238
condition of sustainability, which is identified as one of the EU’s priorities (EEA
2015). Therefore, educating individuals and communities to become Environmental
Citizens is a contemporary challenge if we are to achieve sustainable development
and preserve our natural environments. If we are to educate individuals not only to
act pro-environmentally, but to understand the urgency of environmental issues and
to integrate pro-environmental actions into the core of their political participation
and citizenship expressions, all aspects that comprise Environmental Citizenship
need to be tackled specifically, systematically and precisely with in educational
dimensions.
Therefore, there is an imperative need for the establishment of Education for
Environmental Citizenship: an integrated education that could empower students to
become responsible environmental citizens, via pedagogies which may build students’ competencies for deep civic participation. Through this route Environmental
Citizens could ultimately contribute to environmental and social change.
15.2 The EEC Model: Goals and Objectives
The ultimate goals and objectives of Education for Environmental Citizenship
should be determined from the outset. The pre-existing literature provides a very
important basis for this purpose. Education for Environmental Citizenship should
initially identify what we mean by the term Environmental Citizenship from an
educational perspective. Certainly, Education for Environmental Citizenship should
ultimately identify a coherent and adequate body of knowledge (and categories of
knowledge) as well as the necessary skills, values, attitudes and responsible/active
behaviours that an Environmental Citizen should be equipped with in order to be
able to act and participate actively as agents of change in the private and public
sphere, on a local and global scale, in individual and collective actions, in the direction of solving contemporary and future environmental problems, in preventing new
environmental problems, in achieving sustainability, and in ameliorating the environment and restoring relationships with nature (ENEC 2018). It should also
empower new Environmental Citizens to engage in critical collectives and to participate consciously and critically in ideology, collective, subjectivity, praxis spheres
(Johnson and Morris 2010).
This educational effort should not be seen as an imposed external behavioural
change of Environmental Citizens (see criticism of individualistic behaviouristic
approaches in Chawla and Cushing (2007), Robottom and Hart (1995) but as an
educational process for the emergence and development of values and beliefs
(Dobson 2007), which are suppressed in the separation from nature and the environment and social isolation. Education for Environmental Citizenship should prompt
young citizens to identify the underlying structural causes of environmental problems (Barry 2005), demonstrate the willingness and the competences to engage and
participate in the way to democratically advance these structural causes (acting
A. Ch. Hadjichambis and D. Paraskeva-Hadjichambi
condition of sustainability, which is identified as one of the EU’s priorities (EEA
2015). Therefore, educating individuals and communities to become Environmental
Citizens is a contemporary challenge if we are to achieve sustainable development
and preserve our natural environments. If we are to educate individuals not only to
act pro-environmentally, but to understand the urgency of environmental issues and
to integrate pro-environmental actions into the core of their political participation
and citizenship expressions, all aspects that comprise Environmental Citizenship
need to be tackled specifically, systematically and precisely with in educational
dimensions.
Therefore, there is an imperative need for the establishment of Education for
Environmental Citizenship: an integrated education that could empower students to
become responsible environmental citizens, via pedagogies which may build students’ competencies for deep civic participation. Through this route Environmental
Citizens could ultimately contribute to environmental and social change.
15.2 The EEC Model: Goals and Objectives
The ultimate goals and objectives of Education for Environmental Citizenship
should be determined from the outset. The pre-existing literature provides a very
important basis for this purpose. Education for Environmental Citizenship should
initially identify what we mean by the term Environmental Citizenship from an
educational perspective. Certainly, Education for Environmental Citizenship should
ultimately identify a coherent and adequate body of knowledge (and categories of
knowledge) as well as the necessary skills, values, attitudes and responsible/active
behaviours that an Environmental Citizen should be equipped with in order to be
able to act and participate actively as agents of change in the private and public
sphere, on a local and global scale, in individual and collective actions, in the direction of solving contemporary and future environmental problems, in preventing new
environmental problems, in achieving sustainability, and in ameliorating the environment and restoring relationships with nature (ENEC 2018). It should also
empower new Environmental Citizens to engage in critical collectives and to participate consciously and critically in ideology, collective, subjectivity, praxis spheres
(Johnson and Morris 2010).
This educational effort should not be seen as an imposed external behavioural
change of Environmental Citizens (see criticism of individualistic behaviouristic
approaches in Chawla and Cushing (2007), Robottom and Hart (1995) but as an
educational process for the emergence and development of values and beliefs
(Dobson 2007), which are suppressed in the separation from nature and the environment and social isolation. Education for Environmental Citizenship should prompt
young citizens to identify the underlying structural causes of environmental problems (Barry 2005), demonstrate the willingness and the competences to engage and
participate in the way to democratically advance these structural causes (acting
A. Ch. Hadjichambis and D. Paraskeva-Hadjichambi