Cover not available

Article published In: Dialogue and Ways of Relating
Edited by Huey-Rong Chen
[Language and Dialogue 10:1] 2020
► pp. 97–117

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Beyond critical education for sustainable consumption

Rethinking dialogue in environmental education

 | National Taiwan University (Taiwan)
Published online: 19 May 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00061.chu
Abstract
This paper empirically supports environmental courses and activities based upon ‘parental altruism’ as an effective environmental education in developing citizen’s pro-environmental values, attitudes, and behaviors. This is a case study of the Homemaker’s Union Consumer Cooperation (HUCC), a prominent environmental consumer non-profit organization in Taiwan with over 70000 members. Re-examining Paulo Freire’s critical dialogical pedagogy, this study uses Paul Stern’s three levels of value orientation to investigate changes of HUCC members’ consumption behaviors. The courses and activities with parental-care are efficiently received by members than those of critical knowledge with the environment in terms of developing pro-environmental behaviors. Parental altruism is the key in changing consumer’s environmental values. This finding contributes to rethinking the meaning of dialogue in environmental education.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Green consumption and Paulo Freire’s dialogical approach to education
    • 2.1Green consumption: The significance of critical environmental consciousness
    • 2.2The Freirian approach to critical environmental education
  • 3.Different levels of consciousness regarding the environment: Paul Stern’s theory of environmental behavior
  • 4.The case study of the Homemaker Union Consumer Cooperative (HUCC): Environmental education via parental altruism
    • Level 1.Egoist green consumption: Caring for family healthy eating
    • Level 2.Parental green force: Caring about other’s children as if they were one’s own
    • Level 3.Green parental altruism: Protecting the planet for future generations
  • 5.Discussion: Dialogue in the soft/ flexible environmental civic movement
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
References (48)
References
Bélanger, Paul. 2003. “Learning environments and environmental education.” New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 991: 79–88. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bevir, Mark and Frank Trentmann. 2007. “Civic choices: Retrieving perspectives on rationality, consumption, and citizenship.” In Citizenship and Consumption, Kate Soper and Frank Tretmann (eds.), 19–33. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bright, Alan and Michael Tarrant. 2002. “Effect of environment-based coursework on the nature of attitudes toward the Endangered Species Act.” Journal of Environmental Education 33(4): 10–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chang, Chun-Yen and Kun-Sun Hsiao. 2012. “Discourses of sustainable consumption and practice in everyday life: A study of HUCC community in Taiwan.” Review of Agricultural Extension Science 291: 71–104. (in Chinese)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chen, Yu-Ning. 2016. “The value of participatory democracy is in its slow revolution.” Accessed through [URL]. Accessed on 08 August 2019.
Clover, Darlene E., Shirly Follen, and Budd L. Hall. 1998. The Nature of Transformation: Environmental Adult and Popular Education. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Transformation Learning Center.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cook, Suzanne and Jennifer Sumner. 2009. “New spaces and new places: Adult education and the creation of alternative foodscapes.” Food Security Conversations – Charting the Way Forward: Graduate Food Discussion Paper Series 1(1): 19–24.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dickie, Mark and Victoria L. Messman. 2004. “Parental altruism and the value of avoiding acute illness: Are kids worth more than parents?” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 48(3): 1146–1174. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Diduck, Alan. 1999. “Critical education in resource and environmental management: Learning and empowerment for a sustainable future.” Journal of Environmental Management 57(2): 85–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dietz, Thomas, Amy Fitzgerald, and Rachael Shwom. 2005. “Environmental values.” Annual Review of Environmental Resources 30(1): 335–372. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dietz, Thomas, Gerald T. Gardner, Jonatahn Gilligan, Paul C. Stern, and Michael P. Vandenbergh. 2009. “Household actions can provide a behavioral wedge to rapidly reduce US carbon emissions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (44): 18452–18456. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fien, John. 1993. Education for the Environment: Critical Curriculum Theorizing and Environmental Education. Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Freire, Paulo. 1972. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1973. Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1993. Pedagogy of the City. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gough, Annette and Ian Robottom. 1993. “Towards a socially critical environmental education: Water quality studies in a coastal school.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 25(4): 301–316. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hansla, André, Amelie Gamble, Asgeir Juliusson, and Tommy Gärling. 2008. “The relationships between awareness of consequences, environmental concern, and value orientations.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 28(1): 1–9. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hines, Jody M., Harold R. Hungerford, and Audrey N. Tomera. 1987. “Analysis and synthesis of research on responsible environmental behavior: A meta-analysis.” The Journal of Environmental Education 18(2): 1–8. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hungerford, Harold R. and Ben R. Peyton. 1976. Teaching Environmental Education. J. Weston Walch.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hungerford, Harold R. and Trudi L. Volk. 1990. “Changing learner behavior through environmental education.” The Journal of Environmental Education 21(3): 8–21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnston, Josée. 2008. “The citizen-consumer hybrid: Ideological tensions and the case of whole foods market.” Theory and Society 37(3): 229–270. