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Significant environmental impacts such as climate change, reduction in biodiversity, increasing food scarcity, impacts on water supply and availability, and exacerbation of human health problems are occurring and are expected to increase. Despite these environmental challenges the teaching of California’s environmental literacy standards, the California Environmental Principles and Concepts (CA EP&Cs), in the K-12 public education system is infrequent and inadequate. The purpose of this study was to use a mixed methods approach to examine relationships between environmental identity (EI), personal environmental education teacher efficacy (PEETE), and peak stage of concern (SOC) for implementing CA EP&Cs for K-12 in-service teachers participating in regional 3-year California Environmental Literacy Projects (CELP). In the last year of CELP, a survey was given to 72 of the participating teachers to probe their EI, PEETE, and peak SOC for implementing CA EP&Cs. Eighteen months after the conclusion of CELP, five participating teachers engaged in a follow-up interview providing further insight about the relationships between EI, PEETE, and peak SOC for implementing CA EP&Cs. The findings from quantitative analysis of the survey and the qualitative analysis of the follow-up interviews indicate that participating teachers had high levels of EI and PEETE, and that there is a moderately large correlation between EI and PEETE within the sample of teachers surveyed. These high levels of EI and PEETE did not translate into impact level peak SOC in the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) for most teachers. This finding demonstrates that environmental literacy professional development providers, site and district administrators, and teachers will have to overcome significant challenges to be able to increase the environmental literacy for students in California’s educational system. For environmental literacy professional development providers, it is suggested to surface teachers’ individual challenges to implementing CA EP&Cs and provide explicit recommendations to overcome these challenges. For district and site administrators, it is suggested that the CA EP&Cs be prioritized as important standards that are taught, and that student access to outdoor field experiences be valued and funded. For teachers, it is suggested to prioritize the teaching of CA EP&Cs and to integrate environmental literacy into the teaching of the various content areas where appropriate. Further details and additional suggestions are outlined in this research study.

Many contemporary grassroots environmental campaigns do not begin in urban areas but in small towns, rural enclaves, and racially or economically disadvantaged communities. Citizens with no previous activist experience or association with the established environmental movement organize to fight industry-created degradation in their communities, such as coal-fired power plants in Texas, the focus of this dissertation. The Texas coal plant opposition movement is identified as sites of environmental justice, particularly as discriminatory practices against sparsely populated communities. The movement’s collaborative efforts are defined as a new category of counterpublic, co-counterpublic, due to the discrete organizations’ shared focus and common purpose. The concept that a growing number of environmental activists are atypical is advanced; atypical environmentalists often engage in environmental practices while rejecting traditional environmentalist language and identity to avoid stigmatization as tree-huggers, extremists, or affluent whites. Presented are rhetorical analyses of identity negotiation and modalities of public enactments of citizenship within the Texas coal plant opposition movement and a critique of plant proponent hegemonic discourses. Research focused on five sites of coal plant opposition in Texas, gathered through ethnographic fieldwork and through a compilation of mediated materials. Asen’s discourse theory of citizenship was used to analyze the data for instances of rhetorical negotiation of environmentalist identity in politically conservative and in ethnically marginalized communities, their localized performances as public citizens, and the collaborative processes between established environmental groups and discrete local organizations. Texas anti-coal activists engaged in what Asen called hybrid citizenship; activists were primarily motivated toward enacted citizenship by a sense of betrayal by authorities. Issue and identity framing theories were implemented to critique rhetorical strategies used by plant proponents. In order to silence the opposition, plant supporters marginalized local anti-coal activists using what Cloud called identity frames by foil; proponents borrowed derogatory rhetorics from well-established anti-environmentalist discourse through which they self-identified positively by framing opponents as Other. The means through which proponents deflected their responsibility to the community by promoting technological solutions to pollution and deferring authority to industry executives and government agencies is analyzed within Chong and Druckman’s competing frames and frames in communication theories. / text

