Introduction

Science University Graduates’ Role as Privileged Stakeholders

The decline in ecological systems’ ability to support life due to multiple and continuous injuries (environmental degradation), has cast doubts over some of these systems’ continued life-supporting viability (GEO-4 2007). The Johannesburg declaration on sustainable development (WCED 1987) has suggested that sustainable development would preserve the capacity of the environment to support life. By balancing society’s demand on nature with nature’s capacity to meet that demand, sustainable development can meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Godin and Gingras (2000) have suggested that university science graduates can play a privileged role in promoting the sustainable development approach, including both the process of mediating environmental communications and the related decision-making.

One reason for science graduates’ special role is their ability to mediate between the public’s interests and the views and positions of industrial and governmental institutes (Shriberg 2002). Over the past two decades, due to an increasing public concern and interest, communication on environmental values, actions and performance has become an essential activity of industrial and governmental organizations. Reporting and documentation of environmental information by companies is now part of broader sustainable development initiatives, such as the Global Reporting Initiative. However, understanding the core scientific issues at the heart of such initiatives is no trivial matter. Science graduates are advantageously positioned to act as consultants to other stakeholders, due to their scientific understanding and ability to use scientific formats, language and concepts. Furthermore, science graduates are more than just translators, as they also present environmental management principles that are in accordance with sustainable development, e.g. the precautionary principle concerning public health (Fien and Tilbury 2002; Shriberg 2002; Welp et al. 2006).

An additional point in science graduates’ favor is their potential to hold key management and leadership positions in industrial and related governmental organizations, as well as in health and science institutes (Barton 2002; Bybee and Fuchs 2006; Smith and Gunstone 2009), from which they may significantly influence environmentally concerned policy and guide implementation of the sustainable development approach.

Universities’ Treatment of Sustainability and Its Consequences

Despite the now global endorsement of environmental education’s value and importance, it seems that sustainability concepts, have not yet become an integral part of all higher education degrees (HEFCE 2005; Hopkinson et al. 2008; Rowe 2002; Wolfe 2001; Wright 2002). Dawe et al. (2005) highlighted the following barriers in developing discipline level engagement with ESD: (a) overcrowded curriculum; (b) perceived irrelevance by academic staff; limited staff awareness and expertise and, limited institutional drive and commitment.

One consequence of this lack of environmentally oriented syllabi is insufficient environmental knowledge among university science graduates (Goldman et al. 2006; Kaplowitz and Levine 2005; Summers and Childs 2007; Tikka et al. 2000). Kaplowitz and Levine (2005) have reported that, while university science students were found to possess a higher environmental knowledge level than the general public, only 66% of them had an adequate environmental knowledge level. In engineering too, the high potential for implementing the sustainable development approach is not being realized. Azapagic et al. (2005) conducted a world-wide survey of over 3,000 engineering students from 21 universities located in 10 countries, which indicated that most students could not explain environmental topics, such as ISO 14001, Kyoto protocol, Montreal protocol, Rio declaration and Eco-labeling of manufactured products.

Students’ Argumentation Abilities Concerning Socio-scientific Issues

The ability to deal with socio-scientific issues (SSI) arising from the complex interactions between science and society is an integral part of scientific literacy. Issues such as global climate change, genetic engineering, alternative energy, stem cell research, etc. Demand the attention of more than just scientific specialists with particular areas of expertise (Fowler et al. 2008; Sadler and Donelly 2006). While mastery of scientific knowledge related to SSI is vital for understanding the key issues involved, such scientific knowledge is not enough, but must be complemented by the moral reasoning and values necessary to direct the stream of scientific facts into a valid argument, and to provide a framework for evaluating multiple perspectives and solutions (Sadler and Donelly 2006; Sadler and Zeidler 2005; Zohar and Nemet 2002). This perception of SSI’s importance was adopted by the university in which this research took place when it initiated a “green campus” project, designed to ensure that graduate students be environmentally literate, knowledgeable in sustainability concepts and aware of resource distribution inequities.

The challenge of achieving environmental literacy as part of academic studies in higher education, and the expectation that graduate students actually do so, is especially important in the region in which the research took place. The majority of the students who participated in this research will most likely go on to hold positions in the adjacent industrial park (located eight miles south of the university). This park consists of 20 chemical manufacturing plants—over a half of the chemical plants in Israel. While the site provides employment for nearly 4,000 local workers, people living in the region are concerned that authorities have failed to provide it with the appropriate environmental safeguards. In 2006, this concern reached a critical point when an Epidemiologic Report was issued stressing the environmental effect of the pollution on the health of the Negev region residents. The ability to deal with the SSI arising from complex interactions of science and society such as those described above is an integral component of scientific literacy and citizenship education in the western world (Millar and Osborne 1998).

