Form Follows Function: Interpretive Wisdom for Environmental Educators

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve M. Turek
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Education ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Environmental Activism ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Education Practice ◽  
Ecological Awareness ◽  
Environmental Educators ◽  
Free Choice Learning

A review of the literature reveals that interpreters’ emphasis on individual connection to the resource offers environmental educators key strategies to promote engagement and addresses critiques of environmental education practice as too generalized, behaviorist, manipulative, or negative. Interpreters serve as the nation's front-line environmental educators, with the foremost opportunity to inspire adults to engage in the free-choice learning that may, at best, motivate deeper ecological awareness and personal environmental activism. Pairing interpreters with teachers can extend the same opportunities to students.

Hyperobjects, Media, and Assemblages of Collective Living: Playing With Ontology as Environmental Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-221
Author(s):  
Jesse Bazzul
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Ecological Awareness ◽  
Creative Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Environmental Educators

AbstractThis article emphasises the importance of creative thought for environmental education through a discussion of the ontologically rich work of Anna Tsing, Timothy Morton and John Peters. The recent turn toward ontology in the humanities and social sciences has consequently led to diverse theories about ‘how things are’, and some of these concepts might assist justice-oriented environmental educators in raising ecological awareness in a time of crisis. Using assemblages, media and hyperobjects as concepts to (re)imagine the the world(s) of the Anthropocene, this article promotes a practice of ontic-play, a constantly changing engagement with ontological thought. To think through ecological crisis means moving towards philosophy as creation or art. In other words, engaging thought from the future.

scholarly journals Reimagining public science education: the role of lifelong free-choice learning

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Falk ◽  
Lynn D. Dierking
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Science Learning ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Educational Games ◽  
Comprehensive Approach ◽  
Learning Needs ◽  
Education Practice ◽  
Public Science ◽  
Free Choice Learning ◽  
The Individual

AbstractProfound changes are occurring in society, disrupting current systems and institutions; these disruptions also are affecting science education practice and research. Science learning is becoming a lifelong, self-directed process, dominated by out-of-school, free-choice learning experiences. By necessity these disruptions in the science learning narrative necessitate that societies rethink what constitutes public science education in the twenty-first century. Rather than focusing only on schooling and university/post-secondary training, public science education should include meeting the lifelong science learning needs of all people, at all stages of life, wherever a person is, whenever she faces a learning need. In this context, public science education must be learner-centered and equitable, serving the real lifelong needs, realities and motivations of all people, not just those of children and youth or the most privileged. Such a comprehensive approach to public science education does not currently exist. The key to enacting such a comprehensive approach requires thinking outside of the current educational box, moving beyond Industrial-Age top-down, one-size-fits-all command and control approaches that center on schooling and higher education. A reimagined approach to public science education would embrace more distributed, synergistic, personalized, just-in-time approaches that emphasize and reward lifelong learning, including learning beyond school. This article discusses the scope and scale of free-choice public science learning across a range of informal contexts – museums, zoos and aquariums; broadcast media such as television and radio; hobby groups; electronic media such as social networks, educational games, podcasts and the Internet. In addition, the paper considers the challenges faced by both practitioners and researchers attempting to promote and reform science education in more systemic and comprehensive ways. As the what, where, when, how and with whom of science learning continues to evolve, new educational practices and research approaches will be required; approaches that place the individual and her lifelong, free-choice learning at the center, rather than the periphery of the public’s lifelong science education.

Thinking with a landscape: the Australian Alps, horses and pedagogical considerations

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Scott Jukes
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Education ◽  
Educational Research ◽  
Specific Problem ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Outdoor Environmental Education ◽  
Australian Alps ◽  
Environmental Educators ◽  
Multiple Species ◽  
Constructing Knowledge

Abstract This paper proposes some possibilities for thinking with a landscape as a pedagogical concept, inspired by posthuman theory. The idea of thinking with a landscape is enacted in the Australian Alps (AA), concentrating on the contentious environmental dilemma involving introduced horses and their management in this bio-geographical location. The topic of horses is of pedagogical relevance for place-responsive outdoor environmental educators as both a location-specific problem and an example of a troubling issue. The paper has two objectives for employing posthuman thinking. Firstly, it experiments with the alternative methodological possibilities that posthuman theory affords for outdoor environmental education, including new ways of conducting educational research. Secondly, it explores how thinking with a landscape as a pedagogical concept may help open ways of considering the dilemma that horses pose. The pedagogical concept is enacted through some empirical events which sketch human–horse encounters from the AA. These sketches depict some of the pedagogical conversations and discursive pathways that encounters can provoke. Such encounters and conversations are ways of constructing knowledge of the landscape, covering multiple species, perspectives and discursive opportunities. For these reasons, this paper may be of relevance for outdoor environmental educators, those interested in the AA or posthuman theorists.

An Investigation into the Impact of Environmental Education Certification on Perceptions of Personal Teaching Efficacy

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-17
Author(s):  
Mandy Harrison ◽  
Lisa Gross ◽  
Jennifer McGee
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Teaching Efficacy ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
The North ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Personal Teaching Efficacy ◽  
Environmental Educators ◽  
The Impact

The purpose of this study is to examine how participation in the North Carolina Environmental Educator (NCEE) program influences the individual's perceived self-efficacy. Specifically, this study examines the impact of NCEE certification on participants’ perceived personal teaching self-efficacy. This study compared personal teaching efficacy scores of certified environmental educators, non-certified environmental educators, and licensed schoolteachers. The study found significant differences in teaching efficacy between certified and non-certified environmental educators, as well as certified environmental educators and licensed school teachers. In addition, the study found no significant difference in efficacy scores between NCEE certified licensed school teachers and NCEE certified environmental educators. Results of this study indicate a link between environmental education certification and higher personal teaching efficacy.

Talking Up Country: Language, Natureculture and Interculture in Australian Environmental Education Research

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Whitehouse
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Philosophical Argument ◽  
Human Settlement ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Education Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Interface ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Made In

AbstractAustralia is an old continent with an immensely long history of human settlement. The argument made in this paper is that Australia is, and has always been, a natureculture. Just as English was introduced as the dominant language of education with European colonisation, so arrived an ontological premise that linguistically divides a categorised nature from culture and human from “the” environment. Drawing on published work from the Australian tropics, this paper employs a socionature approach to make a philosophical argument for a more nuanced understanding of language, the cultural interface and contemporary moves towards interculture in Australian environmental education practice.

Bio:grafie. Oltre l'educazione ambientale

2009 ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Marcos Reigota
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Education ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Environmental Educators

- Environmental education will find its place among the sciences and its meaning in contemporary society only if it is able to go beyond itself. This means, if environmental educators, through their practices and their bio:graphies, can contribute to provoke radical change, through which make feasible the contruction of a new society, more equal, truly democratic and made of citizens who are subjects of history.

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