Young adolescents' perceptions of nature and environmental issues: Implications for environmental education in urban settings.

Abstract

With this dissertation the researcher intended to advocate and obtain a better understanding of urban middle school students' perceptions, ideas and theories in relation to environmental issues and nature, in order to obtain new insights in adapting environmental education to the social and physical context in which the school community is embedded. Additionally, the researcher tried to capture the drama and the ordinary of the everyday life of the participants as it relates to environmental issues. The research draws upon interpretive and critical science traditions to come to understand the participants' view of nature and environmental issues as manifested in their own lifeworld and their reflections on their position in this world, without from the start imposing the researcher's predetermined views and ideas on them, and without theories about their causal explanations. The body of data for analysis and interpretation consists of; thirty in-depth interviews with African-American and Caucasian seventh grade students from Detroit and two of its suburbs, research journals, classroom participant observation and students' reflections on photographs. The results show that students ascribe to nature at least five different distinct, but related dimensions which manifest themselves in eight different kinds of nature experiences. All students display significant concern about environmental issues, but do so at different levels of understanding. Three levels are distinguished; Level 1, Pollution can be touched, tasted, smelled and seen; Level II, Pollution can be invisible, move around and accumulate, and Level III, Pollution as a politicized problem. The dissertation ends with a list of implications for environmental education in urban settings, using four inputs of curriculum design: decisions on content, information about students' prior ideas, perspectives on the learning process, and teachers' practical knowledge of students, classrooms and schools. The research findings and implications are integrated into a constructivist teaching sequence for environmental education.