Raising Environmental Awareness through Education
International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning 2016
Džineta Dimante, Tatjana Tambovceva, Dzintra Atstāja

This paper presents a method for involving learners in awareness-raising and real changes in consumption. The described method is a teaching assignment comprising a self-audit of household chemicals consumption, system thinking to find the main causes and consequences, finding solutions and taking action. Findings about students household chemicals consumption patterns and their reactions one month and six months after the assignment are presented and analysed. We found that the students households use considerable amounts of chemicals and in most cases do not pay attention to their health and environmental impacts when making purchasing decisions. When doing this, students were able to find good alternatives to reduce the environmental impact of their household maintenance and have changed their behaviour six months after the assignment.


Keywords
education for sustainable development, ESD, environmental awareness, teaching methods, consumer behaviour, self-audit, household chemicals, sustainable consumption, system thinking
DOI
10.1504/IJCEELL.2016.10000180
Hyperlink
http://www.inderscience.com/info/inarticle.php?artid=78446

Dimante, D., Tambovceva, T., Atstāja, D. Raising Environmental Awareness through Education. International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, 2016, Vol.26, No.3, pp.259-272. ISSN 1560-4624. e-ISSN 1741-5055. Available from: doi:10.1504/IJCEELL.2016.10000180

Publication language
English (en)
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