Abstract
The discipline of psychology can make significant contributions to environmental conservation efforts, yet few people intuitively see the connection between psychology and conservation. The goal of this work was thus to increase students' awareness of how the discipline can be applied to understand and address environmental conservation issues. The authors used a theme-based approach, which has been successful for teaching Introductory Biology, to modify an introductory psychology course curriculum. The new course threaded an environmental conservation theme throughout without reducing coverage of essential Introductory Psychology topics. The theme-based modifications had three key features: (a) conservation examples in lectures, (b) a number of class activities that integrated conservation topics with psychological concepts, and (c) a semester-long student project on a conservation psychology topic. The authors utilized a pre-post quasi-experimental design to assess the effectiveness of the curricular revisions for developing greater student awareness of the link between psychology and environmental sustainability. The results indicate that the course achieved this goal and suggest that the conservation theme-based approach is a promising curricular innovation for Introductory Psychology.