With the dramatic growth of environmental science as an elective in high schools over the last decade, educators have the opportunity to realistically consider the possibility of incorporating environmental science into the core high school curriculum. Environmental science has several characteristics that make it a candidate for the core curriculum. It is: (1) important for students and society; (2) an opportunity for students to experience an applied science; and (3) a particularly engaging...
Topics: ERIC Archive, High Schools, Technology, Secondary School Curriculum, Core Curriculum, Environmental...
This study compares 3rd-grade elementary students' gain and retention of science vocabulary over time in two different classes--"connected science instruction" versus "direct instruction." Data analysis yielded that students who received connected science instruction showed less gain in science knowledge in the short term compared to students who received direct instruction. On the other hand, the growth curve demonstrated a lower rate of loss of science knowledge among...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Science Instruction, Teaching Methods, Grade 3, Elementary School Students, Retention...
One of the goals of Professional Development School (PDS) programs is to provide preservice teachers with opportunities for developing in-depth knowledge and experience as they learn to teach (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2001). A theme-based PDS adds value to the PDS program model because it allows faculty members to share their particular expertise and research interests with preservice teachers and with teachers at the PDS school site. Additionally, a theme-based...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Preservice Teacher Education, Professional Development Schools, Faculty Development,...
Global warming affects every living thing on Earth--people, plants, and animals. While scientists are working to better understand how the Earth's climate will change over time, some effects are already evident: rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers and polar ice caps, changes in the distribution of plants and animals, increases in intense weather, and thawing of permafrost. As global warming is caused by an overabundance of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere, scientists suggest that it can be...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Natural Resources, Scientists, Conservation (Environment), Energy, Environmental...
Across the country, environmental education schools and the growing movement to get children outdoors are challenging the current "indoor generation" of kids. Martin LeBlanc, Sierra Club national youth education director, says the interest has never been greater. People have never been more aware of the fact that children are not getting involved with the outdoors. Even as No Child Left Behind decreases the time allotted for environmental education and field trips, research shows that...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Field Trips, Environmental Education, Federal Legislation, Climate, Conservation...
The inclusion of an Environmental Awareness Module (EAM) within Vocational Education and Training (VET) in Spain is considered a factor of overriding importance due to the current need to incorporate environmental awareness within society as a whole but also within particular occupations and professional practices involved both in jobs relating to the environment and the entire system of production. In this study, we will tackle the changes in the educational system that are essential for...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Foreign Countries, Sustainable Development, Vocational...
At a time of increasing interest and advocacy in integrated and policy-oriented research, this paper offers an empirically-based view of the intellectual and practical challenges of undertaking such research. It analyses the experience of a long-standing university research and postgraduate training centre from 1973-2004: the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at The Australian National University. The paper discusses staff development issues, cross-disciplinary understanding,...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Higher Education, Foreign Countries, Interdisciplinary Approach, Sustainable...
The driving premise of this paper is that students should be schooled in built and natural environments that afford them ways of understanding of how their daily physical actions and social choices affect the earth. Views of prominent philosophers and scholars in support of this premise are described. Next, four cases illustrate how schools can provide students with opportunities to develop ecological mindfulness through practical activities that are enhanced by natural and built environments....
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Facilities Design, Conservation (Environment), Physical Environment,...
University innovations relevant to sustainability education do not always come labelled as such. Inspiration can potentially be drawn from a wide range of fields and initiatives. During a 2005 study tour of Canada, seven universities were visited to investigate such programs, focussing on those that comprise more than one subject and that are intended for an undergraduate audience. In this paper, an exploratory study is undertaken of the collected interviews, field notes and documents to...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Innovation, Foreign Countries, Sustainable Development, Undergraduate...
This article describes River Summer, an interdisciplinary, field project on the Hudson River. Using cognitive data, the team aimed to design an experience that fostered an environment implementing strategies that improve learning. The participants, 40 faculty members from 24 institutions who acted as teachers, students, or both, boarded the Seawolf, the vessel on which the course was situated. River's objectives included lessons for analyzing various aspects of and promoting awareness for the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Teaching Methods, Earth Science, Metacognition, Learning Processes, Cultural Context,...
