Primary School Teachers' Conceptions of Environment: A Comparison Between Australia and France

Abstract

Both Australia and France are similarly developed countries with comparable egalitarian societies but differ in some issues such as energy generation, agricultural and mining history, GMO cultivation, immigration. Both countries have implemented Education for a Sustainable Development (ESD) in their respective education systems. This paper explore primary teachers' conceptions of the environment, and how these relate to the broader national socio-scientific differences. Using the questionnaire of the European research project Biohead-Citizen, we compared, by multivariate analyses, conceptions of 98 Australian and 272 French primary school teachers. The Australian teachers' conceptions significantly differ from those of French teachers, mainly being more pro-GMO, more anthropocentric and believing more that some animals can feel happiness. The most anthropocentric and pro-GMO conceptions are correlated with more belief in God, practising religion, and trusting more in private than in public institutions, for schools, for health services and pensions. They also agree more with the propositions: "It is for biological reasons that women more often than men take care of housekeeping", "Ethnic groups are genetically different and that is why some are superior to others" and "There are too many foreigners in my country: the government should limit immigration". Some hypotheses are proposed to interpret these differences, such as resistance to GMOs in France and Australia's immigration history. The greater endorsement in the Australian sample of values against equality between men and women, or among ethnic groups, is more difficult to explain, but may possibly relate to education or to characteristics of the local sociopolitical contexts.