Environmental Education: Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples in Western Siberia

Abstract

The goal of environmental education is to form a respectful attitude towards nature in the interests of sustainable development. This paper describes the environmental education program at an ethnic camp, which enables visitors to become familiar with the ecological wisdom of the indigenous peoples of Western Siberia, Russia. This program illustrates how indigenous communities can participate in the global agenda as actors suggesting their responses to global environmental challenges. This paper aims to assess the content, form, and effectiveness of the environmental education program at the ethnic camp. The content and form were assessed in compliance with the elements of modern environmental education. To measure the effectiveness of the education program, the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was used to study the students’ intentions to engage in sustainable behavior after visiting the ethnic camp. The research participants were 210 university students. This program is rich in content and form, including traditional activities and the ecological wisdom of the indigenous peoples. However, the findings demonstrated that the program had little effect on their sustainable environmental behavior. No significant differences were found between the results of the experimental and control groups. The study suggests ways to improve the education program.