Calls for schools to "improve" are everywhere, but recently calls for schools to "transform" have proliferated, based on the idea that schools are not simply underperforming but outdated if not obsolete. Most prominently, scholars and authors such as Phillip Schlechty, Peter Senge, and Francis Duffy have targeted school and school system leaders with books calling for whole-system or systemic change to make schools compatible with other information-age social systems....
Topics: ERIC Archive, High Schools, Charter Schools, Social Systems, Community Schools, School Districts,...
The environment is a ready-made subject in writing classrooms, and teachers at all levels are encouraging students to write about nature and environmental issues. Environmental issues provide a equitable meeting place for students from a variety of different backgrounds, interests, and ideologies. There are also many pedagogical advantages to bringing environmental issues into the writing classroom, as proposed by ecocomposition theory. The main advantage is that ecological issues offer social...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Writing (Composition), Environmental Education, Learning Strategies, Ideology,...
As the research interests and the focus of traditional earth scientists are transformed, so too must education in earth system science at colleges and universities across the country change. The required change involves not only the methods used to teach this new science, but also the essential place of the earth sciences in the panoply of disciplines as traditionally ordered by academic colleagues. With growing public and political awareness of the significant environmental problems facing the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, College Curriculum, Environmental Education, Politics of Education, Climate,...
In recent years, the author relates how she had been on a journey to explore the role of art education in fostering ecological literacy. While she had tracked discussions about eco-art education back over three decades in the literature, the author relates how she was still working through exactly what eco-art education is and how it contributes to developing learners' ecological literacy. She had previously reported on a pilot study in this area and had began mapping her journey into this...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Art Education, Pilot Projects, Concept Mapping, Ecology, Environmental Education,...
ACTE Issue Briefs are designed to highlight the role of career and technical education (CTE) in a broader issue of national interest. Each Brief is designed to strengthen the voice of CTE related to the specific issue and to draw more attention to CTE activities and best practices around the country. The Briefs provide background information, highlight research, profile CTE programs and include numerous examples of how CTE is tied to the broader issue. Issue Briefs are designed in a concise,...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Energy Conservation, Sustainable Development, Vocational Education, Environmental...
In this paper we argue that scientific literacy ought to be rethought in that it involves ethics as its core element. Considering the fact that science education has addressed ethical dilemmas of Science, Technology, Society and Environment (STSE) issues, it is worthwhile to question what the ethics of scientific knowledge mean in terms of their implications in modern society where knowledge generally is separated from action and thereby from the responsibility for knowing. We draw on the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Integrity, Scientific Literacy, Case Studies, Ethics, Science Education,...
Environmental sustainability is the most visible recent global movement addressing the effect of human activities on the environment. Because of its effect on human health and well-being, it is imperative that the health education discipline begin to consider this topic as one of the important content areas. This paper provides a model for the integration of environmental sustainability concept into a traditional health education course that equips students with the basic competencies of...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Education Courses, Health Education, Wellness, Models, Physical Environment,...
Teachers' self-efficacy develops based on their appraisal of their experience with a task or similar tasks. Elementary science education should provide opportunities for students to experience science learning opportunities in authentic settings. This retrospective study describes one example of preservice teachers teaching elementary school students environmental science lessons in the outdoors during their science methods course. The preservice teachers' recognition of the students'...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Elementary School Students, Preservice Teachers, Elementary School Science, Methods...
Globalisation is one of the most important historical features that education is likely to experience in this century. The processes of globalisation need to be integrated with a set of social, technological, economic, cultural and ecological circumstances, so that people may begin to accept the fact that the world is facing a totally irreversible universal phenomenon. The concept of sustainable development integrates the factors that lead to a demand for global learning, education for...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Sustainable Development, Global Approach, Global Education,...
Almost 20 years after Bill Mason's death, the writings and films of this legendary Canadian canoeist, filmmaker, and artist remain popular: "Few people of any nation have been so influential in creating a sense of responsibility for the environment" (Buck, 2005, p. 12). Supported by statements in Mason's writings and films, this paper presents eight themes of Mason's environmental ethic which reflect a Christian perspective on caring for the earth. Haluza-Delay (2000) argues that...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Ethics, Films, Foreign Countries, Artists, Writing...
