Learning about environmental issues : Post- and undergraduate students’ interpretations of environmental contentin education

This thesis focuses on students’ perspectives on environmental education and is based on three case studies. The aim is to explore and describe the students’ interpretations of, and learning about, ecology and environmental issues. The students’ learning processes are analysed from an intentional perspective, i.e. a perspective which takes into account the students’ educational aims defined as projects. In the first case study interviews were carried out with six first-year civil engineering students following a compulsory course in Ecology. In the second case study the dialogue between a group of four biology students was tape-recorded while they were working on a task on environmental reports. The third case study was based on interviews with six postgraduate students regarding their interpretations of environmental research and the task of writing a thesis. In all the three cases the students interpret a cultural context concerning values. The three case studies show the way values and emotions become an aspect of the learning process and reveal the students’ difficulties in differentiating between values and descriptions of phenomena. This is analysed and explained in relation to the students’ various projects that come into conflict in the educational setting. The differences among the three groups of students can be explained as a difference in the students’ ability to identify various kinds of projects, and the students’ possibilities of choosing between the projects