Students’ Emotive Reasoning Through Place-Based Environmental Socioscientific Issues

Engaging environmental socioscientific issues (SSI) requires navigating diverse positions regarding people and nature. This qualitative investigation determined how 24 undergraduates experiencing place-based SSI instruction in the Greater Yellowstone Area (includes a national park and its surrounding areas in the western USA) expressed emotive reasoning about people and nature impacted by those SSI. The students’ emotive reasoning ranged from apathy, passive care, and moderated concern to empathetic dissonance—an intense concern for peoples’ and nature’s well-being and SSI resolution. Deeper analyses revealed that the students expressed moderated concern differently toward people and nature when engaging in environmental SSI through value judgments, claiming helplessness, and diffusing responsibility to others. The students also expressed four forms of empathetic dissonance toward people and nature impacted by SSI including deep compassion for those experiencing SSI hardships, guilt for not resolving SSI, anger toward those that are perceived to cause SSI, and righteous indignation when the moral principles of equity and justice were violated because of SSI impacts. The students’ responses included significantly more instances of moderated concern and empathetic dissonance toward people and nature after the place-based SSI instruction. Pedagogical implications include how to instruct SSI in authentic place-based settings that encourage emotive reasoning necessary for environmental SSI engagement.