A Critical Review of Environmental Education Programs through the Lens of Reflective Thinking

Description

Page: 96-99

Sreeja Gopinath and P. Aneesh Kumar (Department of Psychology, CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, Karnataka)

Slowly escalating dangers like global warming, climate change, etc. remind humans about recapturing the collective capacity of ecological intelligence. While wise environmental decision-making with the support of various prerequisites paves the way to ecological intelligence, multiple barriers often block such decision-making and the consequent environmental behaviors. The possibility of utilizing reflective thinking for overcoming the influence of such obstacles was assumed in light of the finding that reflective cognitive style is crucial in environmental decision making. Consequently, as an effort to track the traces of reflective thinking, we critically reviewed different environmental education programs from the standpoint of Schon’s model of reflective learning. Besides, we examined the behavioral outcomes of those programs. The findings showed that three interventions considered in this review utilized reflective thinking. Among them, two studies measured the actual behavior, and they both yielded positive results on the behavior dimension. In light of the results, it is suggested to investigate the role of reflective thinking in overcoming the barriers to wise environmental decision-making.