The question of what science graduates should need to know about environmental issues related to industry is a complicated one. In this research we adopted the approach suggested by Azapagic et al. (2005), who claim that science and engineering graduates should be capable of a rational approach to environmental problem solving based on an understanding of the following four topics:

  1. a.

    Environmental issues (acid rain; air pollution; biodiversity; climate change; deforestation; depletion of natural resources; desertification; ecosystems; global warming; ozone depletion; photochemical smog; solid waste; water pollution).

  2. b.

    Environmental legislation, policy and standards (EU EMAS; IPCC; ISO 14001; Kyoto protocol; Montreal protocol on CFCs; Rio declaration).

  3. c.

    Environmental tools, technologies and approaches (clean technology; design for the environment; fuel cells; industrial ecology; life cycle assessment; product stewardship; renewable energy technologies; responsible care; tradable permits.

  4. d.

    Sustainable development (definition and approaches to sustainable development; precautionary principle; population growth; inter- and intra-generational equity; stakeholders’ participation; connection between poverty, population, consumption; and the degradation of the environment; earth’s carrying capacity; social responsibility.

Purpose

This research aims at exploring university science graduates’ environmental knowledge regarding industrial-environmental issues. The research questions are;

  1. 1.

    Given the stimulus phrase, ‘industrial plant’, do university science graduates show an awareness of environmental issues connected to industry, and, if so, what conceptual constructs may be associated with that awareness?

  2. 2.

    Do university science graduates apply their domain-specific scientific terminology and concepts in their thinking about specific industrial-environmental issues?

Method

Study Design

We assume that viewing the subjects’ perceptions regarding industrial-environmental issues, both indirectly and directly, and on various levels of probing, constitutes a comprehensive and informative measure of the science graduates’ ability to fulfill their previously mentioned privileged role in society regarding environmental issues. Figure 1 illustrates the pyramid-like structure, from general/intuitive to specific/concrete, of the data elicited from each of the research tools.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The pyramid-like structure, from general/intuitive to specific/concrete, of the data elicited from each of the research tools

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As can be seen, at the base of the pyramid are the intuitive spontaneous perceptions elicited by the word association tool. On this level, we aimed at examining whether the environment was part of the participants’ perceptions when thinking about the industry. On the 2nd level are the conceptual constructs elicited by the repertory grid tool, derived from the connections and interrelations between the concepts raised in the base level. On the 3rd level there is explicit and direct environmental knowledge the participants reveal regarding an actual, concrete problem—the factory case-study—concerning both the industry and the environment.

The data analysis of what science graduates should be expected to know about environmental issues related to industry was based on the scheme suggested by Azapagic et al. (2005). Moreover, during the data analysis we discussed our findings in a meeting that included the following participants: the Environmental Management Systems Coordinator, The Standards Institution of Israel, the head of the Department of Environmental Engineering, the head of the Department of Chemistry Engineering, and a researcher of the Department of Science Education (the first author).

Participants

The research was carried out in Israel during the 2006–2007 academic year. It included 180 BSc graduates of the faculties of engineering, the life sciences, and science education. In order to determine the research population, letters were sent to the lecturers of the courses at the faculties of engineering and sciences (the courses are given in the last semester of the last year of studies). Population determination was made thanks to the lecturers’ cooperation and their willingness to allow the researchers to visit classes and conduct the questionnaires.

The students who participated in this research come from a medium-high socio-economic background, and all are among the university’s top 20% in academic achievement, since the highest grades are required for studies in the faculties of engineering and life sciences.

It is important to note that while environmental issues are not taught in exclusively environmental courses, the curriculums of these faculties do include environmental concepts that are distributed among courses such as genetics, environmental chemistry, introduction to ecology, species extinction, water pollution, etc. None of the faculties where the participating students studied obligatorily require courses on sustainable development for their training and graduation. The distribution of the participants by faculty, and by the environmentally related and scientific concepts included in these courses is summarized in Table 1.

Table 1 Characteristics of the research sample
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Research Tools and Analysis

Word Association

Word association is one of the methods used for the evaluation of conceptual structures, as well as for ascertaining belief or attitude changes, in psychology and sociology (Hirsh and Tree 2001; Ross 2003). The method is based on the assumption that giving a stimulus word and asking the respondent to freely associate what words, termed elements, come to his or her mind allows a relatively unrestricted access to mental representations of the stimulus term. Ideas expressed within the word association procedure are spontaneous productions subject to fewer constraints than typically imposed in interviews or closed questionnaires, thus allowing the extraction of less biased results (Hovardas and Korfiatis 2006; Wagner et al. 1996; White and Gunstone 1992). After collecting the elements from all of the research participants, a second phase, in which the elements are sorted into categories, both inductively and deductively, takes place.

