Goals & motivating
problems in research and teaching

My long-term intellectual goal is to bring an understanding of
life-span development to bear on the challenges of human ecology, and
especially to the practice of environmental education. My work here
fits in four main strands:

A. Human-animal interactionThe study of
the relations of humans to animals is an interdisciplinary endeavor
that is receiving exploding levels of attention from historians,
sociologists, biologists, psychologists and others. My
contribution is to bring a human developmental perspective to bear on
the psychological foundations of children's relations to animals.
Much of my work in this area has been theory-building and
qualitative, although some studies in progress are quantitative, and
planned studies move more in this direction. Some of my
explorations here:

Further development of my theory
of child-animal relations: Do the early invariants features of
interactions shown by young children in their relations with animals
show up across cultural differences? How do different cultural
meaning systems facilitate or inhibit responsiveness toward animals?
How do children's conceptions of animals' needs change with
development?

New empiricism: my approach to ethics, and my studies of
relations with animals are informed by what my former graduate
advisor Eugene Gendlin terms the 'responsive
order.' I want to further explore this foundational dimension of
my work, by which it may transcend the impasse of postmodernism.

B. Development of Environmental Care and
ResponsibilityA major foundation for the field of
environmental education, as well as for other fields related to
conservation and human behavior, is the development of the skills,
knowledge, attitudes and values that enable individuals to make
environmentally sound choices. My research in this area applies
insights from human development to problems in environmental care and
moral development, and in understanding the ways members of divergent
social groups become environmentally responsible. Two major
themes (and several minor ones) appear in this strand of my work: one
has to do with the growth of childhood care toward animals into
responsibility for species and ecosystems; the second focuses on
college-age development of environmental concern and careers.

Caring for and about nature: What
developmental significance do natural environments hold for our
species? Of urgent interest is the question: How does the robust
care for animals we observe in many children and adults develop to
include practical care for habitats, species and ecosystems?

Moral development and environmental ethics: Environmental
content has seldom been examined in the study of moral development;
indeed, the field of environmental ethics is very fluid and
problematic. How can existing moral developmental frameworks most
fruitfully be applied? From my study of moral development, I want to
emphasize moral functioning - not just abstract ethics or judgment,
but how we feel, respond to others, and act when we confront choices
in our lives and careers. Habits of defensiveness versus productive
coping are critical. Further, beyond what formal environmental
ethics may tell us, how do we compromise yet retain personal
integrity? How can we strive for change in an imperfect world? Moral
developmental theory may have much to tell us here. These are
important questions in both my research and teaching.

C. Conservation PsychologyMy
colleagues and I are entertaining the term 'Conservation
Psychology' to capture the areas above, and others. We want to
encourage more psychologists to use their specialties to address some
of our urgent problems of sustainability and conservation. In this
area, here are some of the problems that motivate me:

Developing a psychologically, sociologically, and culturally
informed approach to environmental studies. I assume we must look at
environmental problems in context of political and economic systems,
and I am very interested in ecological economics as an important
critique and emerging source of policy alternatives. However,
underlying these systems are cultural-psychological phenomena which
we must understand to provide effective educational programs and
policies. What multiple pathways into environmental concern do we
discover if we look in a culturally and psychologically informed
way?

D. Teaching Environmental Studies and Environmental
Education

Bringing environmental history and environmental ethics
together. Both these topics support large sub-specialties now, but
too often their disciplinary structures prevent asking enlightening
questions that come at their crossing. How are we to appreciate and
evaluate choices made in the past that led to present problems? What
changes in values and sentiments does this reveal? What ethical
concepts are most appropriate now for judging the dilemmas that have
passed to us? What lessons might all this have for present choices?

How can all my above interests (plus many important concepts from
environmental studies) be combined in the best possible ways to
prepare our students? I am very concerned to prepare students
who can effectively marshall key skills and ideas, but more
importantly their own full capacities, on behalf of both humanity
and nature. In my teaching I am constantly asking how to do
this better, in ways that both challenge and support my students.

Myers,
G. & Park, C. (2013). Review of environmental education in the US
National Parks Service according to social transition: A case study
on two Pacific Northwest National Parks. Journal
of Environmental Science International 22(4),
385-396.

Myers, Jr. O. E. & Russell, A. (2001, Aug.). "Sense of
identity in relation animals: A qualitative study of wild black bears
and people with intimate knowledge of them." Paper presented at
the 10th Annual Meeting of the International Society for
Anthrozoology, Davis, CA, Aug. 4.

Myers, Jr. O. E. & Saunders, C. "Growing up green: A
developmental model of caring attitudes and action for nature."
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, Seattle, WA, April 13, 2001.

Myers, Jr. O. E. "Children and animals: To be human is to be
not an animal," paper presented at Thresholds of Identity
in Human-Animal Relationships: An Interdisciplinary Colloquium,
University of Santa Barbara, March 10-11, 2000.

Myers, Jr. O. E. "Chasing pigeons, talking animal, and eating
guinea pigs: Children, animals and anthropocentrism in developmental
psychology," invited paper presented at the Conference on
Children and Animals at the University of Pennsylvania, March, 1998

Myers, Jr. O. E. (1997, August). "Choice of major and
environmental concern among undergraduate students of color,"
paper presented at the conference of the North American Association
for Environmental Education, Vancouver, B.C.

Myers, Jr. O. E. (1997, August). "Significant life
experiences" invited symposium participant at the conference of
the North American Association for Environmental Education,
Vancouver, B.C.

Myers, Jr. O. E. and Iozzi, L. "The treatment of nature as a
'moral patient' in the United States from a developmental point of
view." Presented at the Advanced Research and Training Seminar
on "Eco-ethical thinking in cultural comparison,"
International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Universitat
des Saarlandes, Germany, 1994.

Myers, Jr. O. E. "Space dogs, staring turtles and monkey
Japanese: Forms of animal presence in a nursery school."
Presented at the Natural History Workshop, College of the Atlantic,
Bar Harbor, ME, 1992.