IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v5y2013i3p1266-1281d24378.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Conservation Psychology: A Gap in Current Australian Undergraduate Psychology Education?

Author

Listed:
  • Elissa Pearson

    (School of Psychology, Social Work & Social Policy, University of South Australia, GPO Box 2471, Adelaide, South Australia 5001, Australia)

Abstract

Human actions have contributed to numerous environmental challenges, including climate change and a significant loss of the world’s biodiversity. As the scientific study of human thought and behaviour, psychology has much to offer in better understanding these issues, as well as fostering greater sustainability in human actions. Yet, despite this recognition, and increasing calls from leaders in psychology education to produce graduates capable of applying their disciplinary knowledge to such real-world issues to solve worldwide behaviourally-based problems; this may not be adequately addressed in current psychology training. The present study assessed the content of all APAC (Australian Psychology Accreditation Council) approved psychology programs within Australia to determine the proportion which offered a psychology-focused course (unit) specifically in conservation or sustainability. Based on the data advertised through each university website, it appears that only one of 39 programs currently offers such a course, with one other university implementing a conservation psychology course in 2013. Thus 95% of current APAC-accredited programs in Australia do not have a strong focus on training psychology graduates to contribute to addressing these important issues. The need for greater integration of conservation psychology content into undergraduate psychology education in Australia and beyond is discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Elissa Pearson, 2013. "Conservation Psychology: A Gap in Current Australian Undergraduate Psychology Education?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-16, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:5:y:2013:i:3:p:1266-1281:d:24378
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/3/1266/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/3/1266/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Susan M. Koger, 2013. "Psychological and Behavioral Aspects of Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(7), pages 1-3, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:5:y:2013:i:3:p:1266-1281:d:24378. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.