In this research, the participants were asked to list 12 words they naturally associated with the stimulus term: “industrial plant”. The students yielded a total of 2,390 elements, which were then analyzed by three expert researchers: the two authors and another science education researcher from a different university. Each working separately, the researchers classified the data into categories by content. The categories of classification were derived inductively, using a content analysis procedure (Ben-Zvi Assaraf and Orion 2005). Only categories which had received a 90% and above agreement from all three researchers were included in the research sample. The element categories, examples, and their distribution are summarized in Table 2 (see “Results”).

Table 2 The distribution of students’ elements, presenting the students’ perceptions of industry (N = 2,390 elements)
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The Repertory-grid Technique

George Kelly’s personal construct theory (PCT) (Kelly 1955) describes how concepts are acquired and organized within a learner’s cognitive structures. Kelly draws explicit parallels between the processes that guide scientific research and those involved in everyday activities (Bradshaw et al. 1993). Like scientists, people seek to predict and control the course of events in their environment by constructing mental models of the world. These mental models then enable individuals to formulate testable hypotheses about future events, and then test and revise them against their experience. PCT has provided both a plausible theoretical foundation and an effective practical approach—The Repertory Grid Test—used to identify and elicit individual constructs and analyze relationships between them (Adams-Webber 2006; Bradshaw et al. 1993; Goffin 2002). There is a wide consensus on the claim that the repertory grid technique can reliably depict a person’s way of thinking (Bezzi 1999; Latta and Swigger 1992).

The grid method today is used in many different fields. While applications in the original field of counseling are still important, there are a wide range of other applications. In higher education, Nicholls (2005) described new lecturers’ constructions of learning, teaching and research which are firmly positioned within the framework of quality enhancement as identified by Kelly’s PCT. In Science and Technological Education, examples of repertory grids usage include researchers such as Fetherstonhaugh (1994), who used the repertory grid to probe students’ ideas about energy; Bezzi (1999), who used repertory grid to explore the perceptions held by a university geology instructor and students of the images of the geosciences; and Bencze et al. (2006), who used repertory grids to explore possible relationships between teachers’ conceptions about science and the types of inquiry activities in which they engage students.

The repertory grid contains three major components: Elements, Constructs and Links. We define these below:

  1. 1.

    Elements are the objects of attention within the domain of investigation. The subject is usually presented with 10–15 elements which were either pre-given by the researcher or are derived through a word association task. In this study, following Fetherstonhaugh and Bezzi (1992), we employed the latter method as we did not wish to influence the participants’ constructs regarding the environment (for example, the word ‘waste material’, if supplied by the researcher, would be likely to raise the construct recycle because of the common connection the two have in the media and public discourse, rather than because of its connection to the industry). We wished to explore the constructs derived from the participants’ spontaneous associations regarding the industry and see whether and how they related to the environment.

  2. 2.

    Constructs represent the research participants’ interpretations of the elements. A construct is a bipolar dimension that, to some degree, is a property of each concept. There are several ways to elicit attributes. The classic method used by Kelly is to consider various element triads selected successively from the element list. The subject or person(s) from which the constructs are to be elicited is first presented with three elements and asked to specify some important aspects in which two of them are alike. Then the subject is asked in which aspects the third concept differs from the other two.

  3. 3.

    Links are ways of relating the elements and constructs. The links show how the research participants interpret each element to each constructs. The subject’s description of the similarity forms one pole of the attribute and the answer to the question concerning the difference is the contrast pole. Such a process is called a ‘sort’. The examiner records this similarity and contrast as the resulting attribute dimension from the first sort, and then proceeds to the second and subsequent sorts using different element triads.

In the present research, the student received the following instructions:

  1. a.

    Write your elements from the word association task on 12 cards;

  2. b.

    Place the cards in the envelope;

  3. c.

    Take out three cards randomly;

  4. d.

    Now think which of the three elements is exceptional and write down why;

  5. e.

    Now put the notes back in the envelope and take out randomly another three cards.

The participants played this game ~8 times each. A total of 1,303 constructs were yielded. Analysis of the elicited data was carried out by considering the exception and the reason for it being the exception for each three-word game cycle. For example, the comparison between the elements Manager, Truck, and Chimney may create the construct “CO2 gas emissions”, which characterizes the elements Truck and Chimney but not the element Manager. Therefore, the constructs allow an understanding of how the associations from the word association test are organized and interrelated within a learner’s cognitive structure and as the example shows, it is even possible for three elements, not related to the environment, to form an environmental construct.