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levkoe, Charles Z. 2006. “Learning democracy through food justice movements.” Agriculture and Human Values 23(1): 89–98. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lii, Ding-Tzan and Wen-Yuan Lin. 2003. “The transformation of social forces: Organizational techniques in Taiwan’s environmental protests. Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies, (52): 57–119. (in Chinese)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lockie, Stewart. 2009. “Responsibility and agency within alternative food networks: Assembling the ‘Citizen Consumer’”. Agriculture and Human Values 26(3): 193–201. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lubatkin, Michael H., Rodolphe Durand, and Yan Ling. 2007. “The missing lens in family firm governance theory: A self-other typology of parental altruism.” Journal of Business Research 60(10): 1022–1029. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lubatkin, Michael H., Willam S. Schulze, and Richard N. Dino. 2005. “The effects of parental altruism on the governance of family-managed firms.” Journal of Organizational Behaviour 26(3): 313–330. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miles, Angela. 1996. “Adult education for global social change: Feminism and women’s movement.” In Towards a Transformative Political Economy of Adult Education: Theoretical and Practical Challenges, Paul Wangoola and Frank Youngman (eds.), 277–292. Illinois: LEPS Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peattie, Ken. 1992. Green Marketing. London, England: Pitman Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pepper, David. 1987. “The basis of a radical curriculum in environmental education. In Education, Ecology and Development: The Case for an Education Network, Colin Lacey and Roy Williams (eds.), 65–79. London: The World Wildlife Fund and Kogan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pollan, Michael. 2008. In Defence of Food: The Myth of Nutrition and the Pleasures of Eating. New York: Penguin Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, James A. and Donald R. Bacon. 1997. “Exploring the subtle relationships between environmental concern and ecologically conscious consumer behavior.” Journal of Business Research 40(1): 79–89. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schlosser, Eric. 2005. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schultz, Paul Wesley. 2000. “Empathizing with nature: The effects of perspective taking on concern for environmental issues.” Journal of Social Issues 561: 391–406. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schultz, Paul Wesley, Valdiney V. Gouveia, Linda D. Cameron, Geetika Tankha, Peter Schmuck, Marek Franěk. 2005. “Values and their relationship to environmental concern and conservation behavior.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 361: 457–475. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schultz, Paul Wesley, Chris Shriver, Jennifer J. Tabanico, Azar M. Khazian. 2004. “Implicit connections with nature.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 24(1): 31–42. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwartz, Shalom H. and Klaus Boehnke. 2004. “Evaluating the structure of human values with confirmatory factor analysis.” Journal of Research in Personality 38(3): 230–255. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stark, Oede. 1995. Altruism and Beyond: An Economic Analysis of Transfers within Families and Groups. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stern, Paul C. 2000. “New environmental theories: Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior.” Journal of Social Issues 56(3): 407–424. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2005. “Psychological research and sustainability science.” Keynote address to the 6th Biennial Conference on Environmental Psychology, Bochum, Germany.
Stern, Paul C., Thomas Dietz, and Gregory A. Guagnano. 1995. “The new ecological paradigm in social-psychological context.” Environment and Behavior 27(6): 723–743. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stern, Paul C., Thomas Dietz, and Linda Kalof. 1993. “Value orientations, gender, and environmental concern.” Environment and Behavior 25(5): 322–348. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stevenson, Nick. 2002. “Consumer culture, ecology, and the possibility of cosmopolitan citizenship.” Consumption, Markets and Culture 5(4): 305–319. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tanner, Carmen and Sybille Wölfing Kast. 2003. “Promoting sustainable consumption: Determinants of green purchases by Swiss consumers.” Psychology and Marketing 20(10): 883–902. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tilbury, Daniella. 2004. “Environmental education for sustainability: A force for change in higher education.” In Higher Education and the Challenge of Sustainability: Problematics, Promise and Practice, Peter Blaze Corcoran and Arjen E. J. Wals (eds.), 97–112. Netherlands: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vidgen, Helen Anna and Danielle Gallegos. 2012. Defining Food Literacy, Its Components, Development and Relationship to Food Intake: A Case Study of Young People and Disadvantage. Queensland, Australia: Queensland University of Technology.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilkins, Jennifer L. 2005. “Eating right here: Moving from consumer to food citizen.” Agriculture and Human Values 22(3): 269–273. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wu, Pin-Hsien. and Chih-Hung Wang. 2007. “Reflexive moral projects? Consumption of organic foods through selling organizations and guiding ideas.” Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies (68): 119–176. (in Chinese)Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Suk, Jaehye, Xu Li & Hyesun Hwang
2023. A systematic review of consumer empowerment research trends: Evidence from esteemed consumer studies journals. Journal of Consumer Affairs 57:3 ► pp. 1423 ff. DOI logo
Koloszuki Maciel, Karoline Farias, Miguel David Fuentes-Guevara, Carolina da Silva Gonçalves, Pablo Machado Mendes, Eduarda Gomes de Souza & Luciara Bilhalva Corrêa
2022. Mobile mandala garden as a tool of environmental education in an early childhood school in Southern Brazil. Journal of Cleaner Production 331 ► pp. 129913 ff. DOI logo
Li, Hongjing, Peiyu Qu & Fen Luo
2022. Impact of Tourists’ Perceived Value and Sense of Social Responsibility on the Low-Carbon Consumption Behavior Intention: A Case Study of Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. Forests 13:10 ► pp. 1594 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue