Viable environmental-sustainability education and training

Abstract

Based on a study of Isfahan's Mobarake Steel Company in Iran, this article presents a framework for viable environmental-sustainability or 'green' education and training. The study used an admixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, with twenty managers and steel experts interviewed, and the proposed framework quantified and ratified by means of structural equation modeling. A survey helped collect quantitative data, gleaned from 440 employees and managers. The survey was tested for its external validity, while Cronbach's alpha coefficient allowed assessing its internal consistency. The quantitative results show the need to prioritize cultivating an environmental-sustainability culture, and building a prerequisite infrastructure that both supports and is supported by the effective and efficient implementation of green education and training. To render environmental-sustainability education-and-training programs viable, their design must be grounded in situation-specific frameworks that reflect the work entailed in protecting nature. The qualitative results show that such programs must also be: co-aligned with the intentionality of human-development resources, kept up to date and synchronized with international environmental-sustainability standards. Besides the study's qualifications, also tentatively explored are a few policymaking guidelines and future research directions. © 2019 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.