Supporting a Better Appreciation of Socio-Cultural Pre-Conceptions in
Environmental Education
Abstract
Over the last decades, environmental education – including the
education about natural hazards - was focused solely on perspectives
from the Earth sciences, on economic demands and societal challenges.
Some scholars see the working programme for climate research of the EU
as an example, which seems to be “characterized by its exclusion of
human (cultural, ethical and spiritual) dimensions and is simply
interested in monitoring and technical and socioeconomic engineering of
solution policy” (Bergmann, 2010). Only recently cultural studies and
theology have been introduced into relevant research, but a deeper
understanding of “how human environmental attitudes get shaped and what
causes those attitudes to change through time” (Kareiva; 2008) is still
missing. While scientists agree, that there “… is also ample
evidence that distinct cultural and religious values of individuals and
whole societies influence their perception and tolerance of risk as well
as their capacity to cope with environmental hazard” (Gerten, 2010),
education and communication research have not yet focused on how these
risks and hazards are transported into the public in respect to various
socio-political environments. Within this presentation, we want to
discuss ways to gain a better understanding of how cultural
preconceptions influence science education and science communication.