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Waldorf Teachers and Environmental Issues : - Behavior, Values, Attitudes and Feelings of Responsibility

<p>Today it has become critical that people adapt their behavior and lifestyles to environmental constraints. Teachers are supposed to teach pupils to accept personal responsibility in regard to these problems. The pedagogies of Waldorf and public schools have different outlooks on nature, hence it was hypothesized that Waldorf and public teachers would differ in regard to pro-environmental behavior and factors explaining such actions. An e-questionnaire measuring pro-environmental behavior, biospheric and altruistic values, feelings of personal responsibility, and pro-environmental attitudes was filled out by 68 Waldorf teachers and 73 public teachers from different municipalities in Sweden. The results suggest that Waldorf teachers report higher biospheric values (partial <em>eta<sup>2</sup></em><sup> </sup>= .46, <em>p</em> < .001), more pro-environmental behavior (partial <em>eta<sup>2</sup></em><sup> </sup>= .39, <em>p</em> < .001), more feelings of personal responsibility, (partial <em>eta<sup>2</sup></em><sup> </sup>= .32, <em>p</em> < .001), and higher altruistic values (partial <em>eta<sup>2</sup></em><sup> </sup>= .12, <em>p</em> < .001), than public school teachers do. There were a few limitations in reliability and possibly with social desirability. However, the present study paves the way for an understanding of how pedagogy can be of help in preventing further environmental problems.</p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-5784
Date January 2010
CreatorsRikner, Amanda
PublisherLinnaeus University, School of Education, Psychology and Sport Science
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, text

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