Learning with the Head and the Heart: Exploring Emotional Experiences in Post-Secondary Environmental Education

Abstract

In a time of widespread climate change and environmental degradation, ensuring the efficacy of environmental education to inform and empower the next generation to make meaningful change is more important than ever. However, existing approaches to environmental education largely fail to acknowledge or consider the impact of emotions on student learning, well-being and pro-environmental behaviour. The purpose of this master’s thesis was to explore students’ emotional experiences of post-secondary environmental education with the goal of gathering information that could inform curricular and pedagogical recommendations for educators and institutions. My research was guided by three objectives: (1) to capture and articulate a broad range of students’ emotions in association with the post-secondary environmental curriculum and/or pedagogical experience; (2) to determine if and how the emotional experience varies within the environment student population based on educational stage (early undergraduate, late undergraduate, master’s); and (3) to make student-led recommendations to environmental curriculum and pedagogy to address and support students’ emotional experiences. I took a pragmatic, mixed-methods approach to achieve these objectives using online surveys, a participant-driven photo-elicitation activity, and subsequent individual semi-structured interviews. Data were collected from post-secondary students at two Canadian universities and analyzed in R and NVivo. Survey data showed that students experience a broad range of positive and negative emotions in response to the curricular and pedagogical aspects of their environmental degrees. These emotional experiences varied in frequency, intensity, and persistence with anxiety, sadness, happiness, and inspiration being more frequently, intensely, and persistently experienced. Extensive data from photo-elicitation and subsequent interviews revealed a rich tapestry of emotional responses related to specific curricular and pedagogical sources with anxiety, anger, dread, hopefulness, curiosity, and connection being the most frequently discussed by participants. Negative emotions resulted from learning about climate change and environmental issues, a perceived lack of action from parties in power, and environmental inequities, and from a lack of opportunities to meaningfully engage with the material and each other. Positive emotions resulted from learning about environmental success stories and solutions, and the wonder of the natural world, and from creative teaching approaches, engagement opportunities, and a positive focus. To improve the emotional experience of environmental education, students recommended the following measures: welcoming emotions in the learning environment; increasing opportunities for real-world action and application; embracing experiential learning and creative pedagogy; building community; and expanding solutions-oriented content. These student-led recommendations were well supported by existing peer-reviewed literature. My research fills an existing gap in the available literature on student climate emotions and post-secondary EE. While several studies exist at this intersection, my study makes novel contributions in the form of a multi-dimensional measure of emotions in this context, and specific curricular and pedagogical sources of the emotions discussed. My research has the potential to inform curricular and pedagogical recommendations for environmental educators to improve students’ emotional experiences in post-secondary environmental education.