Waldorf Teachers and Environmental Issues : - Behavior, Values, Attitudes and Feelings of Responsibility

Abstract: Today it has become critical that people adapt their behavior and lifestyles to environmental constraints. Teachers are supposed to teach pupils to accept personal responsibility in regard to these problems. The pedagogies of Waldorf and public schools have different outlooks on nature, hence it was hypothesized that Waldorf and public teachers would differ in regard to pro-environmental behavior and factors explaining such actions. An e-questionnaire measuring pro-environmental behavior, biospheric and altruistic values, feelings of personal responsibility, and pro-environmental attitudes was filled out by 68 Waldorf teachers and 73 public teachers from different municipalities in Sweden. The results suggest that Waldorf teachers report higher biospheric values (partial eta2 = .46, p < .001), more pro-environmental behavior (partial eta2 = .39, p < .001), more feelings of personal responsibility, (partial eta2 = .32, p < .001), and higher altruistic values (partial eta2 = .12, p < .001), than public school teachers do. There were a few limitations in reliability and possibly with social desirability. However, the present study paves the way for an understanding of how pedagogy can be of help in preventing further environmental problems.