Journeying through despair, battling for hope: the experience of one environmental educator.

Abstract

Environmentalism and environmental education can lead people to experience feelings of despair as they learn more about the severity and complexity of environmental challenges. Environmental educators often grapple with questions of how to remain hopeful without being naively optimistic and how to balance professional responsibilities with personal doubts about the efficacy of the field and the sustainability of the human enterprise. Using tools of autoethnography, this study examines the experience of one environmental educator as she struggles with these questions. Insights come from literature in education, cognitive psychology, sociology, medicine, theology, and philosophy.