Personalizing and Empowering Environmental Education Through Expressive Writing

6 THE JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

ESSAYS & ANALYSES

Personalizing and EmpoweringEnvironmental Education ThroughExpressive WritingNathan J. Meyer and Bruce H. Munson

ABSTRACT: The authors explored the perceived effects of an environmental expressive writing exer-cise by using a modified phenomenological method. The authors asked preservice teachers enrolledin a required public university science and society education course to compose multigenre compo-sitions describing personal environmental impacts, followed by written reactions to the assignment.A group of 5 students from the course participated in interviews in which the authors investigatedtheir backgrounds, attitudes, and experiences related to the expressive writing project. Analysis of theparticipants’ multigenre projects, interviews, and written reactions suggested that students enjoyedthe assignment, personalized the content, and indicated empowerment to act responsibly throughknowledge gains and refinements of beliefs and values.

KEY WORDS: empowerment, expressive writing, phenomenology, writing to learn (WTL)

n the words of Gigliotti (1990): “Environmental education [EE] has produced ecologically con-cerned citizens who . . . are willing to fight against the environmental misdeeds of others but lackthe knowledge and conviction of their own role in environmental problems” (p. 9). Effective EE

must devise means of erasing this contradiction, educating Americans about their personal roles ingenerating environmental impacts, and empowering them to act responsibly. Creative thinkingprocesses, including fluency and metaphorical thinking, can help move EE toward its goals (Cooper,1986; Disinger, 1990; Mac Cormac, 1985; Pugh, Hicks, Davis, & Venstra, 1992).

Creative thinking can empower students to act. Disinger (1990, summarizing Woolfolk andMcCune-Nicholich [1984]) suggested that educators encouraging creative thinking should (a)“accept and encourage divergent thinking,” (b) “tolerate dissent,” and (c) “encourage students to trusttheir own judgment” (p. 2). This acknowledgment and emphasis on the validity of individual

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Nathan J. Meyer is a regional extension educator at the University of Minnesota Extension Service,Cloquet. Bruce H. Munson is an associate professor and department head in the Department ofEducation at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

thought affords students a certain personal power. Realistically, students are likely to encounter con-flicting expert opinion surrounding any environmental issue. Methodologies that spark creativethinking should provide them some assurance that informed personal judgment is an adequate andnecessary platform for action.

Writing is one technique used to facilitate creative thinking (Disinger, 1990). The “Writing toLearn” (WTL) movement has focused particular interest on writing as a learning process. “‘Writing toLearn’ is less about formal uses of writing to display memory and test mastery than it is about infor-mal writing; about language that is forming meaning; about writing that is done regularly in and outof class to help students acquire a personal ownership of ideas conveyed in lectures and textbooks”(Connolly, 1989, p. 3). “It [learning] involves hearing what the teacher . . . . knows, but it also involves‘making sense’ for oneself: producing, applying, and extending knowledge . . .” (Connolly, p. 3).

Expressive writing is one informal WTL strategy with strong potential to connect the participantor author and action. Examples include free verse, haiku, stage scripts, bumper stickers, and othergenres that allow personal subjectivities—emotions and personal experiences—into the writingprocess. Experimental evidence supports the claim that expressive writing can enhance learning, espe-cially when employed in conjunction with other teaching techniques (Holliday, Yore, & Alvermann,1994; Rivard, 1994; Rivard & Straw, 2000).

A few curricula and descriptive studies have acknowledged the potential for expressive WTL with-in EE (Bennion & Olsen, 2002; Clidas, 1996; Corcoran, 1999; Lindholdt, 1999; Scharle, 1997;Tallmadge, 1999; Werkenthin, 1992). However, these studies of environmental writing tend to focuson cultivating a sense of place and wonderment rather than developing empowerment and person-alization of subject matter. They have also typically focused on instructor analysis of student writing.However, instructor analyses may not accurately portray the effects perceived by participating stu-dents. In this study, we used a phenomenological methodology to intentionally explore the effects ofan expressive writing exercise as perceived by a group of collegiate preservice education students.

Method

Design and ParticipantsIn this study, we employed a modified phenomenological methodology (Creswell, 1998; Seidman,

1998). We asked students to provide background information, complete an expressive writing proj-ect, write a reaction to the assignment, and participate in two open-ended interviews. Figure 1 showshow these techniques converged to identify the students’ perceptions of the effects of the expressivewriting exercise on awareness, knowledge, and ethics concerning their environmental impacts.

The participants were students in a required upper division course for preservice elementary, sec-ondary social studies, and secondary science education majors that explored science and society inter-actions. We selected 5 students from a class of 27 for interviews. Although all five claimed high lev-els of environmental concern, the students described EE as a sporadic part of their pre-collegiate edu-cation. They also claimed varied levels of experience and enjoyment of expressive writing. Nonereported significant experience with expressive writing in their major courses in college.

