Trading Zones In Environmental Education

Environmental educators often adhere to a relatively narrow theoretical paradigm focusing on changing attitudes and knowledge, which are assumed to foster pro-environmental behaviors, which, in turn, leads to better environmental quality. This book takes a different approach to trying to understand how environmental education might influence people, their communities, and the environment. The authors view changing environmental behaviors as a «wicked» problem, that is, a problem that does not readily lend itself to solutions using existing disciplinary approaches. The book as a whole opens up new avenues for pursuing environmental education research and practice and thus expands the conversation around environmental education, behaviors, and quality. Through developing transdisciplinary research questions and conceptual paradigms, this book also suggests new practices beyond those currently used in environmental education, natural resources management, and other environmental fields.

This book explores interdisciplinary approaches to animal-focused curriculum and pedagogy in environmental education, with an emphasis on integrating methods from the arts, humanities, and natural and social sciences. Each chapter, whether addressing curriculum, pedagogy, or both, engages with the extant literature in environmental education and other relevant fields to consider how interdisciplinary curricular and pedagogical practices shed new light on our understandings of and ethical/moral obligations to animals. Embracing theories like intersectionality, posthumanism, Indigenous cosmologies, and significant life experiences, and considering topics such as equine training, meat consumption and production, urban human-animal relationships, and zoos and aquariums, the chapters collectively contribute to the field by foregrounding the lives of animals. The volume purposefully steps forward from the historical marginalization of animals in educational research and practice.

In the World Library of Educationalists, international scholars themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces—extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and/practical contributions—so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers thus are able to follow the themes and strands of their work and see their contribution to the development of a field, as well as the development of the field itself. Internationally recognized for his research on environmental education, science engagement, learning outside the classroom, and teacher identity and development, in this volume Justin Dillon brings together a thoughtfully crafted selection of his writing representing key aspects of his life and work leading to his current thinking on the need for a convergence of science and environmental education. The chapters are organized around 7 themes: On Habitus; On methodological issues; Developing theories of learning, identity and culture; Challenges and opportunities—science, the environment and the outdoors; Classroom issues—the emergence of Science|Environment|Health; Science engagement and communication; Science, environment and sustainability.

Environmental education and education for sustainable development have become features of many countries’ formal education systems. To date, however, there have been few attempts to explore what such learning looks and feels like from the perspective of the learners. Based on in-depth empirical studies in school and university classrooms, this book presents rich insights into the complexities and dynamics of students’ environmental learning. The authors show how careful analysis of students’ environmental learning experiences can provide powerful pointers for future practice, policy and research. Environmental Learning will be a key resource for educators, teacher educators, decision-makers and researchers involved in education and sustainable development.

Urban Environmental Education Review explores how environmental education can contribute to urban sustainability. Urban environmental education includes any practices that create learning opportunities to foster individual and community well-being and environmental quality in cities. It fosters novel educational approaches and helps debunk common assumptions that cities are ecologically barren and that city people don't care for, or need, urban nature or a healthy environment. Topics in Urban Environmental Education Review range from the urban context to theoretical underpinnings, educational settings, participants, and educational approaches in urban environmental education. Chapters integrate research and practice to help aspiring and practicing environmental educators, urban planners, and other environmental leaders achieve their goals in terms of education, youth and community development, and environmental quality in cities. The ten-essay series Urban EE Essays, excerpted from Urban Environmental Education Review, may be found here: naaee.org/eepro/resources/urban-ee-essays. These essays explore various perspectives on urban environmental education and may be reprinted/reproduced only with permission from Cornell University Press.

This Handbook approaches sustainable development in higher education from an integrated perspective, addressing the dearth of publications on the subject. It offers a unique overview of what universities around the world are doing to implement sustainable development (i.e. via curriculum innovation, research, activities, or practical projects) and how their efforts relate to education for sustainable development at the university level. The Handbook gathers a wealth of information, ideas, best practices and lessons learned in the context of executing concrete projects, and assesses methodological approaches to integrating the topic of sustainable development in university curricula. Lastly, it documents and disseminates the veritable treasure trove of practical experience currently available on sustainability in higher education.

Ecologies for Learning and Practice provides the first systematic account of the ideas of learning ecologies and ecologies of practice and locates the two concepts within the context of our contemporary world. It focuses on how individuals and society are being presented with all manner of learning challenges arising from fluidities and disruptions, which extend across all domains of life. This book examines emerging ways of understanding and living purposively in these new fluidities and provides fresh perspectives on the way we learn and achieve in such dynamic contexts. Providing an insight into the research of a range of internationally renowned contributors, this book explores diverse topics from the higher education and adult learning worlds. These include: The challenges faced by education systems today The concept of ecologies for learning and practice The role and responsibility of higher education institutions in advancing ecological approaches to learning The different eco-social systems of the world—local and global, economic, cultural, practical, technological, and ethical How adult learners might create and manage their own ecologies for learning and practice in order to sustain themselves and flourish With its proposals for individual and institutional learning in the 21st century and concerns for our sustainability in a fragile world, Ecologies for Learning and Practice is an essential guide for all who seek to encourage and facilitate learning in a world that is fundamentally ecological in nature.

Diverse Pedagogies of Place presents eight original place-responsive pedagogies that address a question of paramount importance in today’s world: how do we educate the next generation of students to confront the challenges of global climate change and the on-going degradation of natural environments? Each place-responsive pedagogy is a result of innovative environmental educators’ long-term engagement with particular places, and demonstrates that personal connectedness is crucial to effective environmental education. Professional learning and teacher collaboration is an important theme throughout the book, and the editors discuss how teachers could adapt the learning activities and teaching strategies found in the book in order to create their own place-responsive pedagogies. Each case study provides a rich account of how students can learn to be attentive and draws upon a common analytical framework derived from recent theorisation of place that highlights the centrality of stories-in-place, embodiment, and contestation. The authors present detailed and persuasive evidence that place-responsive pedagogies enable students to construct their own identities, as well as develop commitments and a deeper knowledge of the environments that surround them. A work of international relevance, Diverse Pedagogies of Place will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of environmental education and sustainability, place-based education, outdoor learning, professional learning and teacher development, as well as policymakers and environmental educators.

Environmental issues continue to divide opinion, sometimes in extreme ways. Almost everyone agrees that education has a role to play in ensuring the future of humanity on Earth. Some think we should all learn to leave a minimal environmental footprint; others argue that education should promote economic growth, because only growth can generate the capital needed to develop solutions to environmental problems. Advocates on each side often find the views of their opponents simply incredible, giving rise to accusations of bad faith or poor science. This book explores the foundations of the debate by examining human interrelations with Nature. It takes an educational perspective, but also draws on evidence from anthropology, economics, ecology, policy sciences and natural history. The case presented is that any coherent view of the purposes and potential of education requires a theory of human society in the natural world. For such a theory, education (and, more broadly, learning) must be more than an instrument for the achievement of personal or policy goals. Rather, it is an integral, continuing and necessary component of personal and policy development. On this basis, a novel approach to curriculum design and implementation is outlined.