Il progetto di ricerca analizza i tratti distintivi dell'identità ecologica promossa da associazioni ambientaliste cinesi e le relative pratiche coinvolte nel processo di gestione delle identità all’interno di piattaforme di social networking. Un secondo livello di analisi indaga le modalità con cui gli attivisti negoziano la loro identificazione con i progetti identitari ecologici attivati dalle organizzazioni di appartenenza. La ricerca etnografica si focalizza su dieci associazioni studentesche attive a Pechino. La metodologia qualitativa include interviste in profondità a membri delle organizzazioni, osservazioni partecipanti delle loro attività, l’analisi qualitativa del contenuto di post condivisi sui loro profili Sina Weibo e Wechat; e dei contenuti condivisi dai membri sui loro profili WeChat Moments tra febbraio e luglio 2016. I risultati rivelano identità ecologiche complesse ed elaborate. Lo studio propone una tassonomia tripartita dei progetti identitari, che include ‘sustainable lifestyle-related identities’, in riferimento alla responsabilità degli studenti nel ridurre il loro impatto ambientale (in relazione alla conservazione di acqua, energia, cibo e pratiche di viaggio sostenibili); ‘investigation-related identities', indicando l'impegno degli studenti nella comprensione delle questioni ambientali e nel contributo alla soluzione delle relative problematiche attraverso azioni concrete; ‘social identities’, riferendosi alla determinazione delle associazioni a occuparsi di questioni sociali, impegnandosi in progetti di beneficenza. / The study explores the distinctive features of the environmental identity promoted by Chinese students environmental associations (SEAs), and the social media practices involved in their identity management processes. A second level of analysis investigates how activists negotiate their identification with the environmental identity projects fostered by their organizations. The ethnographic research focuses on ten SEAs located in Beijing. The data collection process is based on extensive usage of in-depth interviews with staff members, participant observations of activities, and content analysis of materials posted on SEAs’ social media accounts (Sina Weibo, WeChat), and materials shared by members on their WeChat Moments over a six-month period (February- July 2016). Results reveal that SEAs environmental identities are plural and composite in themselves. I propose a tripartite taxonomy, which includes sustainable lifestyle-related identities, referring to the responsibility of students to reduce their carbon footprint, by addressing the sources of their impact (in relation to water, energy, food conservation, green travel practices); investigation-related identities, consisting in students’ meaningful engagement in the understanding of environmental issues, and contribution to their solution through concrete action; and social identities, referring to SEAs determination to be concerned about social issues, by engaging in charity projects.

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Sport, as a human activity, contributes to the changes happening in the natural environment, making the sport sector a responsible actor for sustainable development. Experiences in nature can raise awareness about our natural environment and possibly influence pro-environmental behaviour and our identities. Such nature experiences can be reached in schools with teachers as implementers and role models. Swedish schools for example, have a concept called friluftsliv, which introduces children to outdoor experiences as part of Physical Education (PE). In Switzerland, a similar country to Sweden in many aspects, such a concept is non-existent. Thus, this study aims to observe possible differences and similarities between environmental identities of PE teachers in Sweden and Switzerland, how those developed and manifest today.  Primary and secondary school PE teachers from Switzerland and Sweden were asked to draw nature and were interviewed individually as well as in separate group discussions. The model of Education for Sustainability, Transformative Learning Theory, and Identity Theory serve as the theoretical framework of this work. The results show that there are many individual differences in how the PE teachers’ environmental identities manifest. Some see nature as a platform for activities, some deeply care for it, some seek interactions with it or even perceive themselves as a part of the natural world. When it comes to Swiss participants, main influences on their environmental identity were identified before Physical Education teacher education (PETE) through sport-related activities with their family, in associations or their leisure time, whereas the Swedish experiences were more sport-unrelated, connected to family experiences and as part of PETE. I conclude, according to the model of Education for Sustainability, that there were less transformative learning effects and therefore less behavioural change achieved in Swiss PETE than in Swedish PETE. The main difference was the amount of reflection about said nature experiences, which was more present in the Swedish context. Incorporating this reflective aspect into PE curricula could be an approach to increase this reflective aspect, in Switzerland as well as in Sweden.