Is it feasible and appropriate to develop a sustainability metrics which captures cosmological-spiritual dimensions of un/sustainability? Departing from the supposition that the crisis of unsustainability is a crisis of worldview and misguided cosmology which needs redirection on a cultural and global scale, this essay introduces the notion of a diagnostic instrument with which metaphysical aspects of un/sustainability may be assessed. Using the ecological footprint as a template, the essay...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Measurement, Case Studies, Value Judgment, Sustainable Development, Environmental...
Sri Dattatreya, who Lord Krishna quotes in "The Uddhava Gita", has been evoked as a guru for environmental education. Sri Dattatreya gained enlightenment by observing the world, which provided Him with 24 instructors. These taught Him the futility of mundane attachments, the benefits of contemplation and forebearance, and a path towards the spiritual self-realization of the Supreme. Sri Dattatreya, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, features in several Puranas where His teachings involve...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Sustainable Development, Environmental Education, Educational Philosophy, Educational...
The unabashedly messy aspects of the research process are often hidden from published view, and are therefore not available to encourage and instruct. The authors tell specific stories about "messy" research, arranged around: (1) evolving research questions; (2) methodology or methods surprises; (3) problematic answers; and (4)publication dilemmas. These stories are from work amongst diverse categories and frames of inquiry, and are meant to encourage fellow students to persist and...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Research Methodology, Ethics, Research Problems, Research Needs, Environmental...
This article develops the notion that virtues can be utilized as a means of understanding the professional expertise that science teachers demonstrate when they deal with socioscientific issues. Socioscientific issues are those contentious issues that connect science to the society in which it operates--environmental issues being a prime example. We begin by accepting that both the cognitive and the affective facets of teaching represent a professional expertise that can be discussed using a...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Ethical Instruction, Scientific Principles, Science Teachers, Science Education,...
The vast majority of literature and practices in environmental education focuses on places and spaces. Little attention has been paid to time and temporalities as elements of environments, and the ways in which how we experience time affects our experience of place. This paper is an examination of the ways in which reflection on time can be incorporated into environmental education through a case study based on a workshop and continuing research project at Marylake Retreat Centre on the Oak...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Foreign Countries, Workshops, Research Projects, Program...
The School of Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Tourism at Lakehead University offers a third-year course on ecological literacy. The course evolved from one with a predominant scientific approach to studying the bioregion to one that embraced a broader epistemological stance, giving greater authority, voice, and presence to nearby landscapes. This essay traces the progression of an assignment designed to increase confidence, ability, and enjoyment of learning how to directly engage in reading...
Topics: ERIC Archive, College Students, College Instruction, Land Use, Undergraduate Study, Story Telling,...
Contemporary thinking is generally based on substance, as opposed to process, metaphysics: in other words, the belief that the world and the universe are best understood in terms of material rather than events. The environment, for example, is conceived of as substantial; nature as a web of interconnected, if often fragile entities. In this tradition, there is also a strong legacy of mind-body dualism: the belief that the (immaterial) human mind acts on the inert and mechanical "body"...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Environment, Metacognition, Teaching Methods, Educational...
The UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Program (1975-1995) provided impetus for developing, legitimizing, and institutionalizing environmental education. More recently, UNESCO was mandated by the United Nations to carry out a worldwide shift towards education for sustainable development. As international organizations' recommendations and guidelines often act as beacons for the conception and implementation of national formal and nonformal education programs, it is necessary to...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Nonformal Education, Environmental Education, Guidelines, International...
This paper complements Fritjof Capra's paper in this issue, "Sustainable Living, Ecological Literacy, and the Breath of Life." It explores how concepts essential to ecological literacy can also guide strategies for overcoming barriers to introducing integrated, multidisciplinary pedagogy into school curricula. It examines how the crisis of childhood obesity and nutrition-related illness constitutes a point of systemic instability that creates an opportunity to integrate experiential...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Experiential Learning, Interdisciplinary Approach, Barriers, Educational Strategies,...
This paper discusses the conceptual foundations for "Education for Sustainable Patterns of Living," the mission of the Center for Ecoliteracy in California. It offers an operational definition of ecological sustainability, and proposes study of living systems as a framework for understanding ecology. It considers key concepts for understanding living systems and their implications for educators. The paper addresses experiences that foster emotional connections with nature within a...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Ecology, Sustainable Development, Educational Philosophy,...
