ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION (EE)

Definitions of EE
Goals/Goals of EE
Objectives/Rationale
Principles/Characteristics
Orientation
Approaches
Education for Sustainable Development
Methods/Strategies
 Environmental Education:
Definition
“A process which promotes the
analysis and understanding of
environmental issues as the basis for
effective education, problem-solving,
policy-making, and management.”
 As a process…
• Learners acquire knowledge, skills, attitudes, values
on environmental issues.
• The knowledge so acquired improves the awareness
about the status of different environments.
• This awareness stimulates concerns and strong
feelings about quality of the environment on focus
• These strong feeling and concern above leads to a
commitment in wanting to improve and conserve the
environment.
• And this commitment desire calls for participation
and action in order to solve some of the
environmental problems.
 Principles-
• That environmental education should consider the environment in its totality (i.e
biophysical, social, economic, political) including what is man-made or artificial.
• That Environmental Education should be a continuous life-long process in all the formal
and informal non formal emerging dimensions of education.
• That Environment Education should be interdisciplinary in approach where it borrows
heavily from the contents of other disciplines.
• That Environmental Education should examine issues from local, National, regional
continental and the international points of view.
• That Environmental Education should focus on current and potential environmental
situations while remembering the historical perspective.
• That environmental Education should promote and embrace the values and the necessity
for co-operation at all the levels cited in (iv) above.
• That Environmental Education considers environmental impacts / aspects in the
development of economic projects.
• That environmental education should help the learners to discover symptoms and the real
causes of environmental problems.
• That environmental education should emphasize the complexity of environmental
problems which require some critical thinking and advanced problem solving skills.
• That environmental education should utilize diverse teaching and learning strategies with
due emphasis / stress on practical activities and first hand experiences.
 Objectives Explained
– Awareness – Individuals and communities to acquire an
awareness of and sensitivity to the total environment
and its associated problems.
– Knowledge – To impart basic understanding of the
functioning of the environment and its problems, and
the human role factor in it.
– Attitudes - To acquire strong concerns / feelings for the
environment and be motivated to act individually and
communally in resolving environmental problems.
– Skills - To acquire relevant skills needed in identifying
and solving environmental problems.
– Participation - Take appropriate and timely actions in
solving environmental problems and in preventing
Characteristics of environmental education
Comprehensiveness: environment education is related to
natural and social science and is a multidisciplinary
education
Diversity: many forms of education
 Continuity: The education which aims to solve
environment problems is a continuous process.
Universalist: global-cross-cultural
Practicalness: It emphasis environment action and
solution of environment problems in environment
education.
Orientation of environmental education
There are three relative independent forms of environment
education :
Education about environment :Teach the knowledge of the
environment to help learners to understand the generation,
development and its relationship to humans in environmental
problems at different areas.
Education in the environment: the familiar or the related
environment are regarded as the education resources and places,
take the learner experience in the environment as an education
agency.
Education for environment: make the learners to have the
responsible attitudes and behavior to the environment, take care of
the environment, protect the environment.
 Rationale for Environmental Education and
the Teacher
• Teachers live and work in an environment and are part and
parcel of this environment will have either positive or
negative impacts depending on how they go about it.
• Teachers are role models to their learners besides imparting
the knowledge skills and attitudes values that relate to the
management and conservation of the environment.
• Teachers are role models to the immediate School Society in
addition to being opinion leaders in those communities.
Their influence in making decisions involving environmental
matters cannot be underestimated.
• Teachers’ influence on Societies has a multiple effect on the
populations through their learners.
 Approaches to Environmental Education

• Multidisciplinary Approach: Environmental

contents are infused into disciplines / subjects that
are taught in School e.g Geography, Science History
Literature, Social Ethics
• Inter-disciplinary Approach: environmental
education to be taught in Schools as a Subject in its
own right; often included in the block timetable.
Teachers will need to be equipped with special
methods of teaching subject and specially designed
the teaching / learning materials are provided.
 Approaches to Environmental Education-
Multidisciplinary Approach
Chemistry Gases

Religion
Cleanliness is second to godliness;
History
concept of good sanitation, moral and
Origin of management practices
ethical concern over garbage.
over time trends in pollution

Mathematics
Biology Qualities of waste generated
Impact of pollutants on food chains percentage of people affected by each
Pollution on category of waste.
Biodegradable pollutants
Environmental Issue

Technology
Economics
Appropriate technologies to
Cost- Benefit analysis of pollution
manage pollutants for cleaner
effect. Polluter – pay Principle Pollution
production
effect on GDP

