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3.2.2. Environmental literacy
Besides scientifically literate people, the world clearly and urgently needs more 
environmentally literate consumers, parents, voters, and decision-makers who are driven by 
their
sustainable values. In ESD, the educational challenge in terms of environmental literacy 
is multifaceted.
Educators are especially interested in how knowledge will lead a person to an action. A 
persons’ behaviour is affected by multiple psychosocial elements (Bamberg & Möser, 2007; 
Hines, Hungerford & Tomera 1987/86; Hungerford & Volk, 1990; Kaiser, Wölfing & Fuhrer, 
1999). Sociologists and sustainability educators have tried to understand and simplify the 
concept of environmental literacy (Courtenay-Hall & Rogers, 2002; Hollweg et al., 2011). 
The concept has been criticised for being problematic and vague by nature, as both parts of 
the concept, ’environment’ and ’literacy’, are difficult to define even on their own (Järvikoski, 
2001). However, environmental literacy is extensively studied and used for describing the 
aspects of a person’s ethical responsibility.
Environmental literacy is defined to consist of ecological knowledge and understanding, 
strategic behaviour, active participation, cognitive analysing skills and affective personal 

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characteristics (such as values, attitudes, sensitivity and control skills). An environmentally 
literate person is engaged to preserve the dynamic equilibrium between humans and nature. 
(Marcinkowski, 1991; Roth, 1992) Environmental literacy is cross-curricular and closely 
resembles the broad definitions of scientific literacy (Holbrook & Rannikmae, 2009; 
Simmons, 1989) and ecoliteracy (Nichols, 2010). 
Multiple models have been published to illustrate environmental literacy (e.g. Heimlich & 
Ardoin, 2008; Kaiser et al., 1999) and to measure it (Dunlap et al., 2000; Hollweg et al., 2011; 
Johnstone & Reid, 1981; Kaiser et al., 1999; Leeming, Dwyer & Bracken, 1995; Schultz, 
Zelezny & Dalrympe, 2000; Stern, 2000; Uitto & Saloranta, 2010a; Uitto et al., 2011). The 
opportunities and boundaries of these and other models are reviewed in Juntunen (2013).
A teacher will most probably promote environmental literacy in a classroom if she/he is aware 
of the societal power relationships and able to view the environment as personally or socially 
meaningful. Also, moral responsibility, environmental sensitivity, ability to critically evaluate 
one’s own culture and capability and willingness to act for the environment affect the amount 
and quality of a teacher’s ESD choices. (Hsu & Roth, 1998; Käpylä & Wahlström, 2000) 
Similarly, the more the students have personal experiences from school or from their daily 
life, the more easily they contribute positively to environmental protection (Palmer, 1998; 
Saloranta & Uitto, 2010; Uitto et al., 2011). Thus, the teaching methods which promote the 
students’ active role and value-related questions are especially needed in chemistry education. 
For instance, in chemistry the questions can focus on different levels (applied from Wilmes & 
Howarth, 2009):
i) Personal level: Which is the better choice: tap water or bottled water?
ii) Societal level: ”What is the best way to produce energy for a certain need?” 
iii) Global level: ”Why do different countries use different amounts of natural 
resources?” 
One answer is to promote inquiry-based teaching methods (see Section 3.2.5. and Rocard et 
al., 2007; Tirri et al., 2012; Wilmes & Howarth, 2009) and cross-curricular approaches that 
have been rarely utilised so far (Kärnä et al., 2012). Application of socio-scientific issues (see 
Section 3.2.3.) in various learning environments is also needed to raise the level of 
environmental literacy (Saloranta & Uitto, 2010). Well-designed education materials promote 
the learning of content knowledge and the acquiring of meaningful real-life experiences 
(Lester et al., 2006).