Recent international policy literature on Education for Sustainable Development puts forward utopian concepts of sustainable development and transformed learning as objects for educational thinking and practice. This paper, drawing on three illustrative educational investigations with youth in a South African context, critically examines how we might engage with utopian concepts such as those put forward in the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. It incorporates an...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Social Justice, Constructivism (Learning), Racial Segregation, Democracy, Learning...
Michel Foucault's concept of power/knowledge is applied to an exploration of how managerial discourse affects the practice of public environmental education at a publicly owned electric utility. Emerging from interviews with people at SaskPower is a managerial discourse with a particularly instrumental approach to environmental education. The aim of those at the Corporation entrusted with the task of educating people about the environment and the energy industry is directed toward achieving...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Educational Philosophy, Educational Principles, Educational...
It is argued that the view of nature and the relationship between human beings and nature that each of us holds impacts our decisions, actions, and notions of environmental responsibility and consciousness. In this study, I investigate the discursive patterns of selected environmental science classroom resources produced by three disparate subcommunities: the provincial government, a school district, and a non-governmental organization. The findings illustrate how the discursive management of...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Outdoor Education, Environmental Education, Discourse Modes, Instructional Materials,...
Newspapers and other media are often used as a source of information on science issues, both by the public and teachers in classrooms. Over six months, we collected discussions of global warming issues from the online forums of a national newspaper. Our analysis of these contributions suggests there is a considerable effort in these forums, especially from certain individual posters, to detract from the arguments in support of global warming by using a variety of strategies. This paper...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Climate, Web Sites, Discussion Groups, Newspapers, Mass Media Effects, Mass Media...
In Australia there has been a rapid move to an acceptance of education for sustainability as mainstream environmental education. We argue that education for sustainability, with its platform of assisting individuals in making apparently informed decisions to create a more sustainable world, is at some distance from promoting more ethically-based environmental responsibility. If environmental education is to encourage environmental responsibility, then ethically challenging curricula should...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Foreign Countries, Caring, Sustainable Development,...
This article aims to contribute to the debate about the moral and ethical aspects of education for sustainable development by suggesting a clarification of ethics and morals through an investigation of how these aspects appear in educational practice. The ambition is both to point to the normative dangers of education for sustainable development and the possibilities to enhance pluralism. The Wittgenstein-inspired approach used means that ethics and morals are regarded as expressions of a...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Practices, Sustainable Development, Environmental Education, Ethics,...
For a world catapulting towards the many environmental catastrophes that we each recognize and grasp at our own pace, every educational opportunity must transform us in deep, rich, and meaningful ways. The field of community arts has much to offer environmental education, including sets of questions to interrogate our practices regarding issues such as accountability and ownership. Borrowing from frameworks of decolonizing methodologies, I consider what the emerging field of community arts can...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Educational Opportunities, Art Education, Story Telling,...
This article explores the intersection of art education and place-based education as a means of developing ecological literacy. The author advocates the development of a model of place-based art education, one that integrates the real-world, community-centred learning of place-based education with the affective, subjective orientation of art education. Drawing inspiration from the work of environmentalists and eco-artists alike, this model is seen as a way for art and environmental educators to...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Art Education, Models, Interdisciplinary Approach, Environmental Education,...
Walt Whitman defies ontology: he strives to be eternal, to journey ever in the now, and thus to forswear beginnings. And there is a great deal of "place" in Whitman, space both concrete and metaphorical, Alabama and Maine, body and "kosmos." But Whitman the man was born in Huntington, Long Island, which is a good a place to start exploring how place and space shaped the poet. If individuals agree that Whitman is, among many other possibilities, a namer of things, it seems...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Trust (Psychology), Poets, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Literary Devices,...
Sailing, a harnessing of wind with canvas to propel a sailboat across distances of water, in winds shaped by landforms, airflow and temperature, requires constant renegotiation by skipper and crew in response to the wind's changeable presence. In a choreography of movement, sails secured by sheets are loosened or reined in by hand to allow wind spillage or to capitalize on a wayward breeze. A luffing sail means carelessness at the helm or an impending gust; an over-heeled boat requires spilling...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Aquatic Sports, Foreign Countries, Environmental Education, Physical Environment,...
