Seventeenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

This paper evaluates different approaches to educating the future generation about climate change, aiming to identify which educational initiatives produce the most significant behaviour change in children. There are numerous educational initiatives aimed at teaching children about both climate change and sustainability, however, the effectiveness of such initiatives are assessed primarily through self-reported attitudes of children, self-reported behaviour and, of course, assessment of knowledge. However, self-reported attitudes and behaviour do not necessarily correlate with actual behaviour in this area. Indeed, previous research has demonstrated that self-reported attitudes only correlate with self-reported behaviour and not actual behaviour (at least for adults). Within psychology, however, there are other measures that may be better predictors of behaviour – namely implicit attitudes - attitudes that are not necessarily consciously held and develop slowly over time. They may be more closely associated with everyday habitual (non-conscious) behaviours, highly relevant to climate change - consumer habits, transportation and home energy use. Implicit attitudes seem harder to change than explicit attitudes, but in the area of sustainability, it has been recently shown by the present author that they can be changed with suitable emotionally-charged stimuli. However, to date, there is no research considering the impact of education initiatives on such implicit attitudes in children. This is the focus of the present research programme which considers the efficacy of conventional educational programmes and arts-based programmes on both implicit/explicit attitudes and behaviour. This research will have significant implications for the design of future climate change educational initiatives in schools.