The Handprint Initiative: Identifying learners’ attitudes towards the environment

Abstract

The Handprint Initiative was born out of the need for a new pedagogical approach to deal with current global challenges. It is founded in the social responsibility of educators and learners to actively participate in the decision-making process of our society. To achieve this, there was the need for a statistical basis to measure learners’ attitudes towards the environment. A 19-item survey was used to determine five key attitudes in high school students in Mexico. With appropriate statistical tools (including PCA, KMO, normality tests and others), it was possible to measure ecocentrism, eco-apathy, naturalism, pessimism, and scientism attitudes and to confirm the data of other studies. The results of this study contribute to assessment of the impact of the way we teach, as well as the promotion of quality education and the implementation of the Handprint Initiative. Keywords: handprint; attitudes towards environment; eco-apathy; sustainability, quantitative study