In the second phase of the analysis all of the constructs were sorted into categories using a content analysis procedure. As in the word association analysis, the three expert researchers worked separately and only the constructs which had received a 90% and above agreement were included in the research sample. The construct categories and their distribution are summarized in Fig. 2 (appearing in the “Results” section).

Fig. 2
figure 2

The distribution of the students’ constructs that reflects their perceptions concerning industry (N = 1,303)

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The Factory Case-study

A Case study is a study conducted within a story framework, which places the participants in a decision-making position regarding certain issues which are characterized by, (a) a complex problematic situation which has no simple solution and invites multiple points of view; (b) demands some specific knowledge-content to be utilized for addressing the situation; and (c) relates to ethical and value-driven issues. Dori and Herscovitz (1999) have indicated that the case study method is effective for raising students’ conceptual understanding, question posing and critical thinking abilities. Chin et al. (2002) see question posing capabilities, aimed at predicting and explaining scientific phenomena, as constituting an important component of deep learning which includes the ability to solve complex problems and transfer knowledge across contexts.

In this research we adopted Dori and Herscovitz’s (1999) methodology; accordingly, the question-posing capability of the students was examined with a view of the orientation and complexity for each question. In addition, we looked for questions that presented a moral position or values. The students were told about a chemicals factory planned to be built in their town which would release water-soluble substances into the local river. The students were provided with a list of experts in the fields of geology, economy, environment, hydrology, chemistry and architecture. They were instructed to ask each expert three questions in order to decide whether they would recommend building the factory. In addition, the students were instructed to elaborate on their questions and explain for each question why they thought it was important and relevant to the assignment. It is important to note that we took care to plant within the story certain facts that were likely to give rise to environmental concerns. Such facts included the ecological system in the river being very sensitive, and that the factory would release chemical substances into the sewage system. As well, the fact that the city near which the factory was to be erected was one which suffered from a high level of unemployment was presented and was aimed at raising the tension between the conflicting needs of the community and the environment. The format presented to the participants is provided in “Appendix”.

The orientations and complexity types presented in this research are based on Dori and Herscovitz (1999) but with modifications to fit the subject matter—the industry-environment interrelations. The three questions orientation-types are: phenomenon and/or problem description, hazards related to the problem, and treatment and/or solution. The following explain and illustrate each orientation type:

  1. 1.

    Phenomenon/problem description—where the question referred to the description of a phenomenon or problem that was brought up in the case description; for example, “How will the environment be affected by the plant establishment?” and “What is the effect on water quality?”

  2. 2.

    Risks—where the question dealt with a problem or danger which is expected due to the plant’s establishment or operation; for example, “How will the substances affect the environment?” and “If waste materials are washed into the sewage, what will be the influence on the living creatures in the area?”

  3. 3.

    Treatment/solution—when the questions raised the possibilities for environmental solutions; for example, “Are there any materials that can be added to reduce the pollution?”, “Is there a possibility to recycle the waste materials?” and “Are there any neutralizing substances that can be added to reduce the pollution?”

The three question complexity types are: knowledge, application/analysis, and judgment/evaluation.

  1. 1.

    Knowledge—questions that dealt with facts referred to in the case description, for example: “Is there a possibility to recycle the waste materials?” and “Is it possible to prevent damage to the environment?”

  2. 2.

    Application/analysis—questions that pointed to interactions between variables; for example, “Does the industrial plant emit dangerous materials that might enhance ozone depletion?” and “Is it possible to prove that paint components that will be produced will not affect the living creatures in the area?”

  3. 3.

    Judgment/evaluation—questions of evaluation/judgment regarding future environmental impact, where the dimension of time is taken into consideration; for example, “How deep does water leach into the earth and consequently, how deep the contaminated water will reach?” and “Are the soluble materials toxic to living creatures?—It is necessary that if damage will occur, to know what it may be and what are its short and long-term implications.

In particular, the last class of questions is especially relevant for decision-making abilities as it involves temporal, long term considerations. In addition, we searched for questions which could be categorized as ones in which the participants were taking a personal position—where the askers represented their moral point of view and values concerning the case description, for example: “Might the pollution damage the houses in the area? It is important to take care of the poor people.” Usually the moral position appeared in the explanation to the question.

It is important to note that answers which were not accompanied by an explanation, as required by the instructions, were discarded, as it was not possible to reliably determine their complexity, orientation, and moral position. In order to validate the consistency of the classification scheme, a random sample consisting of 10% of the questions were given to the three expert judges mentioned above. They were asked to classify the questions according to the above orientations/complexity types.

