ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how social constructionism and symbolic interactionism contribute to the development of the reflective and meta-reflective competence in environmental communication education. To demonstrate how social constructionism offers the environmental communicator a relevant language for reflection, the chapter explains the situations and describes how they can be understood through a social constructivist language. Students graduating from the Environmental Communication and Management (ECM) program have become employed as practitioners responsible for the coordination of environmental management in public and private organizations in countries such as Sweden, Oman, Ghana, Cameroon, and New Zealand. Environmental communication comprises all meaning constructing processes that emerge when humans interact with their surroundings and are attentive to the environment, potential resources, and issues of sustainability and unsustainability. Environmental communication takes place in a large and varied number of social situations, situations that all differ in character.
