Environmental education

About: Environmental education is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 14551 publications have been published within this topic receiving 211056 citations. The topic is also known as: environmental learning.

Participant Outcomes of Biodiversity Citizen Science Projects: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract: Citizen science is becoming increasingly popular as a format in environmental and sustainability education. Citizen science not only allows researchers to gather large amounts of biodiversity-related data, it also has the potential to engage the public in biodiversity research. Numerous citizen science projects have emerged that assume that participation in the project affects participants’ knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. We investigated what evidence really exists about the outcomes of biodiversity citizen science projects on the side of the individual participants. For this purpose, we conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed research articles published up to and including 2017. We found evidence for various individual participant outcomes. The outcome reported most often was a gain in knowledge. Other outcomes, found in several articles, referred to changes in behavior or attitudes. Outcomes reported less often were new skills, increased self-efficacy and interest, and a variety of other personal outcomes. We discuss the research design and methods used in the reviewed studies und formulate specific recommendations for future research. We conclude that citizen science is a promising option for environmental and sustainability education focusing on biodiversity. Partnerships between natural and social scientists in the design and evaluation of projects would allow future biodiversity citizen science projects to utilize their full educational potential.

A Proposal to Enrich Teachers' Perception of the State of the World: first results

Abstract: The 'state of the world' has become an object of growing concern during recent decades. For this reason educators have been asked to contribute to public awareness and understanding of the problems and challenges related to our planet's future, in order to make possible citizens' participation in well-grounded decision-making. In spite of these appeals, attention paid by science teachers and science education researchers to the present state and future of the world is still very slight and constitutes a serious missing dimension in science teachers' education. In this article we describe a workshop conceived to favour a better teacher perception of global problems and possible remedies, as well as the promotion of more favourable attitudes towards the incorporation of these issues in the curriculum. Results of the implementation of this workshop are presented.

Who Drew the Sky? Conflicting assumptions in environmental education

Abstract: (2001). Who Drew the Sky? Conflicting assumptions in environmental education. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 245-256.

Searching for synergy: integrating traditional and scientific ecological knowledge in environmental science education

Abstract: Scientific ecological knowledge (SEK) is a powerful discipline for diagnosing and analyzing environmental degradation, but has been far less successful in devising sustainable solutions which lie at the intersection of nature and culture. Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of indigenous and local peoples is rich in prescriptions for the philosophy and practice of reciprocal, mutualistic relationships with the earth. Scientists and policy makers all over the world are calling for incorporation of the wisdom of TEK into natural resource planning and environmental policy. TEK has a legitimate place in the education of the next generation of environmental scientists, yet this body of knowledge and the process by which it is generated are virtually absent from the environmental science classroom. Integrating TEK and SEK holds a great promise for broadening and deepening the teaching of environmental science, yet the challenges to such integration are significant in the mainstream classroom. I have found that key elements of this integration include fostering intellectual pluralism in a student population largely unaware of other epistemologies by: (1) clear and disciplined analysis of how TEK and SEK are grounded in different worldviews. Mutually respectful evaluation of the divergences and convergences of these epistemologies creates the foundation for critical examination of how synergy might be created between them; (2) engagement of the indigenous pedagogy of direct, experiential learning in which the land and its inhabitants are recognized as primary knowledge sources; (3) holistic engagement of multiple elements of human capacity: mind, body, emotion, and spirit, not just the intellect which is exclusively privileged in conventional environmental science education; (4) recognition that in indigenous approaches, knowledge and responsibility are inextricably linked, so the course content and approach simultaneously cultivate the responsibility that accompanies knowledge acquisition, including protection and appropriate use of cultural knowledge; and (5) recognition that the mutually exclusive duality between matter and spirit which is essential to the scientific worldview is bridged in TEK where material and spiritual explanations, the secular and the sacred, may simultaneously coexist.