The Importance of Critical Thinking in Environmental Education

Communicating and educating about the environment is necessary, but insufficient to solving environmental issues through behavior change. People may value information more highly if it is seen as coming from an educated authority. Which facts people absorb can also be affected by their opinions regarding how much humanity can exploit nature. Research on fact-based education has concluded that providing facts alone does not necessarily lead to changes in behavior. Rather, researchers suggest that using environmental education to foster critical-thinking skills might achieve multiple positive outcomes. This concept is known as critical environmental education. This article used a case study of a controversial development to examine the potential impact of critical environmental education in Japan. Specifically, the author began by attempting to generate a list of topics that people should understand, and the aim of the research shifted as issues with this approach arose.

The case study took place in Isahaya Bay and the Sanbaze tidal-flat areas near Tokyo Bay in Japan. The author analyzed data from an earlier study that took place in 2003-2008. This prior study had provided a variety of information on environmental risk to adults living in close proximity to a potential development in the Sanbaze tidal-flat. Then, the prior study gathered many types of data, ranging from publicly available data on the topic, such as minutes of meetings that were both pro- and anti-development, articles on the subject, 78 interviews across three locations, site visits, observations, and informal conversations with those living near the potential development. All of these data were analyzed to understand how people were talking about the development and cross-cutting themes.

The initial goal was to list what people living near the development needed to know in order to comprehend the related environmental issues. However, the author found three reasons why the fact-focused approach to environmental education was problematic in this case: 1) different people learned different “facts”; 2) messages about the development conveyed the idea that others knew more about the issues than those who lived there; and 3) cultural beliefs about nature vary.

As the author analyzed these data, they found that different versions of facts existed when describing the same situation. From whether or not the tidal flats in the bay were polluted, to what a tidal flat actually was, various sources presented contrasting information depending on whether the source was pro- or anti-development. The author believed that teaching people to focus on facts alone would not help them see the different opinions that revolve around an issue and does not provide a good solution for contrasting facts.

The second problem is that fact-focused education reinforces the idea that one person's knowledge is worth more than another's, which is known as a hierarchy of knowledge. The top of the hierarchy is usually based on how much education or authority the information giver has. Opposing sides to the land development each claimed that they were more informed than the other, and presented information that belittled the knowledge of local residents. For example, fisherman who had daily experience with how construction affected the sea, said that their opinions did not matter because of their lack of formal education. This emphasis on educating an ignorant public with the “correct” facts from a trusted source overlooked the importance of dialogue and communicating with locals. In addition, it also created confusion around which side was correct and may have led to divisions among information receivers, making dialogue more difficult.

The third problem was that fact-focused environmental education in this case did not account for cultural beliefs about nature. This is known as the myth of nature theory, which relates to whether and how people believe nature can be exploited for their use. The myth of nature theory supposes that people fall into one of four categories: 1) nature will ultimately recover from human action; 2) nature will collapse if disturbed by humans; 3) nature will recover from humans unless pushed past a threshold of collapse; and 4) nature is wholly unpredictable. In the case study, the pro-development groups delivered information in line with the idea that nature is resilient to human changes. Anti-development groups believed the opposite, and their messaging about the development assumed that nature would collapse. A fact-focused approach alone can increase frustration between groups that expect those facts to bridge the gap between their opinions.

This study took place in Japan and its findings reflect its specific cultural and educational context. If a similar study were conducted in another location, the findings may be different. In addition, the author's recommendations are specifically for the Japanese context, though some may be relevant in other physical and cultural contexts.

To address the three issues with fact-focused environmental education described above, the author recommends that learners should be taught to critically investigate multiple sources to better understand an issue, rather than rely on the provided facts alone. Specifically, he suggests three approaches for educators to help adult learners begin to critically examine information about environmental issues. Incorporating local environmental knowledge can bring together multiple perspectives and more clearly illustrate how “facts” may be contradictory and encourage people to think critically. Another recommendation is to help learners examine word choice and identify places where information is missing. Lastly, the author suggests teaching learners how to question statistics and graphics, which are easily manipulated to support a political agenda and often unquestioned as “facts.”