Developing Environmental Education In The Curriculum

Originally published in 1994. This work is intended for teachers in primary and secondary schools faced with the challenge of maximizing National Curriculum opportunities for environmental or "green" issues. The contributors suggest ways of augmenting pupils' understanding of the issues. This book is for teachers in primary and secondary schools faced with the challenge of maximising curriculum opportunities for environmental issues. Specialist contributors suggest practical ways of augmenting their pupils’ understanding of these issues, via work in the other cross-curricular areas, in core and foundation subjects of the National Curriculum and in other areas of study.

This collection traces the development and findings of curriculum studies of environmental education since the mid-1970s. Based on a virtual special issue of the Journal of Curriculum Studies, the volume identifies a series of curriculum challenges for and from environmental education. These include key questions in curriculum politics, planning and implementation, including which educative experiences should a curriculum foster and why; what the scope of a worthwhile curriculum should be and how it should be decided, organised and reworked; why distinctive curricula are provided to different groups of students; and how curriculum should best be enacted and evaluated? The editor and contributors call for renewed attention to the possibilities for future directions in research, in light of previously published work and innovations in scholarship. They also offer critical commentary on curriculum, critique and crisis in environmental education, through new material and previous studies from the journal, by addressing three key themes: perspectives on curriculum and environment education; accounting for curriculum in environmental education; and changes in curriculum for environmental education.

Arranged in four sections, the book offers practical techniques for introducing environmental education at the primary level. The first section, on planning, outlines a conceptual framework for environmental education, describes how the staff at one primary school developed a K-7 curriculum, examines an in-service course on environmental science for K-2 teachers and students, discusses an environment week festival, presents environmental guidelines for schools, and suggests ways to develop school grounds for environmental education. The second section focuses on language arts and discusses the relationship between language development and environmental education. Other topics include environmental awareness in contemporary Australian children's books, drama as a means for developing environmental awareness, a curriculum offering about a hypothetical township entitled "Walmit Divided," and the use of videotaped environmental conflict simulations as a teaching tool. Section 3 focuses on the outdoors as a medium for environmental education and describes techniques for heightening student's awareness of their surroundings through the Pilot Environmental Education Project, the Primary Environmental Education Project, and the Urban Field Study Centre. The final section describes a third grade environmental education curriculum and suggests ideas for using community gardening and animals in environmental education activities. (LH)

This book is a rhizomatic curriculum autobiography that charts the author’s efforts to develop and promote Australian outdoor environmental education practices that are inclusive of, and responsive to, the places in which they are performed. Joining philosophical concepts created by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari with William Pinar’s autobiographical method for curriculum inquiry, the author (re)considers the interrelated concepts, contexts and complex conversations with colleagues, students and others that have shaped his approach to curriculum, pedagogy and research for fifteen years or more. Emphasising the complexity of developing curricula and pedagogies that engage, in a respectful and generative way, with the natural and cultural history of the Australian continent, the author explicates and enacts his attempts to think differently about the cultural, curricular and pedagogical understandings that inform the practices of Australian outdoor environmental educators. Outdoor environmental education in Australia has historically been influenced by imported universalist ideas, particularly from the USA and the UK. However, during the last two decades a growing number of researchers in this field have challenged the applicability of such taken-for-granted approaches and advocated the development of curricula and pedagogies informed by the unique bio-geographical and cultural histories of the locations in which educational experiences take place. As this book demonstrates, Alistair Stewart is prominent among the vanguard of Australian outdoor environmental educators who have led such advocacy by combining practical experience with theoretical rigour.

This book presents an international perspective on environmental educational and specifically the influence that context has on this aspect of curriculum. The focus is on environmental education both formal and non formal and the factors that impact upon its effectiveness, particularly in non-Western and non-English-speaking contexts (i.e., outside the UK, USA, Australia, NZ, etc. ).

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.