UNESCO has indicated the need for more research to test the effectiveness of education for sustainable development (ESD). This study analyzes how ESD is included in the Finnish national core curriculum and examines four environmental indicators to determine if a correlation exists between ESD and a cleaner physical environment in Finland. The…

The challenge of climate change means that school education is more important than ever in preparing young people for an uncertain future. The focus of this research is climate change education and its status in the compulsory middle school years (approximately years 7-10) across six countries (Australia, Israel, Finland, Indonesia, Canada and…

While well-being and health benefits of nature are increasingly recognized, young people's decreasing contact with nature has raised concerns. The emerging adulthood period is seen as critical for ongoing participation in outdoor recreation. This mixed methods study examines how participation in an outdoor education course, including canoeing and…

This article engages with new materialist posthumanist philosophy to conceptually approach an ethics of outdoor environmental education with the focus on a pupil's body. Thinking with place-responsive pedagogy, I aim to extend a conversation toward exploring a child's body as a place. Place-responsive pedagogy, while it challenges a commonly…

In an era of worsening environmental crises, students may not perceive themselves as able to impact and change the inevitably upcoming futures. Accordingly, a common goal of educational systems has been to develop students' agency beliefs and sensemaking in a complex world. Simultaneously, students are facing unprecedented levels of future…

This article explores learning processes that underpin ecovillages as place based 'sustainability initiatives'. Through the theoretical lens of place- based transformative learning (PBTL), developed in earlier work (Pisters et al., 2019, 2020), empirical data from life-story interviews and photovoice sessions from three ecovillages is analysed and…

Purpose: The choices that international students make regarding abroad study destination selection or leave the host country after graduation are influenced by a variety of factors that are both related to positive and negative aspects of the host country. Design/methodology/approach: This study builds on the push-pull factor theory and examines…

Most of biodiversity is not considered charismatic and from human's perspective it can be indifferent, problematic, harmful, disgusting, or dangerous. Secondary school students' attitudes towards an unloved species and how it relates to their feelings of disgust in the context of a biology course were studied during a citizen science project where…

This article asks how the site-specific parameters of pro-environmental behaviour can be seen in educational doctrines and in the practices of science education, and what impact they have on the development of environmental citizenship. Environmental citizenship as an agent of change is key to sustainability transition. Our viewpoint is that a…

In a society that strives for sustainability it is important to observe and value different forms of knowledge. Creating art is not a meaningless exercise. Instead, one might say that works of art serve as a window that interprets the world. In the article it is argued that artistic actions can offer a combination of critical and creative thinking…

Calls for a common environmental education (EE) vision imply imposing certain values as universal. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge on the extent to which EE reflects universalities versus diverse sociocultural realities. We explored practitioners' perspectives on the purpose of EE by interviewing practitioners in Finland and Madagascar…

The purpose of this study was to develop a valid and reliable "Environmental Attitude Scale" (EAS) for secondary school (5th, 8th grade), high school (11th) and undergraduate college students. The reliability and validity studies of the scale were carried out in three different countries (Finland, USA and Turkey). The sampling size was…

Research on long-term media coverage of environmental issues has focused predominantly on English-speaking industrialized countries and on single isolated topics. This article presents a comparative analysis of the Finnish newspaper coverage of climate change and eutrophication from 1990-2014. The coverage of eutrophication showed an annual cycle…

The aim of the present study is to improve the quality of students' environmental literacy and sustainability education in chemistry teaching by combining the socio-scientific issue of life-cycle thinking with inquiry-based learning approaches. This case study presents results from an inquiry-based life-cycle thinking project: an interdisciplinary…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review and assess the state of sustainability reporting in universities. Design/methodology/approach: Analysis of the performance level of 12 universities sustainability reports using the Graphical Assessment of Sustainability in Universities tool. Findings: The results show that sustainability reporting in…