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.

Expanding the Field: Revisiting Environmental Education Principles Through Multidisciplinary Frameworks

Abstract: In response to calls for discourse that builds on the substantive structure of environmental education in efforts to further the scope of the field, this article reexamines key principles of environmental education through the multidisciplinary lenses of critical pedagogy, the environmental justice movement, and more recent definitions of place-based education. Understanding that environmental education's key concepts of environment and environmental literacy are culturally specific—not universal—ideas opens the field for more diverse, locally appropriate, and inclusive pedagogies. By reflecting on environmental education's shortcomings in the field, revisiting its foundational concepts and themes, and integrating multidisciplinary methodologies, the author makes a case for broadening the scope of what is included in environmental education discourse and continuing to challenge the present and future of its theory and practice.

Place-responsive pedagogy: learning from teachers’ experiences of excursions in nature

Abstract: The nature-based excursion has been a significant teaching strategy in environmental education for decades. This article draws upon empirical data from a collaborative research project where teachers were encouraged to visit natural areas to provide an understanding of their roles and experiences of planning and enacting excursions. The analysis indicates that teachers’ sensitisation towards place was aided by collaboration, advance planning visits and the very practice of making place-responsive excursions with pupils. The authors build on the analysis to propose a theory of place-responsive pedagogy. At its core, place-responsive pedagogy involves the explicit efforts to teach by means of an environment with the aim of understanding and improving human–environment relations. Some implications for teacher professional development are offered.

Pollution Comes Home and Gets Personal: Women's Experience of Household Chemical Exposure.

Abstract: We report on interviews conducted with participants in a novel study about environmental chemicals in body fluids and household air and dust. Interviews reveal how personal and collective environmental history influence the interpretation of exposure data, and how participants fashion an emergent understanding of environmental health problems from the articulation of science and experience. To the illness experience literature, we contribute a framework for analyzing a new category of embodied narratives—“exposure experience”—that examines the mediating role of science. We update social scientific knowledge about social responses to toxic chemicals during a period in which science alters public understanding of chemical pollution. This article is among the first published accounts of participants' responses to learning personal exposure data, research identified as critical to environmental science and public health. Our findings raise the importance of reporting even uncertain science and underscore the value of a community-based reporting strategy.

The Effects of Children's Age and Sex on Acquiring Pro-Environmental Attitudes Through Environmental Education

Abstract: Environmental education programs aiming to enhance children's environmental attitudes in a pro-environmental direction require background information, such as age and sex differences, to ensure appropriate design. We used the 2-MEV model with its domains preservation and utilization of nature to assess a four-day program at an educational field center with students 9–10 and 11–13 years of age. A pre- and post-retention test design revealed younger students to be more responsive concerning positive attitude shifts than older students, whereas the sexes were equally influenced. Program developers should consider that education has a stronger effect on young children's environmental attitudes.

Children's Environmental Concerns: Expressing Ecophobia

Abstract: While numerous quantitative studies across disciplines have investigated children's knowledge and attitudes about environmental problems, few studies examine children's feelings about environmental problems—and even fewer have focused on the child's point of view. Through 50 in-depth interviews with urban children (ages 10–12) this research aimed to fill the scholarly gap in our understanding of children's environmental concerns by voicing children's feelings about environmental problems. Findings revealed 82% of children expressed fear, sadness, and anger when discussing their feelings about environmental problems. A majority of children also shared apocalyptic and pessimistic feelings about the future state of the planet. These results suggest that many children are “ecophobic” (i.e., fearful of environmental problems), which scholars argue may have serious implications for children's participation in environmental stewardship and conservation efforts more broadly. Understanding children's perspectives ...