Results

To begin, we would like to note an interesting finding of the research, that no significant differences were detected between the samples of the students from the various disciplines. This was true for all of the research tools we employed. Consequently, the data presented in this section is attributed to the whole sample (N = 180) as one unit. The findings are organized in accordance with the pyramid structure presented in the “Methods” section: from the base to the peak.

Intuitive Perceptions Regarding the Environment Raised by the Word ‘Industrial Plant’

In the word association task, a total of 2,390 elements were yielded and were then grouped into 18 categories, summarized in Table 2.

As can be seen, for the majority of the students, industry was associated with categories not related to environmental issues (about 77%), such as: human components (chief executive, employees, workers)—13.1%; technological components (i.e. truck, container, machine)—10.9%; labor (i.e. schedule, working hours, production line)—8.9%; economic (i.e. monetary income, stocks)—7.4%; and others (Table 2). About 23% of the elements were related to environmental aspects; the main ones being pollution (i.e. air pollution, noise, waste)—9.2%; and environmental risk (damage to the ecology, global warming)—4.6%. It is important to note that the participants’ associations only relate industry to environmental issues in regard to contamination and its implications. Most of the students did not relate to solutions the industrial plant can implement to limit contamination, what the community should do in order to maintain their life quality—such a legislation and enforcement—and social responsibility. For example, element categories related to industry-environment relationships such as safety, quality of life, community feelings, diseases caused by pollution, governmental organizations, green organizations, positive environmental management, and media-environment communication—received <1% of the elements.

Environmental Conceptual Constructs Underlying the Word Associations

The results from the students’ repertory grid personal constructs were quite similar to the word association findings. The constructs connected to environmental issues were mainly limited to pollution, its hazards, and its environmental implications. The distribution of the constructs is presented in Fig. 2.

Most of the elicited constructs, 65%, are not related to environmental issues. The main constructs of this type are: organizational management (22.9%); manufacturing (17.2%); and economic aspects’ (14%). Four constructs do deal with industry-environment relationship. They constitute about 35% of the total constructs; they include: constructs grouped under environmental pollution (referring to the different types of environmental pollution)—18%; constructs grouped under production adverse effects (such as work accidents, explosions of hazardous substances, and diseases (e.g. asthma), due to the exposure to gases being emitted during the production)—10%; constructs grouped under safety regulation usage—4.5%; and constructs grouped under industrial environmental awareness—3%.

These environmentally related constructs represent a general acquaintance with the industrial-environmental agenda, as it is presented in the media and in discussions people have on such topics, rather than a deeper scientific understanding or one which relates to what actually takes place in the industry. To illustrate what we mean by ‘general acquaintance’ we present in Fig. 3 below the distribution of students’ constructs categorized under environmental pollution.

Fig. 3
figure 3

The partial distribution of students’ constructs classified under environmental pollution (N = 234)

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As can be seen, about 24% of the constructs, grouped under general environmental pollution—were general, for example: “Quality of Life is different from Products and Environment, because the environment is damaged due to chemical products of manufacturing”. The rest of the constructs dealt with specific pollutant mechanisms; however, they place an unbalanced emphasis on certain factors which are usually presented in the media. Approximately 23% were related to air pollution: “Research laboratories are different from Industrial process and Production, because at the end of the industrial production process, air pollution may occur”. As a comparison, soil contamination or pollution by sewage constructs, both being actual grave concerns of the Israeli Environmental Protection agency, but ones which are seldom mentioned by the Israeli media, received only 0.9 and 5.5%, respectively.

Another example illustrating the generality of the participants’ constructs is from the safety regulation usage constructs (4.5%). Of these, only 7% of the constructs related to environmental control, for example, “Success is different from Chemical Substances and Pollution since, chemical substances cause water pollution and therefore, a suitable water treatment should be performed”. The rest of the constructs mainly expressed the students’ general concern that workers have a fundamental right to a safe and healthy workplace. “Employee and accidents are different from managers since, training of employees is fundamental to the prevention of accidents”. As well, none of the students mentioned reporting and documentation of environmental information.

Even the sole construct category which seemed to represent a more positive and constructive view of the industry-environment connection—the industrial environment awareness category—also turned out to present a more general superficial acquaintance rather than a deeper grasp of what actually is happening today in the industry-environment context. The distribution of students’ constructs categorized under industrial environmental awareness (2.9%), show that the majority of the constructs grouped under environmental facts (26.3%) and environmental concern (52.6%), express the students’ general awareness of environmental aspects of the industrial activity. However, only 21% of the participants’ constructs are related to environmental management which is the important mechanism by which industries present their environmental awareness; for example, “in order to prevent ground water contamination the management policy must be changed”. In this regard, it is important to note that all of the major industrial facilities in Israel today hold international standards of environmental management systems (such as ISO 14,000).

