1-012 - The new conservation task in developmental psychology: Investigating children’s and adolescent’s environmental minds and values

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Children are the next generation of conservationists. Increasingly, there are caregivers and educators (Paltved-Kaznelson, 2009; Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010) and large-scale institutional initiatives (e.g., The United State’s “Great American Outdoors Initiative,” Australia’s “Planet Ark”, and China’s “The Long Green March”) interested in fostering children’s concerns for protecting the environment. To support children’s conservation concerns we need to understand their developing social, moral, and cognitive experiences of nature (Kahn & Kellert, 2002; Karpiak & Baril, 2008; Melson, 2001; Myers, 2007; Wilson, 1984). This panel integrates research from the sub-fields of cognitive and social-moral development to address understanding of the environmental mind and values of the child.

Paper one will present research on the development of moral understanding in environmentally impoverished communities, including findings on inner-city Columbian children's (1st, 5th, and 9th grades) moral judgments regarding human-nature conflict situations and environmental degradation. Paper two will present research on urban U.S. children’s (7- and 10-years-old) developing concepts of animal welfare and rights, and their concerns for protecting endangered species. Paper three will present research on urban, suburban, and rural U.S. children's (K-6th grades) conceptual organization of knowledge about the natural world, and differences in how they sort animals on the basis of taxonomic and ecological relations. And paper four will present research on immigrant Montreal children's (9- to 12-years-old) concept of eco-citizenship and their need for collective, active engagement in resolving environmental issues. Discussion will center on the implications developmental science has for understanding and promoting conservation of the natural environment.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chair

• Jolina H. Ruckert, University of Washington

Individual Presentations

• Colombian children’s reasoning about prototypical transgressions to nature and variations in economic and communitarian contexts - Presenting Author: Lizette Yamile Pizza, Universidad Nacional; Roberto Posada, Universidad Nacional de Colombia

• The development of biocentric moral concerns: Children’s reasoning regarding animal welfare and rights - Presenting Author: Jolina H. Ruckert, University of Washington

• Environment, experience, and the salience of ecological relations - Presenting Author: John D. Coley, Northeastern University

• The concept of ‘ecocitizenship’ amongst immigrant children in Quebec - Presenting Author: Natasha Blanchet-Cohen, Concordia University