Teaching Students to Make Better Decisions About the Environment: Lessons From the Decision Sciences

Abstract

One of the fundamental goals of environmental education (EE) is to equip students with the skills to make more thoughtful decisions about environmental issues. Many examples of environmental and science education curricula work to address this goal by providing students with up-to-date information about a myriad of environmental issues from a variety of scientific disciplines. As noted by previous researchers in EE, an emphasis on scientific information, however, does not help to overcome many of the barriers to improved decision making. To help students become better environmental decision makers, educators must also work to incorporate lessons about decision making in conventional EE curricula. This article provides an overview of findings from the decision sciences and behavioral decision research to highlight some of the most common impediments to high-quality decision making. The authors end with suggestions for curriculum development that might help to improve students' decision-making skills regarding environmental issues.

Training in Decision-making Strategies: An approach to enhance students’ competence to deal with socio-scientific issues

“…According to his social-intuitionist model, reasoning is usually a post-hoc construction used to justify the initial judgment. Although actual decision-making processes may be intuitive and may lead to satisfying results in routine decisions, Haidt (2001), Arvai et al (2004) and Eggert and Bögeholz (2006) acknowledge that intuitional decisions are not considered the best from a normative viewpoint for all types of decisions. Baron (1998) states that intuitive decisions may even have disastrous consequences.…”

“…Decisions about sustainability issues are complex and include a wide range of possible courses of action. As a result, decision-making competence is a core component of education for sustainable development and environmental education (Arvai, Campbell, Baird & Rivers, 2004;de Haan, 2010;Eggert & Bögeholz, 2006). Because socioscientific issues concerning sustainable development are not fully integrated into science education, new methods of approaching these topics must be developed.…”

Indicators of Informal and Formal Decision-making about a Socioscientific Issue

“…Likewise, informal decision-making also relies on intuitive and cognitive pathways of reasoning, and individuals successfully use this system in thousands of decisions that are made on a daily basis (Kahneman, 2011). However, individuals applying informal decision-making to issues that are complex and ill-structured such as SSIs may neglect to consider all relevant values, scientific information, solutions, and tradeoffs (Arvai, Campbell, Baird, & Rivers, 2004). These suboptimal decision-making process occurs because individuals sometimes rely on simple heuristics to make judgments and decisions (Gregory, Failing, Harstone, Long, McDaniels, & Ohlson, 2012;Kahneman, 2011).…”

“…Formal ways of thinking about SSIs involve being deliberate, rational, and paying attention to uncertainties (Kahneman, 2011;Kahneman, Slovic, Tversky, & others, 1982). Classrooms can support formal decision-making by making students aware of common psychological traps that can bias decisions and by teaching specific skills for incorporating both personal values and technical information into decision-making (Arvai et al, 2004). Several science education researchers have provided various tools, frameworks or steps for supporting formal decisionmaking in classroom settings (Aikenhead, 1985;Edelson, Tarnoff, Schwille, Bruozas, & Switzer, 2006;Kolstø, 2000;Siegel, 2006).…”

“…These suboptimal decision-making process occurs because individuals sometimes rely on simple heuristics to make judgments and decisions (Gregory, Failing, Harstone, Long, McDaniels, & Ohlson, 2012;Kahneman, 2011). Heuristics are simple decision rules that are essentially short cuts to help an individual avoid deliberation, e.g., -If my parent vote ‗yes,' than I will too.‖ Some heuristics arise when individuals rely on limited amounts of information or focus on affect or a single value, and often these heuristics result in cognitive biases (Arvai et al, 2004).…”