Measuring the Transformation of University Students’ Self-Construal for Greater Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

University campus sustainability projects frequently aim to promote ecological behavior of their community members. However, these projects rarely consider the level of students’ self-construal, the view of self held by members of the university community (i.e., whether the self is viewed as independent or interdependent with nature). This runs counter to the findings in psychology that people’s behavior is strongly affected by their self-construal. We thus conducted an exploratory attempt to include self-construal measurements into a campus environmental sustainability project at National Taiwan University. We specifically examined whether the university had contributed to the transformation of students’ self-construal for greater environmental sustainability. Toward this end, we first confirmed that a psychological scale for self-construal, the connectedness to nature scale (CNS) that had been mainly tested in Western contexts, successfully predicted the likelihood of students’ ecological behaviors (e.g., reducing waste) in an East Asian context. We found only a small difference in the CNS between students for different academic years, which suggests that the university was unsuccessful in transforming students’ self-construal for greater sustainability. This finding resonates with the practice of universities in the modern era to emphasize cognitive dimensions of learning rather than ontological dimensions. Our results thus suggest that mainstreaming ontological dimensions would be one potential way for universities to move toward campus sustainability.

Mutual learning through participatory storytelling: Creative approaches to climate adaptation education in secondary schools

“…The research of Tokyo-based Hikaru Komatsu and colleagues provides evidence that educating young people for sustainable futures may call upon teachers in primarily individualistic societies, such as the UK, to challenge their pedagogical approaches at quite a deep level, to influence students’ self-construal. Komatsu et al (2019) suggest that students may need to develop more collectivist understandings of their selves; Komatsu et al (2022) demonstrate that the degree to which students construe themselves as connected to nature is key to their readiness to contribute to environmental solutions. This call to interconnectedness is also expressed, in different terms, by veteran UK environmental educationalist David Orr, who calls for the development of an ecological democracy, which ‘requires a high level of understanding and ecological literacy by which enough citizens can see the world as one evolving system’ (2020: p.272).…”

Education and environmental sustainability: culture matters

“…sorting garbage and driving less) less frequently (Chuang et al. , 2016; Davis & Stroink, 2016; Komatsu, Fu, et al. , 2022).…”

“…Komatsu and Rappleye (2017), Rappleye and Komatsu (2017), Komatsu et al. (2019) and Komatsu, Fu et al. (2022) also proposed several alternative pedagogies that promote interdependence over independence.…”

“…Consequently, individuals with the independent self tend to engage in pro-environmental behavior (e.g. sorting garbage and driving less) less frequently (Chuang et al, 2016;Davis & Stroink, 2016;Komatsu, Fu, et al, 2022).…”

“…Komatsu, Rappleye and Silova (2021) suggested that studentcentered learning, which is deeply rooted in Christian narratives-turned-Western Enlightenment ideas, encourages students to pursue their own interests autonomously and independently and therefore reproduces the dominance of the independent selfhood and prevents us from achieving environmental sustainability. Komatsu and Rappleye (2017), Rappleye and Komatsu (2017), Komatsu et al (2019) and Komatsu, Fu et al (2022) also proposed several alternative pedagogies that promote interdependence over independence. Building on and expanding these efforts of problematizing a dominant form of education from a cultural perspective will be necessary until education policymakers clearly recognize the importance of shifting modern culture.…”