The Expressive Writing AssignmentPrior to beginning the task of writing, we instructed students to read background information

describing impacts associated with their lives—drinking a cup of coffee, reading the newspaper, driv-ing a car, working on the computer (Ryan and Durning, 1997). We then instructed the participantsto select one daily activity to work with in greater detail, gave them a week to do their own additional

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research, and told them to then compose a short multigenre paper based on their research (Romano,2000) that expressed their environmental impact to classmates. We instructed students to includetwo or more genres and gave them an example list of expressive writing genres, such as political rants,bumper stickers, television scripts. We also encouraged them to write in their own voice and includepersonal feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge.

Written DataWe collected background data on the students through a written survey exploring their experi-

ences with expressive writing and their level of interest in and concern for the environment. Aftercompletion of the expressive writing assignment, all students were required to write a reactionpaper, based on written prompts, such as (a) describe how the writing assignment worked for you,

Open-Ended InterviewsWith 5 participants before and after completion of theexpressive writing exercise.

Background InformationCompiled by all participantsbefore starting the expressive

writing exercise.

Assignment Reaction PaperWritten by all participants after

completion of the expressive writing exercise.

Perceived Effects of the Expressive Writing

Exercise

FIGURE 1. Study design showing three components employed to explore perceivedeffects.

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(b) describe how the writing experience affected your awareness and knowledge of your environ-mental impacts, and (c) what kind of effect, if any, will this experience have on your personal rela-tionship with the environment?

InterviewsWe conducted hour-long open-ended interviews with each student before and after the writing

assignment using a condensed form of Seidman’s (1998) three-session format. During the prewrit-ing interview, the researcher asked questions about their personal histories with writing and the envi-ronment, including specific attention to preexisting awareness, knowledge, and ethics concerningtheir environmental impacts. This information served to uncover constitutive events that shaped per-ception of the experience. We also asked students to discuss their perceptions of the environmentalexpressive writing assignment. This discussion adhered to Seidman in that it did not focus on opin-ions of the assignment but rather the details of the experience from which opinions are formed.

The postwriting interview explored the composition process and encouraged reflection on themeaning of the environmental writing experience in terms of the students’ awareness, knowledge,and ethics related to their personal actions. Seidman (1998) described this step as “the intellectualand emotional connections between the participants’ work and life” (p. 12).

Analysis followed standardized practices (Creswell, 1998; Seidman, 1998). The lead author reviewedsurveys, interviews, and reaction papers to identify common themes and create condensed narratives forinclusion in this article. To enhance validity as context, we tested perceived trends through discussionamong ourselves and others. We quoted interviews and methodology critiques in the participants’ exactwords, and we asked them to read and authorize narratives constructed from their words.

Results

The multigenre approach used in this expressive writing project resulted in a variety of individu-alized compositions. For example, Jennifer (pseudonyms are used for each student) invented a“genetic bug” symbolizing her reaction to research suggesting linkages between modern food pro-duction and the development of antibiotic-resistant germs. Korrie created a fairy tale about“Smartvillians” who voluntarily changed behaviors to reduce waste. Linda created an advertisement,phone scripts, and educational materials on energy conservation from her faux company“Conservation Hotline.” Tom wrote a presidential speech and a description of a court case featuring“corn cob” as his candidate for “King of Foodland.” And Brian’s project about the impacts of driv-ing was expressed through lists of advantages and disadvantages, an ecological footprint, and a planfor reduction. All compositions included characteristics symbolic of creative thinking, such as slo-gans, symbols, and metaphors.

Three major themes emerged from the data collected in this study: (a) Processing the Assignment,(b) Personalizing Content, and (c) Empowerment.

Theme 1: Processing the AssignmentMost students initially reacted with trepidation to the project, many approaching the instructor

with questions probing guidelines or ideas. In fact, they overwhelmingly found the process more chal-lenging than their typical assignments. Brian’s reaction to the assignment was common to the group:

Um, when we got the assignment, I thought it was—I wasn’t sure what to think of it. I guess whenI first saw like poems and drawing and art and like all that type of stuff, I just thought it was kind


of strange. I hadn’t really had an assignment like that before. But um, someone explained it . . .and I kind of got it that it wasn’t as hard as I thought. Um, I mean you still have to get your pointacross in the same . . . . Instead of writing like a four page paper about a subject you’re able to likedo different things to get that same point across.

