Fostering ecological literacy: Recognizing and appreciating *emergence in a complex virtual inquiry environment

Concerning the sustainable future of humanity, connections are made between ecological literacy, systems thinking, and humans' understanding and appreciation of complex systems. These connections are framed within the perspective of individual learning---including the complexity of systems, a learner's specific knowledge of a particular system, recognition of emergent properties of these complex systems, and the potential for facilitating such recognition in virtual inquiry environments. In parallel to the learning perspective, learner affect toward complexity is also explored---focused upon a learner's perceived instrumentality of possessing the skills and abilities necessary to understand complex systems and think systemically, as well as his or her environmental orientation (i.e., his or her perception of the relationship between the human species and the natural environment). The potential for facilitating improvement in these affective traits in learners using virtual inquiry environments is explored. Measures of participants' water cycle knowledge, environmental orientation, perceived instrumentality, and ability to recognize emergence were taken at various points throughout a two-hour experience with the Cloverdale virtual water cycle scenario. This interactive virtual scenario is housed in the Cloverdale virtual environment, which is a 3D virtual world consisting of the Clover River Watershed and the fictitious town of Cloverdale. The learner must evaluate the Town's plan for residential expansion and commercial development---an evaluation specifically based on the ecological consequences that the development plan will have on the Clover River Watershed. Multilevel growth modeling was used for analysis of hypothesized predictive relationships between measured variables.;Significant growth was found for both perceived instrumentality and ability to recognize emergence in participants that completed the Cloverdale virtual scenario. Participants' initial environmental orientation significantly predicted initial level of perceived instrumentality, and participants' initial water cycle knowledge and change in perceived instrumentality over time both significantly predicted initial level of ability to recognize emergence. These findings provide preliminary support for the use of virtual environments to foster ecological literacy through improved systems thinking in learners, as well as continued improvement upon how such environments should be designed to foster the requisite changes in knowledge, ability, affect, and values.