Hope and its implication for geographical and environmental education

As the world waits in great anticipation for an end to the CoVID-19 pandemic amidst the latest developments in vaccines, new waves of infection has prompted many jurisdictions to impose new lock down measures. The uncertainty of the global pandemic and when and how it will end stays at the top of the list of concerns for everyone, including the geographical and environmental educator. One cannot help but ask the question of how does geographical and environmental education contribute to a key aspiration of education - education for hope? Indeed, “hope, despite efforts to undermine it prompted by despair, relativism, cynicism and fatalism, is a crucial aspect of the educational process” (Halpin, 2001, p. 392), we need to give hope to students to imagine liveable futures – to live with a positive anticipation. ‘Hope’ as a construct, is not new, and geographical and environmental education build on the premise that there will be a better tomorrow. Researchers have found that students who are high in hope have greater academic success, stronger friendships, and demonstrate more creativity and better problem-solving (Chang, 1998). Despite the fluidity in challenges brought about by the global pandemic, there is much scope for us to look beyond the outbreak and the economic repercussions to how we can lead meaningful lives (Chang, 2020).

Education aims to provide opportunities for enriching and enhancing the lives of young people. This is not dissimilar to Welfare economist Amartya Sen's notion of individuals’ capability of attaining the kind of lives they have reason to value. Education provides opportunities to develop capabilities beyond knowledge acquisition. In an essay promoting storytelling in troubled times (Facer, 2019) advocates that schools and universities need to support students to understand the troubles of the 21^st Century, and “to think with hope and with rigour about the sorts of futures that are being made today and to enable them to care for, imagine and make liveable futures” (p. 4). In Ojala’s (2017) analysis of the teaching and experiencing of ‘hope’, she considers ‘hope’ as both an evasion from reality and a call to action resulting from an awareness of current issues. The call to action is defined by Ojala as ‘critical hope’ - the development of robust, powerful ideations of possibility in the full knowledge of the difficulties and complexities of reality. When we consider the current CoVID-19 pandemic and associated economic implications, we see a critical importance of the experience of collective action, of a calling to community, to tackle the emotional and affective challenges of creating ‘critical hope’ for a new tomorrow. Such collective action must extend to the environment. It is difficult to recall the last time an environmental issue was debated in the media – pandemic related reports dominate news channels, and perhaps rightfully so, but we must not forget other crises threatening our futures.

IRGEE has repeatedly published articles in relation to the International Geographical Union Charter on Geographical Education, which affirms, “geographical education is indispensable to the development of responsible and active citizens in the present and future world”. Also “geography can be an informing, enabling and stimulating subject at all levels in education, and contributes to a lifelong enjoyment and understanding of our world” (International Geographic Union - Commission on Geographical Education, 2016). We argue that geographical and environmental education can help develop hope through self-reflection (recognising opportunities and challenges), making a positive contribution, by a focus on things that will empower, and by the development of coping skills (being adaptive and resilient). This latter skill learning has been an important feature in IRGEE recently. In our Editorials (Chang & Kidman, 2020a, 2020b), we emphasise that failing to prepare students for future crises, means we are preparing to fail. We must develop the skills of a ‘critical hope’ in our students so they remain hopeful that both the short and long-term futures are better than current times.

In this issue, we are provided an insight into how we can develop such skills by Gouramanis and Morales Ramirez (2021) in their Singaporean study into natural hazards based and disaster risk reduction in a higher education setting. The Sendai Framework was used to identify risks, adaptations and mitigation strategies to develop stakeholder communication tools. Gouramanis and Morales Ramirez (2021) tell us how “students became their own experts” of a particular hazard, and that a “self-realisation that their assignments were of real-world practical value and underpinned by a global framework” was highly empowering. Wu and Otsuka (2021), also in this issue, draw our attention to the development of pro-environmental behaviour and environmental actions. Such behaviours and actions by individuals and communities can be learned through activity-based learning and has a positive impact on adolescent actions. Wu and Otsuka outline life experiences correlate to pro-environmental behaviours, and there is a need to include socio-cultural factors, to give students the opportunities to act, and to use authentic tools and skills in decision-making processes in both formal and informal educational contexts.

But we cannot provide this ‘critical hope’ education if we do not have a teaching workforce with the skills to develop such an education for hope. Golightly (2021), in this issue, houses his research in pre-service teacher education and problem-based learning. As alluded to above, education for hope and resilience is, seemingly, best developed through experiential learning. Golightly (2021) informs us that problem-based learning is well suited to Geography classrooms by virtue of its focus on complex human-environment relationships, but that pre-service teachers need to be challenged as both teachers and learners of this active-learning strategy. Through empowering students to “integrate theory and practice, and apply knowledge and skills to develop viable solutions” we are fostering a learning and thinking style based on empathy and thus, hope. Although Golightly’s paper emphasises self- and peer assessment, the study identifies social-loafing (lack of team participation) as being a concern in problem-based learning.

We consider the occurrence of social-loafing in Golightly’s study to be akin to members of society not contributing to the necessary changes in environmental attitudes and behaviours the world needs in times of crisis, and as a long-term plan for resilience and disaster mitigation. While education across many contexts favour the learning of knowledge and skills, we contend that this is not sufficient. We need to teach the ‘person’. The ‘person’ needs knowledge, skills and importantly an understanding of the relationships between themselves, the environment and society - a requirement to live in the complexity of current and future times. The ‘person’ needs a sense of optimism about their tomorrow where disruption, much like we have experienced in 2020, is a certainty, and not just a hypothetical. We call on all environmental and geographical educators to contribute to a better understanding of this notion.

Gillian Kidman and Chew-Hung Chang
[email protected]