I’ve been working with schools and teachers in Luton recently, as part of a scheme called Climate Action Teacher Champions. It was developed in partnership with the Climate Action Unit at University College London, which is headed up by the neuroscientist and climate communicator Kris De Myer. His particular field of study is understanding what motivates people to take environmental action, and what does not. We use his insights in helping teachers to bring their leadership teams on board, and start to build environmental ambition into school culture.
One particular insight from De Meyer’s work seems very relevant. He demonstrates how actions drive beliefs. In environmental circles it is almost always the other way round – if we can just persuade enough people that something is important and that they should do something, they will act. The evidence suggests this doesn’t work, and that beliefs don’t drive action nearly as much as we assume they do.
If this is the case, then endlessly preaching at people is of limited use. We should create opportunities for action, and let small positive actions inspire bigger ones.
I’ve heard Kris do his presentation to teachers a couple of times now. Here’s a similar talk he delivered to the TEDx Countdown event in London recently. I’d be interested to know what you think.
The Earthbound Report 
Thanks for this excellent and timely post! Yet more evidence in support of the paradox that action precedes motivation rather than the other way around…
That action precedes belief is only a seeming paradox because of our default way of understanding the world as thinkers who observe it, starting from Descartes’ famous dictum ‘Cogito ergo sum’ – I think therefore I am. This creates a disconnect between mind and body, but it is the body that is actually in the world that is heating up, whilst our mind with its beliefs is elsewhere.
If we conceive of ourselves primarily as agents relating to the world then we naturally start with agency and our actions inform our beliefs and there is no paradox. Furthermore through embodied relationship with the world, our actions drive our motivation, which is our beliefs.
Here in Sheffield there is a piece of graffiti on a wall, now faded that stated:
‘You think therefore I am but your actions define you’.
At root this is a philosophical and moral problem of Western civilisation and requires a complete turnaround in the understanding of each and every individual. The philosopher John Macmurray (1891-1976) addressed the issue over 70 years ago, yet we are still stuck:
“John Macmurray was a Scot who fought in World War I and subsequently became a philosopher and broadcaster. In his Gifford Lectures he set out to challenge certain presuppositions in traditional thinking on the nature of the self, which have led to its being regarded as pure subject, as opposed to the world as object. In this first volume of those lectures, he is concerned to establish the primacy of action in the processes of self-realization, the manner in which the forms of reflective activity are derived from and related to action, and the importance of the practical in human experience.” (Jacket description of ‘The Self As Agent’, Faber and Faber 1995, originally 1951). More at https://johnmacmurray.org.
NB I am the chairperson of the John Macmurray Fellowship and maintain this website)