To sum up the findings from the word association and repertory grid research tools, generally speaking, the participants’ conceptual structures evidenced some connections between the industry and environmental issues. However, the connections were usually of a superficial nature: common knowledge frequently discussed in the mass-media regarding risks and a general environmental concern. Very few of the evidenced connections dealt with possible solutions or prevention measures to industrial-environmental issues, and furthermore, none of the sustainable development terminology and concepts was evidenced.

Direct, Explicit Environmental Knowledge Concerning Both Industry and Environment

The factory case-study task provided the students with an opportunity to formulate high-level complex responses to an assignment which directly aimed at probing their abilities to responsibly address an industrial-environmental issue. In total, only 908 questions were analyzed. This is because the students did not always provide the full number of question demanded and because, as mentioned in previous section, only answers which included explanations were analyzed. The following is the distribution of the students’ questions by the specific field of the interrogated expert: environment (20.15%), hydrology (15.42%), ecology (14.65%), economy (13.88%), chemistry (12.89%), architecture (12.11%) and geology (10.9%).

In order to clarify what kind of questions we consider as being ‘good questions’, that is, questions that evidence the kind of environmental perception we would expect from university science graduates, we present in Table 3 ‘good questions’ collected from the participants themselves.

Table 3 Examples of questions collected from students’ response of the factory case-study
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An analysis of the questions according to their orientation type (Table 4) revealed that most of the questions dealt with potential hazards of the plant—belonging to the risks orientation type (57.6%). These questions demonstrate a general concern regarding environmental issues such as: “How might the plant damage the ecosystem?”—a question addressed to the ecology expert; or “How will water-soluble materials interact with the river environment?”—a question addressed to the hydrology expert. Only 11.3% of the questions were of the Solution/Treatment orientation type of questions that were aimed at the environmental management level or questions which dealt with actual practical treatment options in order to address the problems that might result from the plant’s establishment. Such questions include: “Is there a possibility to recycle the waste materials?”—a question addressed to the environment expert; or “Are there any neutralizing substances that can be added to reduce the pollution?”—a question addressed to the hydrology expert. Interestingly, while none of the participants were economics students, most of the solution/treatment orientation type questions were directed to the economy expert. Students asked about different types of economic solutions for dealing with pollution, rather than taking care to avoid it from the very first start. Examples of such questions are: “How much the rehabilitation of the river environment is going to cost?” and “What would be the fine for allowing waste to flow into the river rather than the sewage system?”

Table 4 The distribution of students’ questions to the various experts
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The analysis of the questions according to the complexity categories are summarized in Table 4.

As can be seen 41% of the questions were identified as knowledge type of questions. Examples include: “Can plants continue to grow in such a polluted environment?”—a question addressed to the ecology expert; or “What will be the constitution of the waste that will flow into the sewage?”—a question that was addressed to the hydrology expert. Application/analysis type questions were the majority (53.2%). However, of these, most of the questions were related to the risks orientation rather than the solutions orientation; for example, “Is it possible to prove that paint components that will be produced will not affect the living creatures in the area?” The judgment/evaluation type of questions that address the long-term environmental effects of the plant and which are especially relevant for decision-making were much less frequent (only 5.6% of the questions); for example, “Are the soluble materials toxic to living creatures?—If damage to the environment will occur, it is necessary to know what it will be, and what will be its short and long-term implications”.

Another finding of the research is that questions indicating a moral position toward the environment, for example, “What kinds of living creatures share the river habitat? We should prevent the extinction of rare species”. Where evidenced in only 11.7% of the participants’ questions.

Finally, another important finding is that there was no outstanding difference in environmental conceptions or in expressing scientific knowledge between the students of the different departments. For example, in their questions to the ecology expert, biology students did not express their domain-specific scientific conceptual knowledge, or use a more professional terminology such as ecosystem, wild life, habitat, and biodiversity. Similarly, when questioning the hydrology expert, chemical engineering students did not use give expression to more scientific concepts than the other students.

We conclude this section by outlining the major findings:

  • The students’ perceptions regarding the connections between the industry and the environment are of risks, pollution, and other negative aspects.

  • Only few students had presented solutions or alternative preventive strategies for avoiding environmental problems.

  • The majority of the students did not take an explicit moral position about the connection between the industry and the environment.

  • The students hardly mentioned the influence and the role of the green organizations and governmental institution in the context of the connections between the industry and the environment.

  • The students did not evidence knowledge of the sustainable development’s tenets and neither did they use its terminology.