One student, Linda, found the assignment distasteful. She imagined her struggles with the assign-ment frustrating and unfair in relation to her perception of other students. Linda elaborated on thisduring her second interview:

Um, well first of all I don’t like it, okay. I guess that would stem part of it. And then the other rea-son is I have such a hard time, such a hard time like thinking of the things like the poem we hadto write. I know it’s not related to this assignment, but man that took me forever. And so, maybeI have the wrong impression of other people. But that sometimes I hear people say things and seethem do things that I just go whoa, how in the world did they come up with that so fast? Howcreative. Now, it would take me like 4 hours. I like cut and dry.

Her perspective was a contrast to that expressed by the other four, such as Korrie, who wrote: “Inthe past I have only been asked to write research papers for college-level classes, so having the oppor-tunity to think more creatively and be more expressive was very welcoming and encouraging.”

Theme 2: Personalizing ContentAlthough they did not explicitly perceive the process, interviews evidenced that students connect-

ed with their topics through writing about their own lives and daily activities. Tom provided a vividexample during his interview:

And I just—like I was trying to figure out which food I wanted to use and like how it would affectthe environment . . . So I just decided on corn. I just figured back around my hometown it’s justcorn everywhere. So, I figure might as well go with that. And then I just found the National CornGrower’s Association Web site. And then another Web site, too, on it. So, it was—and that gaveme a lot of information. And that just made it a little more interesting.

Students like Brian composed expressive writing projects primarily based on measures of their ownpersonal impact—length of showers or number of miles driven. Brian summarized this sentiment:

Well, just . . . I was able to use the assignment like looking at the stuff I do rather than just ingeneral what the average American does. So it was kind of just—it was easier and it was moreimportant because it related directly to me.

In each case, genre choice seemed to reflect a second level of personalization. The project not onlyprompted students to connect with information within their topics, but also spurred them to com-municate the information in genres fitting their individual writing styles. Jennifer described herchoice to write a stream-of-consciousness paper:

So, I hadn’t really had a plan, which I should have . . . But, I knew I had done the stream-of-con-sciousness before. I remembered doing that from my junior year of high school, and, um, I justthought it was really fun because you don’t have to worry about punctuation and like it, it, there’s

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no strings attached and, you know, I like that . . . And then I just kinda, I just kept going andthen I stopped at the end for a little bit. And then it just kinda picked up really nicely. And afterI read it, I just—I loved it.

Some students measured their expressive writing against their own worldviews. Korrie describedthis process during her second interview. Preparing her paper, she kept comparing plans against herown beliefs and practices. She wrote:

I think that the main thing that was in my head was like, okay, how is this me? Or like how amI gonna make this personal? Or how do I think about this? How, you know, just to make sure it’smy personal experience plus like what I’ve learned and everything. Well, it’s kind of like a checkand balance thing. Like okay, this is what I think. This is what I want others to do. Am I doingit? Like how am I doing this? And then, like, does what I say go along with that? Okay, peopleshould not use a bag when they go to the grocery store. Okay, then I was at the grocery store, Iwas thinking okay this is where, you know, I shouldn’t use a bag if I don’t need one.

Theme 3: EmpowermentIn interviews and reaction papers, students detailed a sense of empowerment through perceived

knowledge gains and refinements of their beliefs and values. Some suggested the process of gather-ing information for their expressive writing expanded their awareness of their personal environmen-tal impacts. For example, Brian explained:

I guess I mean I knew that by driving my car I was polluting the environment. And I knew that Ihad that impact. But, by doing this assignment I guess it just it made me realize it more that I’mdoing—everyone by getting in their car is doing damage, you know. And it made me realize thathow easy it is to lessen that by whatever public transportation, walking, um, carpooling, stuff likethat. Um, just by seeing facts about how much people drive and what it actually does. I guess theywere actually kind of just numbers like stats about car use. I don’t remember any specific numbers.

Students described revising beliefs and values to align with new information uncovered in theprocess of creating their expressive writing projects. They also described interpreting factual infor-mation through their beliefs and values. With regard to her stream-of-consciousness paper, Jenniferexplained:

I felt, um, like I really had something, like I knew what I was talking about and like I was reallyon to something. And I felt like I had kind of captured my beliefs on it, I guess. Um, I felt like,I don’t know, like my knowledge and beliefs were kind of coming together and . . . um, I was ableto like defend my stance.

In some cases, students were empowered to change their immediate behavior. For instance, Briandescribed the effects of composing his essay on transportation:

Well, actually a good example for myself would be last night. Um, I was finishing up that politi-cal cartoon, and I couldn’t find a fine tip or a black tip marker or whatever, I think black marker.I don’t know that’s just what I needed for a certain part of it. And, um, I thought about like how


I could just run up to Target and go get one, or maybe at the gas station they would have one. Butinstead I went and asked three different neighbors. And, well, the third one actually had one. AndI didn’t even know these neighbors. And I ended up getting one and didn’t have to get in my car. . . But, um, yeah, I think it had to do with like I didn’t want to waste the gas. It was easier andit was better . . . it was a little awkward going up to people’s doors and asking them for a pen.

