Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Learner-Centered Teaching Activities for Environmental and Sustainability Studies

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Abstract

A worldview is a complex cognitive and affective lens through which a person sees and interprets the world, including human-environment relationships. Examining worldviews is relevant to environmental and sustainability studies, in part, because they influence a person’s environmentally related decisions and divergent worldviews create conflict about environmental problems and solutions. Using physical glasses that make an abstract concept more concrete, the activity described in this chapter introduces students to worldviews and their links to environmental and sustainability issues through informal, open-ended, exploratory dialogue, catalyzed by the examination of four individuals’ hypothetical worldviews as playful case studies. The activity’s goal is to help students realize that everyone has a unique worldview that emerges from personal experiences, such that we should resist temptations to make assumptions about them or judge them too quickly. After completing this activity, students should be able to (1) describe what a worldview is and its many dimensions, (2) ask questions that help reveal dimensions of a person’s worldview, (3) discuss how worldviews influence people’s environmental and sustainability perspectives, (4) explain why examining worldviews is a valuable part of environmental and sustainability studies, and (5) reflect on one’s own worldview and the factors that have shaped it.

First Page

43

Last Page

50

DOI

10.1007/978-3-319-28543-6_4

ISBN

9783319285436,9783319285412

Download

Share

 
COinS