Discussion

This research aims at exploring university science graduates’ environmental knowledge regarding industrial-environmental issues. The findings of the word association and repertory grid research tools indicated that connections to the industry do exist, but that they are basically negative ones—associated with risks, diseases and other negative aspects which are commonly discussed in the media and are general knowledge. The students’ response is, therefore, representative of the general public’s reaction to environmental hazards—where those hazards around which there is much uncertainty, like environmental issues, seem to be a cause for higher levels of anticipated risks than is the case with other issues, such as car accidents (Bickerstaff 2004). Furthermore, quite surprisingly, the sustainable development’s tenets and terminology did not surface and the institutions responsible for dealing with such issues were only minimally acknowledged. Moral positions and value-driven approaches were also notably absent from the participants’ associations, constructs, and questions and explanations.

To counter the argument that such results are not valid as the participants were not directly asked about an industrial-environmental issue, the factory case-study research tool, which directly probed a concrete industrial-environmental problem, was also employed with quite similar results. Furthermore, the factory case-study revealed that suggested solutions and preemptive measures to the presented problem were notably lacking in the participants’ responses, suggesting they are not better able to arrive at sound industrial-environmental decisions. Another important finding is that the participants’ domain-specific scientific knowledge did not surface in their answers. It appears that their scientific background did not significantly affect their environmental perception, as evidenced by the questions they posed to the science experts in the relevant fields. The factory case-study placed the participants in a decision-making position and gave them the opportunity to present aspects of environmental literacy within specific scientific domains by utilizing any of the science experts mentioned in the assignment. Nevertheless, the students did not choose, or were unable, to use the scientific terminology included in their engineering/biology/chemistry studies.

Because scientific concepts related to the environment do frequently appear in courses that students are obligated to take (as mentioned in Table 1), it seems reasonable to look for the root of this problem not in the science graduates’ scientific knowledge per se but rather in its connection to actual events and debates presently taking place in the public arena regarding industrial-environmental issues (Murphy 2004). The students’ questions to the various experts did not indicate any over-arching environmental approach—be it the sustainable development approach, the green organizations’ approach, or even the responsible-care economics approach. Moreover, only a very small part of the questions suggested by the students included values and moral-based explanations.

As mentioned at the outset of this paper, we believe that university science graduates can potentially play a privileged role in industrial-environmental decision-making and mediation. In view of this, the above findings are disturbing. These call into question university science education’s current ability to meet environmental challenges. In Israel, 5,000 students of engineering and architecture, 1,500 students in the faculties of life sciences, and 2,500 students of mathematics, statistics and computer sciences graduate each year. Like in other western countries, the current Israeli approach to educational reform focuses on upgrading students’ cognitive skills and scientific knowledge, rather than teaching them how to implement what they have learned in actual situations. Thus, education at the university level presents a scheme which does not meet the requirements of learning complex problem-solving, e.g. in the subject area of sustainable development (Stauffacher et al. 2006). One barrier, quite simply, is the sheer size of the science education system and its inherent resistance to change. For example, thousands of educators and roughly 70,000 engineering students graduate every year in the USA alone. Another is that the language for sustainability is simply not a part of most academics’ vocabulary, and is therefore not included as an important focus topic in university curriculums (Reid and Petocz 2006; Scott and Gough 2007). Carew (2004) presented the problem of teaching sustainable engineering as one which crosses disciplinary boundaries, and raised questions regarding what students need to know about sustainable engineering. Allenby et al. (2007) concluded that engineering students are not aware of sustainability guidelines when solving engineering problems. Moreover, the ideas of risk and risk assessment have rarely, if at all, been included in mainstream science curricula.

In response to the situation outlined above, we offer three suggestions that may help in bringing together students’ scientific knowledge and environmental and sustainable development issues. First: taking the science students to industrial facilities and acquainting them with the facilities and their personnel, using the examination of local environments to bridge the gap between the familiar and the novel. Our study showed that few of the participating students are aware of the recent changes that have occurred in the industry’s environmental outlook that have led almost all of the major plants to adopt a more environmentally aware approach. An acquaintance with the local investigation of environmental phenomena in nearby businesses and industry can be used to rectify this situation and teach campus students relevant scientific concepts (Carlsen 2001).

Although most of the students who participated in this research live near the biggest industrial facilities in southern Israel, 90% of them have never visited them. We believe that well-planned excursions to industrial facilities will allow students to see with their own eyes the changes occurring in the industry on the level of both legislation and technological implementation, for example, how a factory’s control room is actually fitted with equipment for monitoring the excretes. Following Lugg (2007) we suggest that universities should design and execute industrial outdoor learning activities for science students, during which they will actively interact with workers, engineers, researchers, executive managers, etc.—within the industrial facilities. This is important because of the questionable reliability of corporate environmental reporting, with discrepancies found not only between messages conveyed by various company reports, but also between what is reported in their environmental and social reports and what has actually been done (Cerin 2002).

