Death in the curriculum: a terror management theory assessment of emotions and mortality reminders in post-secondary interdisciplinary environmental education courses

Interdisciplinary Environmental Education (IEE) provides post-secondary students with the knowledge, awareness, skills, and motivation for environmental stewardship. Educators are responsible for building students’ action competence to engage in environmental/climate challenges and apply those skills to solve ecological problems. However, Terror Management Theory researchers have shown that mortality awareness – including awareness triggered by climate change – activates individuals’ deep psychological defenses. These defenses may provoke reactions and behaviours detrimental to pro-environmental objectives. To investigate the interaction between mortality salience reminders (MSRs) and emotions in post-secondary IEE curriculum, we identified every MSR in faculty interviews and curricular materials, coded all associated emotions, and consolidated them into six basic categories (Joy, Love, Awe/Surprise, Fear, Anger, Sadness). We tallied their frequency across documents to determine the emotional load (EL) of individual texts and for the whole dataset. Our analysis revealed Fear as the prevalent emotion associated with death-thought prompts and an overall negative emotional load across eight courses taught at two Canadian post-secondary institutions. We also found that while some educators did not intentionally provoke a particular affect, others deliberately instilled hope and confidence when addressing environmental issues. Our findings provide insights to strengthen local teaching practices and inform global environmental education strategies.