Promoting Environmental Citizenship Through Local Socio-Cultural Traditions in Science Education

Abstract

This article asks how the site-specific parameters of pro-environmental behaviour can be seen in educational doctrines and in the practices of science education, and what impact they have on the development of environmental citizenship. Environmental citizenship as an agent of change is key to sustainability transition. Our viewpoint is that a contextual resource doctrine provides a framework of people’s environmental values, meaning both the capacity to fulfil the requirements of the doctrine and the ability to critically reflect it by rational-scientific arguments. Thus, place-specificity and sense of place should be highlighted in citizenship science education. In order to explain the multi-scalar nature of learning requirements, we apply the idea of ‘trans-contextualisation’ in science education. In the article we use examples which are derived from university students’ favourite places reflecting sense of place as well as three cases, which start from the near secondary school students’ environment and discuss local environmental issues. In this study we used qualitative and quantitative research methods. The results show that by promoting contextually sensitive environmental citizenship through Socio-scientific Issues (SSI) in science education, we could accelerate the transition to sustainable future. If cultural traditions, anecdotal and local knowledge are not incorporated in the expert scientific knowledge, sustainability transition is constantly in danger for remaining an isolated activity in the shadow of resource realism.