The Conundrum of Conservation Education and the Conservation Mission

In 2006 Conservation Biology reached the ripe old age of 20. For many years, contributions to the Conservation Education section have been among its most interesting and provocative texts, providing highly innovative explorations of fundamental aspects of what it means to study and practice conservation. Readers have been asked to consider the application of the principles of conservation biology to their own institutions, either in terms of the structure of the academy (Uhl et al. 1996), an architectural pedagogy (Orr 1993, 1997), or the potential for creating practical and organizational examples of sustainability (Orr 2000). We have also been asked to consider how best to communicate effectively with different audiences (Nadkani 2004), form successful partnerships with teachers (Brewer 2002), devise and implement interdisciplinary teaching ( Jacobson 1990; Neisenbaum & Lewis 2003), integrate emotional and spiritual dimensions within our conservation praxis (Fleischner 1990; Hagan 1995; McDaniel 2002), and even favor a “slow approach” to knowledge (Orr 1996). Together these interventions represent a powerful tradition of conservation education derived from the experiences of educational practitioners and those seeking to address conservation issues in a holistic, imaginative manner and to address some of the fundamental problems our subject faces. Nevertheless, when posited within the metadiscipline of conservation biology represented by the main body of the journal, with its “proper” scientific knowledge and established approaches employed by the more conventional conservation scientists, they take on a somewhat different hue. They reveal an underlying tension concerning what conservation education and conservation biology are and what they might be. Among conservation biologists the prevailing view of conservation education appears to rest on a deep-seated belief that the basic function of conservation education should be to disseminate knowledge that scientists generate, essentially to transport information to the public and key groups in the expectation that it will eventually precipitate more appropriate conservation-related behaviors. This is perfectly understandable. Biodiversity conservation distinguishes itself from many other environmental subjects in being grounded on a rather discrete set of well-defined concepts and methodologies, providing a relatively reliable and coherent field of knowledge, and being accompanied by a sense of certainty as to the nature of the problem and what needs to be done about it. Conservation educators themselves have tended to acknowledge this, with much of their early, path-finding work adopting a largely quantitative approach to educational research and action through seeking to measure and eliminate the gap between what people actually know and what they need to know. Within the wider field of environmental education, however, information-based approaches to changing people’s behavior have long been considered redundant. Herein much of the debate has surrounded the lack of strong correlations between quantitative data concerning environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. It has also been informed by recognition that the processes, barriers, and constraints affecting proenvironmental behavior are highly complex, are subject to a matrix of cultural, socioeconomic factors, and personality dimensions, and are significantly influenced by what happens in the affective, qualitative domain. Consequently, the main body of opinion has come to eschew quantitative approaches to environmental education and research and favor studies of, for instance, “significant life experiences” or the way environmental knowledge and the notion of biodiversity itself may be socially constructed. Yet it is also true that practically none of the research in question has focused specifically on the subjects of conservation or biodiversity. So with the exception of a handful of studies (e.g., Biodiversity Project 1996, 2002; Bride 2001), Pollock’s 1995 assertion that there exists no substantive research on the public understanding of biodiversity per se, remains true, both in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Moreover, qualitative studies concerning biodiversity (Thomas & Chetwynd 1995; Wals 1999) have failed to explore understandings and support beyond a superficial level, and wider research has largely skated over the relationship between