool for environmental citizenship education that contributes to improved understanding of forest ecosystems and non-anthropocentric perspectives for future development. However, forest education lacks funding, integration into formal education curricula, and the harmonization of framework conditions in non-formal education.

Keywords:

• Forest education
• environmental and sustainability education
• environmental citizenship
• encounters with nature
• non-anthropocentrism

Acknowledgments

The authors are very grateful to Heide Bruckner for proof reading and to the two anonymous reviewers for fruitful comments that helped to improve the paper.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Notes

1 Throughout this paper, we use ESE as an umbrella term encompassing environmental education, education for sustainable development (ESD), sustainability education, education for sustainable development goals (ESDG) and other forms of education that are at least partly concerned with land and environment.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by ENEC (European Network for Environmental Citizenship) Cost Action CA16229 (https://enec-cost.eu/).