Our second suggestion is improving science graduates’ capabilities through the design and implementation of special courses that focus on environmental topics. It seems that the students who do not participate in environmental courses, as our participants have not, may lack a broad coherent approach to industrial-environmental problem-solving. Reid and Petocz (2006) describe the results of the industry/university forum held at Macquarie University in Australia, which identified the need to integrate ideas of sustainable development within university curricula, in all disciplines, to prepare students for their professional roles. Universities have been developing a series of courses that address the importance of sustainable development and practices in the twenty-first century (Moody et al. (2005); Moore (2005); Mulder (2006); Reid and Petocz (2006); Springett and Kearins (2005); Sukumaran et al. 2004). Moody and Hartel (2007) showed that an environmental literacy requirement course increased student’ knowledge and concern about environmental issues and changed some students’ environmental behavior. The major environmental issues that were declared essential knowledge for any environmentally literate student were: abiotic and biotic interactions; resource use, conservation, and management; role of humans/environmental; economics/governmental issues; global warming; population growth; habitat destruction/deforestation; biodiversity loss; water quality issues; and agricultural impacts/issues.

Our final suggestion concerns the science curriculum itself. We propose that the pressing state of the environment may be reason enough to consider making some changes in the current science curriculums. In this regard, it is important to note that some researchers, such as Clark (2007), Gallopin et al. (2001), and Mihelcic et al. (2003) advocate founding a new curricular framework—‘sustainability science’—focusing explicitly on the dynamic interactions in nature-society systems and reflecting pluralities of perspectives. However, we wish to support a less radical approach, namely, that scientific literacy requires some new curriculum content. This approach is endorsed by a large number of researchers, some of whom are listed below together with concrete suggestions they have made on how to achieve significant changes regarding environmental perspectives without making radical changes in the existing curriculum.

Students should be prepared for realistic problem solving in authentic contexts, in which decisions are made in a process of interaction between concerned stakeholders (Stauffacher et al. 2006). Students should be confronted with environmental problems that represent real phenomena, comprising such “real” touches as uncertainty, complexity and incompleteness of information (Ibid). Rivet and Krajcik (2008) suggest contextualizing instruction as the utilization of particular situations or events occurring outside of science class, or are of particular interest to students, to motivate and guide the presentation of scientific ideas and concepts. Contextualizing often takes the form of real world examples or problems that are meaningful to students personally, to the local area, or to the scientific community (Lugg 2007). For example, Dori and Tal (2000) suggested incorporating industrial and environmental elements into the science curriculum through a collaborative community project that dealt with an actual industry—environment dilemma that was being debated at the time—the establishment of a new industrial zone above a very important regional aquifer.

Alternately curricula should ensure the inclusion of SSI arising from the complex interactions of science and society. Such issues represent an integral component of scientific literacy and citizenship that move students from awareness to action (Millar and Osborne 1998; Fien and Tilbury 2002; Rowe 2002). Advanced socio-scientific reasoning must involve recognizing the inherent complexity of such issues, examining issues from multiple perspectives, and developing systems perceptions and high-order thinking skills in order to deal with complex, multi-scale and multi-layered systems (Ben-Zvi Assaraf and Orion 2005; Coyle 2005; Sadler et al. 2006; Zoller and Scholz 2004).

Finally, interdisciplinary models for environmental education that offer students opportunities to learn critical thinking, problem solving, and effective decision-making skills should be incorporated into the curriculum (Moore 2005; Reid and Petocz 2006; Springett and Kearins 2005).

Concluding Thoughts

The need for a scientifically well-trained work force, one which will be able to lead society into the next era of scientific innovations and technological advances, lays stress on the role of science education (Barton 2002; Bybee and Fuchs 2006). However, this work force, nurtured by higher education has also a role to play in helping society find social and technical solutions to the challenges posed by maintaining a sustainable development (Shriberg 2002).

This is a process in which all stakeholders need to participate, but the involvement of higher education graduates in general, and science graduates in particular, is particularly important, as it is likely that graduates with a scientific background will occupy the majority of managerial and leadership positions in the industrial community and will be in an influential position to mediate the environmental communications to the general public. We thus call upon curriculum developers and policy makers to bring about the necessary conditions for enabling the potential of university science graduates’ to benefit society to be fully realized.

Hopkinson et al. (2008) argues that university student learning about sustainable development might usefully be configured within a broad framework combining formal, informal and campus curriculum to mutually reinforce approaches to student learning about SD. These include campus environmental management, curriculum developments, skills development, community engagement and the development of global citizenship.