Bangladeshi young people\u27s ecoliteracy in postcolonial times

Abstract

This research explores Bangladeshi young people’s ecoliteracy and how such literacy is socially and culturally influenced. At present, Bangladesh has no particular policy document on environmental education for school education. The theoretical foundations of this study are in the intersecting areas of socioecological theory and postcolonial theory. A child-framed ethnographic methodology was used as the overarching mode of enquiry. The study was conducted in two districts of Bangladesh—Dhaka and Jessore—involving 28 co-researchers and 84 participants aged between 14 and 15 from four different secondary public and private schools. The young people revealed a rich tapestry of ecoliteracy. While ecological knowledge was limited among some young people, environmental issues such as climate change were revealed as an omnipresent consciousness in Bangladeshi culture. The research revealed a deep level of systemic environmental inaction due to traditional and colonial concepts of the environment and education, which continue to dominate Bangladeshi culture