Gender and Students’ Sustainability Consciousness

Author(s):

Daniel Olsson(presenting / submitting)Niklas Gericke

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

30 SES 02 A, Awareness, Attitudes within Cultural Politics

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-23

15:15-16:45

Room:

NM-A105

Chair:

Johan Öhman

Contribution

The socialization of young people has taken the form of an increased gender gap (Lahelma, 2014; Quensel & Hurrelmann, 2013), which is characterized by girls outperforming boys regarding attendance achievement and behavior in their school performance (Quenzel & Hurrellmann, 2013). The gender gap has also been found to exist within environmental education where girls show greater knowledge, more positive attitudes and higher pro-environmental behavior (e.g. Liefländer & Bogner, 2014; Boeve-de Pauw, Jacobs, & Van Petegem, 2014). A common explanation for the occurred gender gap in environmental education has been the process of gender socialization (Pomerantz, Fei-Yin Ng, & Wang, 2004). Scholars usually differentiate between the related terms sex and gender. The term sex is used to refer to biologically distinctions between the sexes (usually man and women) and the term gender to refer to the process of socialization and construction of differences between the sexes (Marini, 1990). Gender socialization arises from constructs of gender in which children are continually influenced by their surrounding, e.g. parents, teachers and media. Pomerantz and colleagues (2004) argue that gendered stereotyping tend to increase over time, reaching its peak when children enters adolescence, and has categorized the time period when children enter adolescence as a time period when gendered issues become particularly important.

To develop a feminist/ecofeminist perspective on environmental and sustainability education has been argued for by Gough (2013). Feminism is about the ability to challenge the normative power of social structures and not pass on these existing structures into future practice, which implies the possibility to deal with the complexity of conflicting perspectives and the ability to change the perspectives of which we act upon (Gough, 2013). Therefore, more transformative approaches in environmental and sustainability education could be seen to have key roles in preventing the occurrence of the gender gap (Gough, 2013).

Education for sustainable development (ESD) has been described as an approach in teaching characterized by a focus on preparing young people with capacities and action competence for the future (Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). However, the possible gender-effect of an ESD-oriented teaching approach is still unanswered and more empirical research is needed to examine whether implementation of a specific approach in teaching could have a key role in reducing the gap (Jacob, 2002). Moreover, little is known of the impact of gender on students’ consciousness of sustainability more broadly, including the economic and social dimensions to the previously investigated environmental dimension. This study intends to follow up gender gap tendencies, which has been indicated in previous research in the field of sustainability education (Olsson & Gericke, 2016; Olsson, Gericke, & Chang-Rundgren, 2015; Berglund, Gericke, & Chang-Rundgren, 2014). In these studies preliminary results were found that might indicate gender differences in students’ sustainability consciousness depending on age and if students attend a school with an ESD-oriented approach or not. Therefore, this study aims for investigating the nature of these hypothesized gender differences, which could have important implications for teaching and learning as well as for further research in the field of ESD.

The aim of this study is to in a coherent way investigate the effect of gender on students’ sustainability consciousness in the Swedish school system, and how this effect might relate to ESD-implementation programs.

Method

The study reported herein is part of a larger investigation of the implementation of ESD in the Swedish school system, for which two sets of schools were selected from across Sweden (Olsson, Gericke & Chang Rundgren, 2015). One group adopting an explicit ESD-oriented approach for which they have received certifications or awards and the other group consisting of regular schools without such an explicit ESD-approach. The regular schools were selected to be as similar to the ESD-certified schools as possible by using Swedish National Agence for Education databases1. In this study we use the same sample by focusing on the effect of gender on students’ sustainability consciousness. Participants were selected from grade six (ages 12-13), grade nine (ages 15-16) and grade twelve (ages 18-19). The sample included 2413 students in 51 schools across Sweden, with a mix of big and small schools as well as schools in urban and rural areas. To collect data on students’ sustainability consciousness (SC) we used a questionnaire that has been used in several studies previously (Olsson & Gericke 2016; Boeve-de Pauw, Gericke, Olsson & Berglund, 2015; Olsson et al. 2015; Berglund et al. 2014). Two pilot studies were performed followed by group interviews to ensure that the understanding of the items and that the language of the questionnaire were suitable for each age group; a validity procedure which resulted in three grade-adapted but compatible versions of the questionnaire. The questionnaire includes 50 items representing the concept of SC, which includes knowingness, attitudes and behavior items concerning the environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainable development. Each item invites responses on a five point Likert-scale ranging from (1) ‘strongly disagree’ to (5) ‘strongly agree’, with a ‘don’t know’ option. In one background item students marked their sex (boy or girl) for which we used the information to separate the population for further gender analysis. Students’ SC was analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and Wilks’ Lambda statistics to test for significant differences between mean Likert scores. We delved more deeply into the results of each SD dimension through the ANOVA included to the multivariate analysis, by applying separate F-tests to the comparison of students’ responses. Furthermore, effect sizes (Cohen’s d) were calculated to determine the magnitude of the detected differences. The effect size is considered as small, moderate, medium and large if d ≥ 0.2, ≥0.3, ≥ 0.5 and ≥ 0.8, respectively (Cohen, 1988).