Agriculture
Inorganic fertilizers, pesticides,
herbicides insecticides,
fungicides
 Approaches to Environmental Education-
Inter-disciplinary Approach
Chemistry Gases

Religion
Cleanliness is second to godliness;
History
concept of good sanitation, moral and
Origin of management practices
ethical concern over garbage.
over time trends in pollution

Mathematics
Biology Qualities of waste generated
Impact of pollutants on food chains percentage of people affected by each
Pollution on category of waste.
Biodegradable pollutants
Environmental Issue

Technology
Economics
Appropriate technologies to
Cost- Benefit analysis of pollution
manage pollutants for cleaner
effect. Polluter – pay Principle Pollution
production
effect on GDP

Agriculture
Inorganic fertilizers, pesticides,
herbicides insecticides,
fungicides
Education for Sustainable
Development
The United Nations General Assembly

Declared 2005–2014 as the

U.N. Decade of Education
for Sustainable Development (ESD).

Environmental Education is a pillar of

 Goal of ESD
 Reorient existing education to address
sustainability

• Question: How is education for sustainable

development (ESD) different than the education we
are currently providing our students?

• Answer: An appropriately reoriented education

includes more principles, skills, perspectives, and
values related to sustainability than are currently
included in our educational system.
 Three Levels of Action for
Implementing ESD

Disciplinary
Whole school
Educational system
 Level 1 – Disciplinary:
Strengths Model
• ESD is such a large task that efforts from many
people and disciplines are needed to make
progress.
• Elements of the Strengths Model
Every discipline can contribute to ESD.
Every teacher can contribute to ESD.
No one discipline should claim ownership of ESD.
 Level 1 – Disciplinary: Strengths
Model Examples

 Mathematics helps students understand extremely small numbers

(e.g., parts per hundred, thousand, or million), which
allows them to interpret pollution data.
 Social Studies helps students understand
ethnocentrism, racism, and gender inequity as well as
to recognize how these are expressed in the
surrounding community and in nations worldwide.
 Language Arts, especially media literacy, creates
knowledgeable consumers who can separate fact and
opinion and analyze the messages of advertisers and
see beyond "green wash.”
 Level 2 - Whole School/University
 Whole-school approaches
 It takes more than information about sustainability to
make the enormous behavioral shift needed for a more
sustainable future.
 Schools model environmental, social, and economic
sustainability in the daily operations of a school.
 Sustainability is practiced to reinforce concepts
taught in the classroom.
 Walk the walk and talk the walk.
 Level 3 - Educational System
• UNESCO identified 5 key aspects of
quality education at the systems
level.
creates a legislative framework,
implements good policies,
builds administrative support and
leadership,
provides sufficient resources, and
measures learning outcomes
 The implementation approach of environmental
education

① Environmental education in school

Divided into two kinds as basic education and professional
education
Basic school education is mainly to primary and secondary
schools
School professional education is for different levels of the
environmental professionals
② Community environmental education
 Community landscaping is the obligations of teachers and
students, and also creates a favorable external conditions for school
environmental education .
Teaching strategies of environmental education
Use various means and methods of teaching
comprehensively
Emphasize the autonomy of the learner
Guide the learners to identify problems in daily
life
Do from "able to solve problems", do from now
on and from myself
 Teaching mode and teaching methods
(1) Inquiry teaching

Inquiry-based learning can be divided into five steps by the student:

Identify and ask the questions
Make the plan to the question on “what has been known and what
need to know next”
Collect the information and analyze and synthesize it
Analyze and arrange the information, make a solution, and select
and determine the action case
Make implementation plans, have social action, evaluate and adjust
the plan
Participatory teaching and interactive teaching

Currently, interactive environment education method is

based on problem(take environment problems to
coordinate the teaching content) which is more popular
in international and the main organization forms are
combined with cooperative learning in groups, individual
independent study and group discussions
 Classification of environmental education methods in schools

The name of the method Implementation Results of implementation

approaches
Observe and investigate Use the sense of vision, Have a good habits of
type hearing , touch and taste carefully observation and
experience
Discussi and debate type Interactive communication Exercise of thinking ability
and achieve emotion,
attitude and values’
conversion
Experiment type Use some equipment by Have a rigorous scientific
your hands attitude and realistic spirit

Simulation experience type Play a relevant role From perceptual

knowledge to rational
knowledge
Multimedia application Multimedia teaching Get perceptual knowledge
type Software to raise thinking
Interactive teaching of community
education environment

Community service and practice

Outdoor teaching by the community environment

Outdoor environment education: aims to contact with the nature

Environmental education from the school to the urban community