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.

Young children learning about well-being and environmental education in the early years: a funds of knowledge approach

Abstract: Early childhood educators currently provide content focused learning opportunities for children in the areas of well-being and environmental education. However, these are usually seen as discrete content areas and educators are challenged with responding to children’s interests in popular-culture inspired food products given these influence their consumption of energy-dense, nutrient-poor and highly packaged food in the early childhood setting. This paper reports preliminary findings from a pilot randomised trial examining the interconnectedness of sustainability, well-being and popular-culture in early childhood education. Planning, assessment documentation and summaries from twenty-four learning experiences implemented by six educators over a six-week period were analysed using a deductive approach. Twenty well-being and environmental education topics were identified and shown to be generated by the educators when considering the children’s ‘funds of knowledge’ on popular-culture inspired food products. We argue that topics derived from children’s engagement with popular-culture may help educators to create an integrated approach to curriculum provision. This may impact child weight and facilitate obesity prevention and environmental sustainability as children create stronger connections between these content areas and their everyday choices and practices.

Goals and Competencies for Precollege STS Education: Recommendations Based upon Recent Literature in Environmental Education

Abstract: Initiated by recommendations in the reports of the study groups that examined the status of science education in the United States early in this decade, science-technology-society (STS) education has become accepted as a viable part of the school science curriculum. The social responsibility perspective on STS education that was embodied in those recommendations has become the most widely accepted. Approached from a social responsibility perspective, the goal of STS education is to help students develop the knowledge, skills, and affective qualities to take responsible action on the myriad of STS issues facing humankind. That goal is congruent with the superordinate goal of EE. Given the parallel and the lack of a body of research in STS education, recent EE research on responsible environmental behavior was used to generate a goal structure for STS education that is similar to one prepared for EE by Hungerford et al. in 1980. The STS goal structure is further explicated in a set of fifty-three l...

Marching Out From Ultima Thule: Critical Counterstories of Emancipatory Educators Working at the Intersection of Human Rights, Animal Rights, and Planetary Sustainability

Abstract: 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 of a total liberation pedagogy that works to further critical intersectional literacy on behalf of all oppressions and ecological sustainability. We then introduce and contextualize the practices of nine new paradigm educators at work in both formal and non-formal arenas.

Training Tomorrow's Environmental Problem Solvers: An Integrative Approach to Graduate Education

Abstract: Environmental problems are generally complex and blind to disciplinary boundaries. Efforts to devise long-term solutions require collaborative research that integrates knowledge across historically disparate fields, yet the traditional model for training new scientists emphasizes personal independence and disciplinary focus, Growing awareness of the limitations of the traditional model has spurred a reexamination of graduate training in the environmental sciences. Many institutions are implementing novel training approaches, with varying degrees of success. In this article, a group of current and former doctoral students evaluates our collective experience in one such program, the Biogeochemistry and Environmental Biocomplexity Program at Cornell University, funded by an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship grant from the National Science Foundation. We identify aspects of the program that contributed to our integrative research training experience, and discuss stumbling blocks that may...

It Takes Two to Tango: Studying How Students Constitute Political Subjects in Discourses on Sustainable Development.

Abstract: A great deal of the ongoing discussion about environmental education and edu- cation for sustainable development has to do with democracy and deliberation. Here, for example, the normative approach ...