Students also indicated the assignment would affect their future actions. Tom was moved to pledgeaction in his future teaching:

. . . [I] tell my kids about the environment and I’m trying to tell them how safe it is . . . Um, butwe could like, you know, do something in class like maybe see the effects of what would happenif corn wasn’t there or if corn was polluted. You know, the soil won’t be as strong now as muchother plants could grow . . . You’re surrounded by corn, my God take care of it.

It is important to note, however, that awareness and knowledge of personal impacts may beempowering, but it can also be overwhelming, as illustrated by Linda’s comments.

But, what I mean is that everything you do, by me sitting in this chair, the chair came from some-where, there’s workers who worked in a chair factory, there’s workers who worked in a factorywhere there are parts, they had to have food, they had to have water. Well, that’s what I’m saying.Like I said last time, if I ever tried to think about that I’d be crazy. I would be insane, so no. Imean that’s—direct impacts are a little different. Direct impacts are a little easier like as in whenI turn the light on I’m using electrical energy. Okay, that’s easy.

Discussion and Recommendations

The expressive writing assignment was intended to personalize and activate information aboutindividual environmental impacts. Measured against these expectations, the effects perceived by stu-dents are noteworthy. These can be summarized as: (a) the expressive writing process was difficult-but engaging; (b) expressive writing personalized the course content—encouraging heightenedawareness and knowledge of personal environmental impacts associated with their individual behav-iors; and (c) students indicated an increased sense of empowerment through integration of beliefs andvalues about environmental impacts and behaviors.

Four of the five students enjoyed the project because of its personal orientation and composition-al freedoms. The fifth student did not overcome her concerns about her ability to be creative in writ-ing. The unique nature of the assignment made it more challenging for students, but also moreengaging because they could devise their own subjects of study and modes of communication. Thissupports Miller-Cleary’s (1991) phenomenology of writing, in which she notes the importance ofboth self-expression and individualization. Miller-Cleary concluded, “Individualization permits stu-dents to plant their souls and their curiosity firmly within the work” (p. 180). However, the freedomsinherent to the assignment induced compositional struggles. As Miller-Cleary warned, “Again a cau-tion: when students are not used to having a choice in what they write, such a choice can make themfearful. They must come to trust that it is permissible to go in their own direction” (p. 180).

The results also indicate that the assignment influenced students’ empowerment and diminishedKaza’s (1999) threat of political paralysis. Most had no problem interpreting information based on

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their own beliefs and attitudes. Students, empowered with new information about responsible action,considered themselves to be more environmentally responsible than before the project. Some evenpledged behavior reforms to benefit the environment.

Although studies in science education attest to the beneficial, knowledge-transforming capabilitiesof expressive writing, related research in EE has been very limited. The results of this study suggestthat an expressive writing assignment may benefit students’ understanding and awareness of theirenvironmental impacts. Expressive writing can personalize the content and empower them to speakand act responsibly. These impacts provide progress toward the goals of EE. Continued efforts withexpressive writing assignments and methodologies may further increase their effectiveness.

Future studies can delve deeper into origins of effects—focusing inquiry on the operations sur-rounding the acquisition of facts and statistics, the use of personal orientation, and the expressivenature and unique structure of the expressive writing assignment reported as affecting students in thisstudy. Prior writing experiences, social backgrounds, and cultural backgrounds—factors that are alsolikely to affect expressive writing—can also be explored in more depth.

Nonetheless, the findings in this study do suggest that environmental educators can benefit frommethods like expressive writing that facilitate personalization of information. In fact, the intervieweesstated that projects similar to the focus of this study should be an integral part of their scientific andenvironmental studies. All of the interview candidates felt that educators should make an effort tohelp students engage and personalize their subjects. Korrie summarized the group sentiment well:

I think it’s a good thing to do [expressive writing] because it makes what you’re learning—and likeif I was an environmental studies teacher, I’d want, you know, to come across with the point thatwhat you do has an impact. Like hopefully you care about what you’re doing, and so by doinglike expressive writing, it pushes the individual like this is a personal thing, you know. What do Ithink about this? I think it helps so much. Like if I went to all my classes and they told me, okay,write about this, how this is like, you know, molding you into who you are or, you know, how it’saffecting your life like then you have to kind of—you have to pay attention. You have to try tomake some sense about what you’re learning. And it’s not so much you’re learning ABC facts thatyou’re gonna remember for the test and, you know, throw out making room for something elselater on cause if you write about something then you have to think about what you’re writingabout in a way that pertains to you. Like it’s automatically more in your head.

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Personalizing and Empowering Environmental Education Through Expressive Writing

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