| This is a thesis report on the topic of hope. The author employs an interdisciplinary perspective. Case stories within environmental education, specifically dealing with climate change, serve to support original concepts. Through a cross-sectioned focused reading, literature from the varied fields of ecophilosophy, ecopsychology, and deep ecology are breached and synthesized. The convergence of these fields offers novel disciplinary combination. In this report, the author presents the role of hope within each of the aforementioned fields, seeking to understand why environmental educators need hope, where the sources of hope reside, and how hope affects directed actions. Through a synthesis of findings within the literature and a thematic framing narrative, a model for facilitating experiential hope-fueled education is presented. This model for hopeful action is argued to be a naturally-occurring phenomenon. Two case stories help to support this position. |
