Ringvorlesung mit dem Vortragstitel: "Greenperceptions of Preservice Teachers within selected European countries" (Prof. Pierre Clement, Univ. Aix en Provence)

The human relationship to nature is crucial for environmental awareness.
I’ll firstly present the concept of “umwelt” defined by J. von Uexküll: each species, but also each individual in human species, builds his/ her own world. In consequence, the conceptions of nature can strongly differ among individuals, with possible convergence inside social groups (defined by their nationality, or religion, or gender, etc.). For instance, using a historical approach, Chansigaud (2017) concludes: “The French are less interested in nature than their German-speaking neighbours”.
This socio-historical approach will just introduce some important concepts of didactics of biology: conceptions, social representations, competences, didactic transposition, interactions between scientific knowledge, values and social practices (the KVP model).
I’ll illustrate these concepts by analyzing some of the results of an international survey using the BIOHEAD-Citizen questionnaire to compare pre-service and in-service teachers’ conceptions of nature in several European and not European countries.