A Blackfoot woman, caught in the act of adultery, was condemned at this site to have her nose cut off as a penalty for her actions. People do not know her story. The tribe cast it on the ground. And so She, Nose Hill, was named. John Laurie Boulevard holds her mound in a circlet of asphalt, defining the map of her "terra incognita." She is a park for the lost and disturbed, for those who seek peace. The kids in the author's neighbourhood knew her as Spy Hill. In the late sixties, they...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Physical Environment, Geographic Location, Environmental...
In this article, the author examines the notions of "loss" and "place" in relation to the mourning of one's personal and historical pasts. In doing so, the author draws upon the psychoanalytical writings of Julia Kristeva in an analysis of Jane Urquhart's 2005 novel "A Map of Glass"--a story about emplacement, displacement, and change. Here, the author explores three main topics. First, she discusses the Kristevan notion of lost nature as a lost historical past....
Topics: ERIC Archive, Grief, Teacher Student Relationship, Novels, Foreign Countries, Autobiographies,...
This article presents a collection of postcards, titled "postcartographia," which is excerpted from an atlas of Mapwork and is one component of a gallery exhibition with the same title. Incorporating photography and poetic text, the postcards explore aesthetic approaches to knowing in the world, specifically, aesthetic ways of knowing places and identities. (Contains 2 notes.)
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Educational Philosophy, Educational Principles, Educational...
Fragile, ethereal, beautiful, the butterfly is at the same time decidedly strange in appearance. They are without mandibles, unlike most insects, but sport instead a proboscis, sometimes one and a half times their body length, which they use to drink liquids as if through a straw. They have large, compound eyes, tiny nails or claws, and strange tufts of fur sprouting from unfamiliar body parts. Their wings, made of hardened membrane, are covered in tiny, often iridescent scales. The Linnaean...
Topics: ERIC Archive, History, Entomology, Aesthetics, Environment, Environmental Education, Essays,...
This article discusses how the cultural commons that exist in every community, both rural and urban, carry forward the intergenerational knowledge and skills that enable people to live more mutually supportive lives that are less dependent upon consumerism and that have a smaller ecological footprint. Also discussed is why public schools and universities have relegated the intergenerational and largely non-monetized knowledge and skills to low status, as well as the different ways in which the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Nonformal Education, Cultural Capital, Social Environment, Social Capital, Indigenous...
It is not altogether uncommon now to hear environmental educational theorists speak of the need to develop pedagogical methods that can work both for ecological sustainability and social justice. However, the majority of the socio-ecological turn in environmental education has failed to integrate nonhuman animal advocacy as a serious educational issue. In this essay, then, we critically inquire into the theoretical practices of these environmental educators and thereby offer the future promise...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Social Justice, Animals, Environmental Education, Sustainable Development, Teaching...
This is a story about how a national Canadian environmental education program (Green Street) evolved in unpredictable ways and about the particular twist in the road that led program stakeholders to focus on scaling up in different ways than originally imagined. The "twist" occurred when the program reached the initially perceived "peak" in a particular "fitness landscape," where a focus on policy advocacy (and specifically curriculum reform) seemed a logical next...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Citizenship, Environmental Education, Educational Change,...
Environmental education has become trapped in the curriculum box. At a time when our students' generation is becoming trapped in a global warming box, their education needs to be rapidly adaptable to the changing state of their planet. Venturing outside the curriculum box takes courage, creativity, and a willingness to let nature serve as the teacher. This paper provides a rationale for stepping outside the box, and discusses my experiences as an environmental education coordinator working to...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Environmental Education, Transformative Learning, Climate, Educational Change,...
Children's gardening programs have enjoyed increasing popularity in recent years. An Australian environmental education non-profit organization implemented a program, entitled Multicultural Schools Gardens, in disadvantaged (low-income) schools that used food gardening as a focus for implementing a culturally-focused environmental education program. While the program included the well documented educational, social, and health benefits of growing food, gardening and cooking were also utilized...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Methods Research, Environmental Education, Cultural Differences, Gardening, Food,...
Based on the idea that eating is an environmental act, we designed an environmental education project where elementary school children and community elders work as partners to raise food crops on an urban organic farm. Our goal was to illustrate how eco-philosophies could be translated into educational programs that foster environmental consciousness and care, and to further the critical and systematic examination of environmental education initiatives. In this article we draw on six years of...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Foreign Countries, Environmental Education, Age Differences, Theory Practice...