Teacher college students' views of controversial evironmental issues: Ambivalence and readiness to adopt a stance

One of the most important goals of discussing controversial issues in the classroom is
to educate students to possess an inclination towards reason, open mindedness and
fairness. However, research tends to show that teachers are not adequately trained to
lead fruitful discussions about controversial issues and do not possess the necessary
skills to perform such a task. This paper refers to one aspect of teaching controversial
issues in environmental education, namely, the inclination of teachers towards
ambivalence (agreeing to some extent with both favourable and unfavourable
arguments concerning a proposition) and its potential consequences. The aim of the
current study is to assess teacher college students' ambivalence concerning
environmental issues, to explore their readiness to adopt a stance and when doing so
to check their tendency to adopt a stance in favour of the environment. The findings
showed that ambivalence was less common than non-ambivalence, although it varied
across the issues. Most of the ambivalent students voted for a side. Furthermore,
ambivalence did not prevent pro-environment decisions. The implications of the
findings on environmental education are discussed.