Guiding questions
- How do different perspectives develop?
- How do perspectives affect the decisions we make concerning environmental issues?
SL and HL knowledge statements
1.1.1 A perspective is how a particular situation is viewed and understood by an individual. It is based on a mix of personal and collective assumptions, values and beliefs.
1.1.2. Perspectives are informed and justified by sociocultural norms, scientific understandings, laws, religion, economic conditions, local and global events, and lived experience, among other factors.
1.1.3 Values are qualities or principles that people feel have worth and importance in life.
1.1.4 The values that underpin our perspectives can be seen in our communication and actions with the wider community. The values held by organisations can be seen through advertisements, media, policies and actions.
1.1.5 Values surveys can be used to investigate the perspectives shown by a particular social group towards environmental issues.
- How to design survey questionnaires – from ScienceBuddies.org
1.1.6 Worldviews are the lenses shared by groups of people through which they perceive, make sense of and act within their environment. They shape people’s values and perspectives through culture, philosophy, ideology, religion and politics.
1.1.7 An environmental value system is a model that shows the inputs affecting our perspectives and the outputs resulting from our perspectives.
1.1.8 Environmental perspectives (worldviews) can be classified into the broad categories of technocentric, anthropocentric and ecocentric.
1.1.9 Perspectives and the beliefs that underpin them change over time in all societies. They can be influenced by government or non-governmental organization (NGO) campaigns or through social and demographic change.
- 10 Most Influential Environmental Campaigns and Their Impact – One Green Planet
1.1.10 The development of the environmental movement has been influenced by individuals, literature, the media, major environmental disasters, international agreements, new technologies and scientific discoveries.
- Current winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize
- List of American nonfiction environmental writers – Wikipedia
- 9 memorable examples of environmental journalism – Shorthand
- Timeline of ecological disasters – Council on Foreign Relations
- Environmental history: Timeline and historical insights
Practical activities
- Design and carry out questionnaires/surveys/interviews, using online collaborative survey tools, to correlate perspectives with attitudes towards particular environmental or sustainability issues.
- Select a suitable statistical tool to analyse this data.
- You may use and develop behaviour-time graphs to show lifestyle changes.
- How to design survey questionnaires – from ScienceBuddies.org
Possible engagement opportunities
- Practise debating or discussing your own perspectives and how they might influence behaviour.
- Design appropriately persuasive materials to advocate for an environmental or social cause. Advocate to show how personal actions can create change towards a more sustainable society.
- Engage in discussing the role of politics, intergovernmental organisations (IGOs), NGOs and individuals (through social media) in solving an environmental problem. This could be through participating in a Model United Nations group (MUN).
Happy learning!
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