Michaela Maurer

Responsibly using resources is an essential goal of the 2030 agenda. An overall need for 180 tonnes of fish per year is pushing the limits of sustainable fishing. Teachers can focus on this topic to enhance the environmental awareness of sustainability issues in learners (e.g., sustainable consumption, production, and supporting sustainable judgements). For this purpose, we developed a questionnaire on the topic of aquaculture using LimeSurvey and administered this survey to preservice teachers. The survey contained five open questions relating to aquaculture terms, a semantic differential with 14 adjective pairs that concern the interest in and usefulness of aquacultures; the environmental motives scale to determine the environmental concern of the teachers, and a self-developed set of items on systems—consumption knowledge, and social influence. Individuals in the target group (n = 158) indicated that they thought aquaculture products were rather useless and uninteresting, and they purchased them less. The results showed that the participants mostly correctly defined the aquaculture terms, but an overall understanding of system- and consumption-related knowledge, for example, was missing. Aquaculture seems to be associated more with profit than with nutrition or environmental concerns. We illustrate a possible barrier to the communication of less-familiar issues in society.

The Global Earth Overshoot Day, the date when all annually available natural resources are consumed, is set for July this year. For densely populated European countries like Germany or Switzerland, that specific day is due even earlier (May). To overcome such an unsustainable lifestyle, immediate actions are required, which includes substantial educational efforts. As the model of "Sustainable Development" is complex, appropriate pedagogical actions need to support cognitive learning, critical thinking and behavioural actions. Knowledge about individual conceptions in relation to the Environment, Nature and Ecological Footprints contributes to pre-conditions to succeed. To what extent present teaching methods influenced individual conceptions during the first UN-decade regarding those terms is illustrated by 464 Swiss-German university freshmen who participated in our paper-pencil test, which is based on four open questions. The term of Environment was perceived as the sum of biocentric, ecocentric and anthropocentric views. The participants often equated the term to Nature and associated it with positive feelings or emotions. Therefore, calm, joy and aesthetic appreciation were predominantly named. Regardless of the concept, humans were perceived as the Greatest Environmental Threat. In contrast, recommendations to reduce Environmental Footprints regarding mobility & transport, waste avoidance and consumption differ. Following a binary logistic regression analysis, the involvement of the Inclusion of Self Scale (INS) was used as an explanatory variable to detect patterns of those conceptions. Relating sustainable concepts, natural resources were frequently named exceeding saving water and energy or other association dealt with second-hand issues or regional/ seasonal usages. Such ideas are shaped by experiences and scientific expertise.

Affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy consumption is a crucial goal of the Agenda 2030. To raise each citizen’s awareness for more effective energy consumptions, proper education is necessary. The classroom project GAIA (Green Awareness in Action) was designed to change energy consumption patterns to pursue green behaviour. The class-wise aim was to improve schools’ CO₂-balance and to promote environmentally sustainable behaviour without impacting school life quality. Our target group were sixth graders (N = 132, M = 11.03, SD ± 0.23, 53.4% = girls) of one Greek school. To monitor the project’s effect, a pre- and post-test design was applied to measure environmental literacy regarding environmental knowledge, attitudes/values and behaviour. A regression analysis revealed that students with poor previous knowledge reached higher learning effects compared to those with good previous knowledge. Related to the environmental knowledge types, an ANCOVA analysis revealed a knowledge gain in action-related and effectiveness knowledge. The overall learning effect correlates positively with pro-environmental preference (high scores in preservation, low scores in utilisation) and negatively with weak pro-environmental preferences. Anthropocentric (utilitarian) preferences primarily focussing on nature exploitation have considerably decreased. The project illustrates how far individual behaviour can be targeted in green educational initiatives.

Concepts of 464 university freshmen towards Environmental Education (EE) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) were analyzed. Responses were classified into seven main categories: ‘ecological aspects’, ‘ecological problems’, ‘economical aspects’, ‘social aspects’, ‘environmental attitudes’, ‘environmental behavior’ and ‘education’. Analyses of sustainability concepts show a large discrepancy between EE and ESD, whereby the latter includes an additional sub-group: ‘the next generation aspect’. Labeling individual sources of EE in a retrospective assessment identified the family as the most important source of knowledge, followed by media, school and outreach. Further differences were detected between students’ self-perception and their ideal conception of environmental behavior, by using the scale Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS). Only some EE statements produced higher (unfulfilled) expectations ‘economic aspects’, ‘environmental behavior’ and ‘ecological problems’. In contrast fewer (unfulfilled) expectations were observed in the categories of ‘education’ and ‘ecological aspects’.