Integrating cognitive and affective domains in environmental learning
Environmental learning has multiple dimensions, and it is well understood that environmental
learning occurs in a wide range of contexts and from many sources beyond the formal educational
system (Crane et al. 1994; Brody, 2005). However, Falk (2005) points out that traditional ways
of interpreting research on learning are flawed:
Asking: What did an individual learn as a consequence of this educational experience is an inappropriate
way to frame the question. A more appropriate way to frame questions of learning would be to
ask: How did this educational experience contribute to an individual’s learning? (Falk 2005, 207)
The first frame focusses on a transmission, knowledge-centred model of learning, where individuals
are passive recipients of knowledge, whilst the second emphasises a process-based, learnercentred
model where individuals actively construct knowledge. This shift in emphasis is based on
the premise that learning is a personalised, active, multi-dimensional process (Gardner 1993) that
is influenced by prior experience, contextual settings (Brody 2005) and takes place in social situations
(Wenger 1998). Effective learning also occurs when meaningful connections are made
with prior experience (Novak and Gowin 1984). This also matches what is now known about how
learning occurs through the construction of complex neural nets in the cortex of the brain, which
are developed in response to experience and which are highly specific to individuals.
Research on conceptual change in the learning of science has focused on the cognitive
domain, for example the model developed by Strike and Posner (1985) who proposed that
conceptual change only takes place if curriculum material is intelligible, plausible and fruitful, an
approach that ignores the affective domain. The cognitive constructivist model of science education
is prominent in recent research (see Liang and Gabel 2005; Palmer 2005), which draws on
Piaget’s ideas of cognitive processes that take place within the individual (Piaget 1978; Osborne
and Wittrock 1983), while social constructivism developed from the ideas of Vygotsky, who
emphasised the importance of shared culture and language in learning (Vygotsky 1962; Lemke
2001). Treagust (1996, cited by Falk 2005) extends the model of Strike and Posner to propose a
model of conceptual change that is influenced by dimensions of epistemology (where material
needs to be intelligible, plausible and fruitful), ontology (based on beliefs about fundamental
categories of the world; see Chinn and Brewer 1993) and social/affective dimensions (where
individuals as learners and as groups influence learning). Watts and Alsop (1997) take this further
to suggest that material also needs to be salient (where the material needs to be noticeable o