Improving Sustainable Living Education through the Use of Formative Experiments

Abstract

Experts agree that overconsumption is a major problem in Western culture today, particularly in the United States. Thus, it is important to promote sustainable behaviour among the general public. However, existing educational programming geared towards promoting such behaviour remains appealing largely to environmentally motivated audiences, as opposed to individuals with alternative motivations. In response to this discrepancy, I conducted a formative experiment aimed at (a) fostering participation among non-environmentally motivated individuals in sustainable living educational programming and (b) obtaining behaviour change commitments from those participants. While formative and design-based experiments are relatively familiar to education researchers, they have not typically been applied to research aimed at improving sustainable living education. Hence, the research process and results outlined here represent an effort to extend an existing research approach into a novel area of inquiry. The findings presented hold implications for both researchers and practitioners in the field of sustainable living education.