Assessing high-school students’ conceptions of global water consumption and sustainability

ABSTRACT

Due to global water consumption and an intensification of the resulting consequences there is a need for education regarding sustainable water consumption. Regarding Education for Sustainable Development, the ongoing water use of the industrialized countries needs to be discussed in the classrooms. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present and use a questionnaire for the survey of students’ conceptions of sustainable water use. In order to enable educational reconstruction, conceptions about sustainable development and virtual water have been surveyed. The latter aspect of conceptions has been divided into different spatial conceptions and knowledge about water intense products. It has been shown, that the students’ conceptions are similar to scientific concepts, but learners also have their own conceptions. According to these findings conclusions for improved learning and teaching on sustainable water consumption are derived, to achieve more comprehensive students’ conceptions.

KEYWORDS:

• Education for sustainable development
• conceptions
• virtual water
• socio-scientific-issues
• sustainable consumption

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the students who took part in our survey. We would also like to thank their teachers for providing the time. A special thanks goes to Claus Carstens, Universität Hamburg for transforming our data into meaningful maps.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.