Comparing environmental literacy in informal education between secular, religious, and ultraorthodox children in Israel

While traditional schools are often thought of us the main way that children receive education today, there are many other informal forms of education that influence how children perceive the world. In Israel, one of the most popular forms of informal education is youth movements (YMs). These programs foster community engagement both politically and socially, and focus on many social justice issues, including environmental ones. This study compared the environmental literacy (EL) of YM members across different levels of religious engagement (secular, religious, ultraorthodox) found in Israel. The researchers asked two research questions: what characterizes the EL of the YM members in each of the three groups, and how is sustainability meaningfully incorporated into the YM groups?

This study focused on the differences in environmental literacy between different major portions of the Israeli population. Israel has a population that is 74.5% Jewish, but within that large percentage there is also a multicultural aspect. A total of 46% of the Jewish population identifies as secular, 32% as nonreligious traditional, 15% as orthodox religious, and 7% as extremely religious ultraorthodox. These differences, religious and otherwise, between the majority of the population in Israel makes this study one of multicultural environmental education.

The participants included 1,377 YM members who are “young guides” as well the general director and/or director of education for each YM. Young guides are between the ages of 14 and 17 years, lead activities for younger members, and have been involved for multiple years. The three groups were represented in the total sample;70.6% of the members were secular, 16.6% religious, and 12.8% ultraorthodox. The other population that was investigated in this study were YM leadership, including the general director and/or the director of education.

To collect the data from the young guides, researchers used a questionnaire that looked into four EL variables: subjective environmental knowledge, attitudes (falling into the categories of concern for the environment, self-efficacy, importance of EE, or value of nature), willingness for environmentally supportive actions and consumer-related actions, and involvement in pro-environmental actions. The researchers interviewed the YM leadership to learn more about their ideology, EE in practice, challenges/opportunities when incorporating EE into their YM, and their personal conceptions of sustainability.

The researchers found that members of secular YMs felt that they had more environmental knowledge compared to the religious and ultraorthodox members. This can be contributed to higher exposure to environmental information from formal education and media, further exacerbated by the separation of the Israeli public school system into secular, religious, and ultraorthodox schools. Secular participants also had highest value of nature and EE, though had the least concern for the environment. This finding matched previous researched that showed disconnect between values and personal behaviors. Instead, secular participants thought technological advances will solve environmental problems. Secular and religious participants were more in favor for pro-environmental action within the YMs, but less in favor of changes in personal materialistic consumerism. The researchers thought the ultraorthodox members may have not believed there was room to further reduce their consumption due to low socioeconomic status. Questionnaire scores also revealed that self-efficacy attitudes were high for all groups, which researchers thought may reflect the young guides involvement in leadership roles.

After interviewing the leaders in various YMs, the researchers found that environmentalism and connection to nature are major themes in Jewish values. Many of the leaders brought in Jewish laws and values when speaking about environmentalism and felt that humans have a responsibility to take care of nature. Therefore, the leaders in the religious and ultraorthodox YMs believed that YMs can be used to link social values such as sustainability with education and community engagement. Leaders in secular YMs also connected these values to Judaism, such as through highlighting environmental aspects of holidays. However, the researchers note that there is a disparity between the opinions of the leadership in YMs and the young guides, and the entities need to connect to realize desired sustainability outcomes.

This study had limitations. Israel is in a unique situation where the large majority of the country is of one religion and that religion is taught in public schools, which may limit generalizability. Additionally, this study only involved Jewish participants, which may also limit generalizability of the results and recommendations to other religions.

The researchers recommend that informal EE programs incorporate multicultural education into their curricula. They note that informal programs should take advantage of the flexibility they have in their curriculum to do such compared to formal education. They also recommend incorporating religious perspective and tradition into EE when appropriate as many religions stress environmental protection and environmentalism as religious values, and it would help to make the environmental personally relevant.