Expected Outcomes

We found that there is a difference between boys and girls in their overall SC (Wilks’ Lambda, p<.001), and also in the environmental (p<.001), economic (p = .003 ) and social (p<.001) dimensions separately. Thus, our results extend the findings of previous environmental education research. It is the girls that consistently report stronger SC and higher mean values in the separate dimension than boys. Second, we have also found an increasing gender gap, which is identified by an increased effect of gender on students’ SC by age. Between grade six and grade twelve the effect of gender increases from no effect to small effect size regarding the economic dimension and for the environmental and social dimension the effect of gender increases from small to medium effect size. This may be interpretted as the current teaching tradition in the investigated schools ratify the gender socialization process, which according to research influence boys' performance in general (Lahelma, 2014), and as we have shown also have an effect on their SC in comparison to the girls. Our third finding in this paper indicates that ESD-certified schools amplify the gender gap in students’ SC. For the economic dimension the effect on gender increases from no to small effect size with an ESD-certification. Likewise, the effect size increases from small to medium for the environmental, and from moderate to medium for the social dimension. Based on these results and on previous findings by Olsson and Gericke (2015) and Boeve-de Pauw and colleagues (2015), we can conclude that this effect is probably not caused by that ESD-certified schools practice transformative ESD teaching approaches including holistic and pluralistic approaches. Instead, the question whether ESD can remedy the gender gap is still empirically unanswered.

References

Berglund, T., N. Gericke, and S.-N. Chang Rundgren. (2014). The Implementation of Education for Sustainable Development in Sweden: Investigating the Sustainability Consciousness among Upper Secondary Students. Research in Science & Technological Education 32 (3): 318–339. Boeve-de Pauw, J., Jacobs, K., & Van Petegem, P. (2014). Gender differences in environmental values: An issue of measurement?. Environment and Behavior, 46, 373-397. Boeve‐de Pauw, J. Gericke, N., Olsson, D., & Berglund, T. (2015). The Effectiveness of Education for Sustainable Development. Sustainability, 7, 15693-15717. DOI:10.3390/su71115693 Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. 2nd Edition. London: Routledge. Gough, A. (2013). Researching differently: Generating a gender agenda for research in environmental education. In Stevenson, R. B., Brody, M., Dillon, J., & Wals, A. E. (Eds.). (2013). International Handbook of Research on Environmental Education. London: Routledge. Jacob, B. A. (2002). Where the boys aren't: Non-cognitive skills, returns to school and the gender gap in higher education. Economics of Education review, 21(6), 589-598. Lahelma, E. (2014). Troubling discourses on gender and education. Educational Research, 56(2), 171-183. Liefländer, A. K., & Bogner, F. X. (2014). The effects of children's age and sex on acquiring pro-environmental attitudes through environmental education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 45(2), 105-117. Mogensen, F & Schnack, K. (2010). The action competence approach and the 'new' discourse of education for sustainable development, competence and quality criteria. Environmental Education Research, 16(1), 59-74. Marini, M. M. (1990). Sex and gender: What do we know? Sociological Forum, 5(1), 95-120). Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers. Olsson, D., Gericke, N., & Chang-Rundgren, S-N. (2015). The effect of implementation of education for sustainable development in Swedish compulsory schools - assessing pupils’ sustainability consciousness. Environmental Education Research. DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2015.1005057 Olsson, D. & N. Gericke. (2015). The adolescent dip in students’ sustainability consciousenss: Implications for education for sustainable development. The Journal of environmental education, 47(1), 35-51. Pomerantz, E. M., Ng, F. F. Y., & Wang, Q. (2004). Gender socialization: A parent x child model. In Eagly, A. H., Beall, A. E., & Sternberg, R. J. (Eds.). (2005). The psychology of gender. New York: Guilford Press. Quenzel, G., & Hurrelmann, K. (2013). The growing gender gap in education. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 18(2), 69-84. Notes 1. SALSA, The National Agency for Education’s analysis tool for context analysis http://salsa.artisan.se/ and SIRIS, The National Agency for Education's online information system on results and quality http://siris.skolverket.se/siris/f?p=Siris:1:0

Author Information

Daniel Olsson (presenting / submitting)

Karlstad University

Karlstad

Niklas Gericke

Karlstad University

Environmental and Life Sciences