Technology Fixes To Energy Use-associated Environmental Issues? An Analysis Of The Constructions In Chinese Physics Textbooks

Abstract

Constructionist approach has been much used in the analysis of environmental communications especially on how claims are made (Hannigan, 2014). On the other hand, environmental education community has been paying attention to the development and implementation of environmental curriculums for long (Stevenson, Brody, Dillon, & Wals (2013) for a compilation for relevant studies). However, constructionist analysis of the environmental elements in the curriculum resources, particularly those in the textbooks, is comparably sparse and this might hinder further investigations on the construction of students’ environmental understandings. The current study addresses the perceived knowledge needs by focusing particularly on how textual factors might influence the constructions of environmental issues in science educational texts. This translates into two specific research questions: (1) What are the lexico-grammatical and topic features identifiable from the constructions of energy use-related environmental issues in Chinese physics textbooks? (2) What are the communicative purposes achieved through these features? The environmental issues associated with energy use were chosen due to its prevalence in physics textbooks and the relevant sections in the five most commonly used physics textbooks were thus identified. Since the construction of social issues involves the construction of the conditions, consequences, people and morality through symbolic means (Loseke, 2017), the lexico-grammatical and topic features of these constructions in the identified sections were examined. Lexically, the use of non-specific collective nouns and nominalized forms as subjects and objects respectively in the phenomenal descriptions has led to the indetermination of the parties causing and suffered from the issues. The use quantitative and technological vocabulary in the statement of the remedy measures frames the solution of environmental problems as a purely techno-scientific matter. Grammatically, the necessitative modal auxiliaries used in the causal-effect statements of economic development and environmental pollution imply the unavoidability of environmental problems, the imperative forms that are not directing to the readers in the solution lists result in the non-assignment of responsibility, and the progressive aspect indicators associated with professional and governing parties suggest that the problems have been taken care of and citizens’ actions, particularly the collective ones, are implied as unnecessary. The unbalanced topic selection results in the exclusion of non-human organisms, the erasure of victim experience, and the disregarding of citizen science. These textual features bring about the suppression of non-human organisms, the background of the involved people, and the undermining of citizen agency. Possible critical readings like the favoring of anthropocentric worldviews, the de-empathization with fellow citizens, and the de-politicalization of socioscientific discourses will also be briefly discussed for highlighting the power of textual study in the illustration of the micro-macro nexus of the environmental affairs. The potential of these illustrations to enable the construction of an analytical framework for Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of environmental communications and an explanatory model for the (dis-)empowerment of individuals in socioscientific discussions will also be considered to underline the significance of the textual study of socioscientific and technoscientific texts. References: Hannigan, J. A. (2014). Environmental sociology (3rd ed.). Abindon, Oxon: Routledge. Loseke, D. R. (2017). Thinking about social problems: An introduction to constructionist perspectives (2nd ed.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Stevenson, R. B., Brody, M., Dillon, J., & Wals, A. E. (2013). International handbook of research on environmental education. New York, NY: Routledge.