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Article published In:
Dialogue and Ways of Relating
Edited by Huey-Rong Chen
[Language and Dialogue 10:1] 2020
► pp. 97–117

Beyond critical education for sustainable consumption

Rethinking dialogue in environmental education

| National Taiwan University (Taiwan)

This paper empirically supports environmental courses and activities based upon ‘parental altruism’ as an effective environmental education in developing citizen’s pro-environmental values, attitudes, and behaviors. This is a case study of the Homemaker’s Union Consumer Cooperation (HUCC), a prominent environmental consumer non-profit organization in Taiwan with over 70000 members. Re-examining Paulo Freire’s critical dialogical pedagogy, this study uses Paul Stern’s three levels of value orientation to investigate changes of HUCC members’ consumption behaviors. The courses and activities with parental-care are efficiently received by members than those of critical knowledge with the environment in terms of developing pro-environmental behaviors. Parental altruism is the key in changing consumer’s environmental values. This finding contributes to rethinking the meaning of dialogue in environmental education.

Keywords: parental altruism, dialogue, critical consciousness, environmental education, sustainable consumption
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Green consumption and Paulo Freire’s dialogical approach to education
    • 2.1Green consumption: The significance of critical environmental consciousness
    • 2.2The Freirian approach to critical environmental education
  • 3.Different levels of consciousness regarding the environment: Paul Stern’s theory of environmental behavior
  • 4.The case study of the Homemaker Union Consumer Cooperative (HUCC): Environmental education via parental altruism
    • Level 1.Egoist green consumption: Caring for family healthy eating
    • Level 2.Parental green force: Caring about other’s children as if they were one’s own
    • Level 3.Green parental altruism: Protecting the planet for future generations
  • 5.Discussion: Dialogue in the soft/ flexible environmental civic movement
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 19 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00061.chu
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