Beyond critical education for sustainable consumption
Rethinking dialogue in environmental education
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.
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
-
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