Abstract:

The emergence of environmental values is one of the main cultural transformations in recent decades, provoking the distribution of new meanings and the addition of new rights and obligations. In correlation with this point, we believe that promoting the perception of pro-environmental behavior among young people is crucial to reducing the harmful effects on nature and moving towards a more sustainable future in which nature is capital and not just resources to be consumed. The contemporary ecological approach requires appropriate balance and integrity between conservation and utilization of natural resources. In reference to these contemporaneous requirements, we designed this research aiming to diagnose the existing pre-dispositions and their interconnection with demographic, educational and social factors that determine university students’ ecological dispositions and values. The findings and conclusions will be used as a starting point for improving the teaching methodology and content of academic disciplines in this field at the university level.

Starting from the understanding that beliefs, attitudes, and motives are elements that build visions of the world and pro-ecological dispositions, we focus on the basic paradigms in social and humanitarian knowledge, which problematize in a very specific way and methodology human-nature relations:
1) the "anthropocentric paradigm", which perceives people as separated from "nature" and dominating it through technology; ensuring the development of human progress as an upward and continuous line; this paradigm is dominant not only in social and humanitarian knowledge, but also as an everyday attitude that can be captured in the way people treat nature only as a resource for use, but not as capital to be conserve.
2) the "ecocentric paradigm" (the so-called "new ecological paradigm" Corral Verdugo, 2010), in which people think of themselves as part of nature; it assumes that the rules governing social living conditions are embedded in a complex ecosystem that includes the interdependence between man and all living things, hence the importance of limiting the growth of human activities, the importance of tackling the harmful effects on the environment and the need to maintain human-nature synergies.

The pilot study, conducted with the theme "People and Nature", in the period March-September 2021, analyzed the dispositions of university students to the following set of issues:
- connection between economic development and nature conservation and enrichment;
- ranking in importance of basic economic activities leading to ecological imbalance;
- climate change - causes and indications;
- fair and equitable use of natural capital.

The data obtained from the research provide grounds for comparing the disposition of different groups of respondents and analyzing the reasons for the differences expressed. Statistical data processing provides grounds for sound conclusions such as encouraging greater cooperation of academic teaching staff from different scientific fields and sharing expertise in planning and conducting coordinated activities to improve teaching methodology and content of disciplines in this field at university level as part of the interdisciplinary university-wide projects as our project Vita Plus.

Keywords:

Ecological approach, dispositions, methodology, interdisciplinary research project.