What We Know about Water: A Water Literacy Review

Abstract

Water literacy, or the culmination of water-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviors, is a relatively new field of study with growing importance for sustainable water management and social water equity. However, its definition and use across existing literature are varied and often inconsistent. This paper seeks to synthesize and streamline the conception of water literacy. We conducted a systematic review of literature that defines or describes in detail either “water literacy” or “watershed literacy”. From this, we suggest a new holistic framework for water literacy to guide a more inclusive, relevant use of the concept. We utilized the framework to examine existing surveys and studies of water knowledge, attitudes and behaviors in both student and adult populations, and summarized water literacy levels and knowledge gaps that exist around the world. To address knowledge gaps, we suggest using a suite of approaches drawn from the published literature, including enhanced visuals, place-based learning, interdisciplinary curricula, and reflective and iterative development of future water literacy initiatives.

Assessing Water Literacy: Undergraduate Student Conceptions of Groundwater and Surface Water Flow

“…One significant barrier to Earth systems science literacy is conceptual understanding of the fundamental physical processes driving movement of energy and matter. Decades of research on the conceptual understanding of hydrological systems reveals that students struggle with issues of scale and the connectedness of system components in the natural world [3][4][5][6][7]. Similar to recent studies by Arthurs and Elwondger [3] and Lally and Forbes [8], the present study leverages visual models (e.g., diagrams) to explore students' reasoning about surface and ground water processes.…”

“…The present study probes students' understanding of the physical behavior of water and its role in transport of dissolved and solid material. This is but one component of water literacy as defined by McCarroll and Hamman [6]. Although not assessed in this study, students' local knowledge of their water infrastructure likely impacted their answers on the assessment questions.…”

“…In their recent contribution to this special issue, McCarroll and Hamann [6] conducted a systematic review of literature in pursuit of a better definition of water literacy. Within the context of their framework, the present study probes into students' "science and systems knowledge" [6] (p. 8) of water's physical properties and ability to transport dissolved and solid materials [6]. We pursue this line of research in response to prior work identifying gaps and disconnections in students' mental models of surface and groundwater.…”

“…Several studies on students' conceptions of hydrologic systems utilize student sketches to elicit their understanding of water in the Earth system [3][4][5][6][7][12][13][14]30]. The approach used in the present study has enabled us to gather data with a broader sample of students because classroom response systems (CRS) can be employed with large numbers of students.…”

Resistance to Change and Perceived Risk as Determinants of Water-Saving Intention

“…Undertaking actions directed at the goal of saving can take place quickly, but habits are achieved to a large degree by the antecedent stimuli received and achieved by the consequences of saving [25]. The second reason relates to the idea that many water savers think that they could do more, but they do not know how to save water effectively, have low motivation to act, or make ineffective savings [26,27]. Therefore, along with habits, there must be cognitive support to enhance the outcomes.…”