Abstract
Higher education institutions are tasked with education for sustainable development, of which the environment is a central pillar. Understanding the demographic factors that influence the establishment of environmental worldviews allows educators to better contextualize sustainability content and discussion. Identifying pedagogies capable of creating learning spaces within which worldviews can shift offers similar opportunities. Using a quasi-experimental design and model building, this study identifies important social psychological antecedents of environmental beliefs, assesses the effectiveness of outbound mobility pedagogy at changing those beliefs and identifies important predictors of the nature and magnitude of those changes. Sustainable outbound mobility courses were effective at increasing environmental worldview compared to a control group. At program commencement, political orientation and business majors were negatively associated with environmental worldview, while female gender was the reverse. For sustainability education courses, only gender was retained as a significant predictor of the nature and change of environmental worldview by the course’s end. These results suggest that the factors associated with environmental worldview upon commencement of a course do not necessarily predict the malleability of that worldview in higher education students.
Highlights
Universities in the U.S recognize the benefits of study abroad and its potential for experiential learning and for nurturing undergraduates with global experience and perspectives
Residential campus study abroad programs were defined as those where students were outside the U.S and attending a foreign higher education institution where courses were delivered in a traditional classroom setting
The increase in variation within the samples from pretest to posttest is of interest in contextualizing subsequent results and discussion thereof
Summary
Universities in the U.S recognize the benefits of study abroad and its potential for experiential learning and for nurturing undergraduates with global experience and perspectives. Study abroad has been put forward as a potentially transformative experience for participants [2,3,4] with the ability to alter participants’ beliefs, attitudes and behaviors regarding sustainability and the triple bottom line of society, economics and the environment [5]. The factors that influence the environmental worldview of students are of interest in the design of sustainability communication and education approaches. Knowledge thereof gives educators the ability to focus on content relevant to students. Knowledge of the socio-demographic factors influencing change in student environmental worldviews in response to programs designed to do so should inform more effective curriculum design
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