Education Strategies for Environmental Literacy

Most environmental problems are rooted in human behaviour, and most tools deployed to solve them are fundamentally behaviour change tools. However, many common approaches thus far applied to address environmental issues have delayed and often invisible benefits. Significant changes in human consumption patterns are needed to reach the desired results on environmental and climate issues, especially for activities that cause overconsumption of food, water, and natural resources. Environmental Literacy is crucial in order to trigger good practices and to promote a real change in behaviours. A comprehensive teaching approach paired with innovative educational methods, integrating the analysis of the factors that influence behaviour with the representation of complex concepts in a more accessible way, supported renewed responsible citizenship. The project used cognitive and communication psychology to tackle climate change challenges. It aimed to raise awareness of biases, improve risk perception, and foster critical thinking about polarized debates. The focus was on helping people recognize fallacies, make informed decisions, and develop better deliberative skills.

The main overall objective of the project was the development of educational activities aimed at promoting behavioural changes in individual and collective choices and consumption habits through innovative strategies and methodologies applied to environment and climate goals. The specific objective was to raise awareness - among secondary school students - of critical aspects of Environmental Literacy while at the same time enhancing their ability to evaluate risk and manage uncertainty. More specifically, all partners acquired highly skilled strategies to promote cultural and behavioural change and were able to apply such strategies to the study of environmental and climate change. Moreover, they developed the strategy necessary to support the diffusion of such changes at an organizational level. The project supported the diffusion of innovative teaching methodologies, with a special focus on the increase of the capacity of independent judgment. The project also contributed to the reinforcement of a network of international relations organized around the shared interest in environmental education, fostering the diffusion of awareness and the definition of innovative policies among educative institutions.

- Transnational Project Meetings, - Multiplier events, - Learning, Teaching and Training Activities, - Project results, - Interventions/Education in class about Critical thinking, fostering Psychorhetorical abilities, evaluating risk and managing uncertainty, Nudge with students, - Interaction with the Chatbot.

The concrete outputs of our project include the Manual for the implementation of the Methodology, the Simulation Tool (www.codap.xyz), a Guidebook, the WEB Platform (www.edus4el.eu), the Teacher to Teacher Training Course (TTTC), the Educational Experimentation. The project led us to several publications in international journals, as follows: (1) Bourlier, M., Jacquet, B., Jamet, F., & Baratgin, J. (2024). Knowledge, action against climate change and eco-anxiety. In Proceedings of the International Conference Socioecos: Climate change, sustainability and socio-ecological practices (Socioecos 2024), June, 2024, Bilbao, Spain. (2) García Velasco, C., Jiménez Ramírez, M. y Lorente García, R. (2023). ReMida en la formación reggiana: espacio de encuentro creativo entre la infancia y la sostenibilidad ambiental. La experiencia del proyecto ReCrea. En A.S. Jiménez Hernández, C.J. Castro Ramírez, M. Vergara Arboleda y R.S. Chacón Pinilla (Coords.), La escuela promotora de derechos, buen trato y participación. Revisiones, estudios y experiencias (pp. 1124-1132). Editorial Octaedro. ISBN: 978-84-19690-00-5. https://octaedro.com/libro/la-escuela-promotora-de-derechos-buen-trato-y-participacion/ (3) Hoffrage, U., Martignon, L., Erickson, T., Engel, J. (2024). Connecting Basic Proportional Thinking with Reasoning About Risks. In: Baratgin, J., Jacquet, B., Yama, H. (eds) Human and Artificial Rationalities. HAR 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14522. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55245-8_25 (4) Hoffrage, U. & Martignon, L. (to appear 2025) A tribute to Kahneman and Tversky in the context of Math Education. Abstract for invited talk at the World Statistics Congress in May 2025 at den Hague.HAR 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14522. Springer, Cham. (5) Jacquet, B., Bourlier, M., Caravona, L., Izquierdo, L. M., Ríos, F. J. J., Jamet, F., ... & Baratgin, J. (2023, March). Your personal chatbot coach to change your CO2 footprint. In Proceedings of the 2023 International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI2023). (6) Macchi L., Caravona L., & Palazzi, E. (in press). Critical Thinking and Psychorhetoric for promoting environmental awareness. In Proceedings of 3nd International Conference on Human and Artificial Rationalities (HAR 2024), September 17-20, 2024, Paris, France. (7) Martignon, L., Wanisch, L. Osmanaj, A., Engel, J. (2025) Data Science im Kontext von Umwelt und Nachhaltigkeit. BZmU. Tagungsberichte der GDM.