Cognitive structures of university students about environmental education, climate change and consumption

Greenhouse gas emissions, a major cause of global climate change, have reached unprecedented levels since the pre-industrial age (IPCC, 2007). Although Americans comprise less than 5% of the world’s population, their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is almost one-fifth of the global output (World Resources Report, 2010-2011). Educating new generations that will be impacted even more acutely by changing climate patterns, about the impacts of climate change and its sources is therefore critically important to teach about (Boyes, Chuckran & Stanisstreet, 1993; Bofferding & Kloser, 2015). In today’s world where global environmental problems are rapidly growing, carbon emissions have already reached the highest known levels and the global ecologic footprint has now reached the top of the loading capacity of the earth. This makes environmental education of even greater importance as a vehicle to provide education about these problems.

The growing impacts of environmental degradation are widely understood to feed expressions of concern about the sustainability of contemporary lifestyles and their impacts on the planet. However, while many environmental problems are increasingly studied in terms of the globalized nature of their origins and outcomes, the extent of their impacts and associated concerns about their nature are not always examined at the local or immediate level, including aspects of personal experience and perceptions (Kim, 2011).

The failure for students to make the connection between consumerism and environmental problems is often attributed to an inadequacy of environmental education indicating the need to strengthen the focus of environmental education toward earth issues in order to create more effective solutions to contemporary environmental problems (e.g. climate change and personal consumption of non-reusable and or recyclable products) (Benn, 2004; Kagawa, 2007; Boyes, Skamp & Stanisstreet, 2008).

Environmental education involves a multidisciplinary approach of teaching and learning that educates individuals to become more knowledgeable about the natural environment and to develop responsible environmental behavior and skills in order to work for improved environmental quality (Belgrade Charter, 1975; Nordström, 2008; Blanchet-Cohen & Reilly, 2013). Environmental education is assumed to have a significant influence on environmental awareness, everyday lifestyles, and consumer behaviors of students.

Environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) are rising topics on national and international agendas (Pauw, 2014). Among educational content for sustainable development lie key issues such as climate change, the over-use of natural resources, social justice, human rights and democracy. Both EE and ESD allow for students to gain competence to act in the future and within the vision of action competence (Hines, Hungerford & Tomera, 1986; Hasslöf & Malmberg, 2015). Several higher education institutions have recently recognized the importance of integrating sustainability issues into education to make this impact focused and explicit. As a topic, it has emerged as being a field of inquiry seeking to understand how sustainability may be advanced in the curricula and operational activities of higher education institutions (Zsóka, Marjainé, Széchy & Kocsis, 2013; Lozano, 2010; Waas, Verbruggen & Wright, 2010; AASHE, 2014).

Unfortunately, college students have exhibited misconceptions about environmental education, climate change and consumption. This study attempted to offer some insights into these issues. There are several methods to externalize and to measure the cognitive structure of students as the organization and relationships between the concepts in the mind. Research on conceptual change has been a central topic in science education literature for the last 25 years. It builds from the insight that learners bring their own conceptions of the natural world into the science classroom, which is often incongruent with scientific ones (Bevir, 2003; Hayes, Foster & Gadd, 2003; Kang, Scharmann & Noh, 2004). Students should strive to replace and re-organize their personal concepts of the natural environment through structured lessons by experiencing learning as a process of conceptual change (Abd-el-Khalick & Akerson, 2004; Merenluoto & Lehtinen, 2004). Word associations are one of the methods used for the evaluation of conceptual structures, as well as for ascertaining belief or attitude changes in psychology and sociology (Doise et al., 1993; Hirsh & Tree, 2001; Schmitt, 1998; Hovardas & Korfiatis, 2006). A word association test is one of the most common and oldest methods for investigating cognitive structure, and have been used by several researchers on various subjects (Bahar, Johnstone & Sutcliffe, 1999; Little & Hart, 2016; Derman & Eilks, 2016; Keskin & Örgün, 2015; Öner Armağan, 2015; Aydın, 2015; Aydın & Taşar, 2010; Ercan, Taşdere & Ercan, 2010; Uzun, Özsoy & Keleş, 2010; Nakiboğlu, 2008; Bahar & Özatli, 2003; Bahar et al., 1999; Bahar & Hansell, 2000; Cardellini & Bahar, 2000, Shavelson, 1974).

The method is based on the assumption that giving a stimulus word and asking the respondent to freely associate what ideas come to their mind gives relatively unrestricted access to mental representations of the stimulus term. It has been found that ideas expressed within a word association procedure are spontaneous productions that are subjected to fewer constraints than typically imposed in interviews or written questionnaires and thus allowing less biased results (Wagner et al., 1996).

We used a word association test to map the cognitive structure of environmental education, climate change and consumer consumption to university students at the University of Minnesota Duluth, U.S.A.

Within the scope of environmental education courses given in undergraduate and graduate programs, students have cognitive knowledge about environmental education. Within the scope of education for sustainable development, environmental problems for sustainable life should be examined not only from environmental dimension but also from economic and social dimensions. Unsustainable consumption behaviour causes climate change. Increasing individual awareness of climate change is possible through environmental education. In the context of cognitive, emotional and psychomotor skills, the concept of environmental education, together with the concepts of climate change and consumption, is important only in the cognitive dimension, in order to reveal the cognitive subset of these concepts in the minds of the students. Therefore, these three concepts are key words related to each other. There have been no direct studies of environmental education-climate change-consumption in the literature. In this research, in order to reveal the cognitive structures of the students participating in the research in the aspect of environmental dimension, the social dimension of climate change, and consumption in sustainable consumption habits in the aspect of these three components of sustainable development, environmental education was chosen.

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between university students' cognitive structures about environmental topics, and to guide students to see this map as a reminder of the conceptual environmental links between their word associations and environmental issues. Accordingly, our goal was to find an answer to the following research questions:

What is the total number of response words related to key concepts (environmental education, climate change and consumption) in the word association test?
What are the three response words that most frequently come to the minds of the respondents in association with each key concept in the word association test?
What is the relationship between selected university students' cognitive structures about environmental education, climate change and consumption concepts?

This study is significant because it reveals what the selected student’s conceptual knowledge is toward environmental concepts and issues. It also is intended to serve as a guide to teachers for an additional means of measuring students learning of environmental concepts. This approach has been successful in several other disciplines at varying grade levels, yet it has not yet been used to assess college students’ conceptual knowledge and the subsequent concept mapping of their knowledge about environmental issues and how their own behavior can influence those issues.