A New Approach To Ecological Education

"Part of the Peter Lang Education list"--P. facing t.p.

This book illustrates how to connect students to the natural world and encourage them to care about a more sustainable, ecologically secure planet.

Celebrates the work of educators who explore ecological issues in school and non-school settings. Gives examples of ways to impact the thinking of children and adults in order to affirm the values of sufficiency, mutual support, and community.

In Ecological Thinking, Shoshana Keiny relates the arguments of this book to the new ecological paradigm, based on open instead of closed systems, which see humans not as outsiders but as part of the system. Keiny uses the term ecological thinking as a holistic framework for thinking about ways in which teachers need to be engaged in participatory interactive learning processes, which seek to generate new understanding and knowledge that changes their professional context. Ecological Thinking is based on several projects in which teacher educators, researchers, parents and/or other members of the community collaborated in order to jointly transform education. Written as a personal narrative, Keiny illustrates an Action Research process that emphasizes the interplay between praxis and theory.

This resource is ideal for anyone working with young people in grades 9-12, whether in schools or in non-formal educational settings. Richly illustrated, it offers fifty teaching strategies that promote learning about natural systems and foster critical thinking about environmental issues, both local and global. It contains new approaches to learning, strategies for living sustainably, and numerous activities that promote interdisciplinary learning. In addition, the book provides suggestions for how best to green individual subject areas, develop integrated learning programs, or replicate exemplary programs created by innovative schools and communities. Containing contributions from over sixty educators from across North America, the book’s strength lies in its diverse content. Readers learn how best to apply systems thinking, teach about controversial issues, and use a step-by-step approach to creative problem-solving in environmental projects. Also provided are instructions for measuring the ecological footprint of a high school, creating an indoor “living system” that cleans water, monitoring air quality with lichens, and using green technologies to help green school campuses. Many articles and activities engage teenagers in outdoor learning and community restoration projects. Suggestions are included for connecting students with special needs to the environment around them. Readers will find accessible background information and suggestions for many practical projects and activities. It is sure to appeal to a wide range of teachers, educators, and parents seeking innovative ideas for incorporating green themes into their programs. Tim Grant and Gail Littlejohn are the editors of Green Teacher magazine, North America’s award-winning environmental teaching resource.

Examines the overlapping aims, values, and concepts in peace and environmental education.

Environmental education is a field characterised by a paradox. Few would doubt the urgency and importance of learning to live in sustainable ways, but environmental education holds nowhere near the priority position in formal schooling around the world that this would suggest. This text sets out to find out why this is so. It is divided into six parts: Part 1 is a concise history of the development of environmental education from an international perspective; Part 2 is an overview of the 'global agenda', or subject knowledge of environmental education; Part 3 introduces perspectives on theory and research in environmental education; Part 4 moves on to practice, and presents an integrated model for planning environmental education programmes; Part 5 brings together invited contributors who talk about environmental education in their own countries - from 15 countries including China, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the USA; Part 6 returns to the core questions of how progress can be made, and how we can maximise the potential of environmental education for the twenty first century.

Recent worldwide education policy has reinvented teachers as agents of change and professional developers of the school curriculum. Academic literature has analyzed changes in how teacher professionalism is conceived in policy and in practice but Teacher Agency provides a fresh perspective on this issue, drawing upon an ecological theory of agency. Using this model for understanding agency, Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Sarah Robinson explore empirical findings from the 'Teacher Agency and Curriculum Change' project, funded by the UK-based Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Drawing together this research with the authors' international experiences and perspectives, Teacher Agency addresses theoretical and practical issues of international significance. The authors illustrate how teacher agency should be understood not only in terms of individual capacity of teachers, but also in respect of the cultures and structures of schooling.