Exploring Undergraduate Students' Conceptions of Environmental Education Through Phenomenographic Analysis

The core function of science education is to equip students with scientific literacy, enabling them to understand complex environmental challenges and actively engage in proenvironmental behaviors. Therefore, understanding students' conceptions of environmental education is crucial for advancing environmental education. In this study, we explored undergraduate students' conceptions of environmental education and its relationship to approaches to learning from a phenomenographic perspective. We conducted interviews with 36 undergraduates and identified 5 qualitatively different categories of conceptions of environmental education, namely, “receiving information,” “disseminating and communicating,” “understanding,” “awareness and reflective thinking,” and “solving problems and taking action.” These categories are hierarchically ordered from lowest to highest, reflecting increasing complexity. Specifically, the first two were categorized as passive conceptions, while the last three were classified as active conceptions. Our findings showed that passive and active conceptions were evenly distributed among the students. In addition, a χ² analysis revealed an observable correlation between students' conceptions and their adopted learning strategies. Particularly, students with more passive conceptions tended to employ surface learning strategies, whereas those with more active conceptions were inclined toward deep learning strategies. The implications of these findings for promoting students' proenvironmental behavior are discussed.