Abstract
This manuscript stems from observations the authors made while teaching an environmental health course, which is part of a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree. Observations of student attitudes and patterns in course feedback prompted questions about how to pique interest in the course. Since research on motivation has shown that adult learners build new knowledge from what they believe they already know, we first sought to better understand this basis for learning. On the first day of class, students were administered an assignment prompting them to "define environment" in their own words; data were analyzed for content. Results characterize student conceptions of environment as being (1) beyond human influence and (2) individually-focused. The implications of these "alternative conceptions" of environmental public health for educators seeking to motivate adult learners are discussed. Restructuring coursework to reflect Transformative Learning Theory (TLT) is identified as a potential solution to student amotivation.
Highlights
This manuscript stems from questions about adult motivation to learn prompted by observations the authors made while teaching an environmental health course which is part of a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree
Data were transferred verbatim to Excel spreadsheets for analyses, which followed the general inductive analytic approach described by Thomas (2006), useful here because we aimed to work toward a model to understand student motivation in future research
While we found no glaring patterns in factual incorrectness, our data do suggest that instructors must work to help students systematize and 'complexify' their understanding of (1) environments, (2) the components in them relevant to human health and well-being, and (3) the interactions between human activity and environmental states and conditions
Summary
This manuscript stems from questions about adult motivation to learn prompted by observations the authors made while teaching an environmental health course which is part of a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree. A MPH is the professional practice degree for those people whose focus is protecting and promoting the health status of the population. Public health workers hail from many disciplines of origin, and the MPH degree aims to build applied scientific skills and channel disciplinary worldviews toward assessment, planning, monitoring, coalition and partnership development, management, leadership, communication, policy development, and cultural humility in service of the prevention of disease and injury, and the prolonging of life (APHA, 2017; WHO, 2017). Environmental public health—a core area of public health—focuses on the relationships between the environment and human health; many diseases and injuries are initiated, promoted, sustained, or stimulated by environmental factors. Environments may promote better states of health
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