bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Popular Education for the Environment: Building Interest in the Educational Dimension of Social Action
Authors: Whelan James 
Published: July 2016

AbstractCommunity-based environmental education is an important part of the sustainability project. Along with regulation and market-based instruments, adult learning and education in non-formal settings consistently features in the sustainability strategies advocated and implemented by government, community and industry entities.Community-situated environmental education programs often feature didactic “messaging”™, public awareness and community-based social marketing approaches. Clearly, these approaches have limited capacity to stimulate the social learning necessary to reorient toward sustainability. Popular education provides a framework to break from these dominant modes of environmental communication and education and achieve outcomes of a different order. Popular educators build curriculum from the daily lives of community members, address their social, political and structural change priorities, and emphasise collective rather than individual learning. Their work creates opportunities for education as social action, education for social action, and learning through social action.Case studies from Australia and the United States highlight opportunities for community educators to draw on the traditions and practices of popular education. Residents of contaminated communities organise “toxic tours”™ to bolster their campaigns for remediation. Residents and conservationists concerned about freeway construction incorporate learning strategies in their campaign plan to enhance peer learning, mentoring and prospects of long-term success. Advocacy organisations and research institutions work together to create formal and informal educational programs to strengthen and learn from social action. The principles derived from these case studies offer a starting point for collaboration and action research.
Exploring the Relationship Between Conservation Agencies and Schools
Authors: Howard Jonathon Leigh 
Published: July 2016

AbstractThis study's primary aim was to address the lack of accessible information about successful government sector programs in environmental education. In doing so it also explored the role of conservation agencies in schools by quantifying the environmental education resources used and preferred by teachers, and by determining the factors that influenced conservation agencies in the developing these preferred resources. Eighty seven percent of teachers stated they used resources from conservation agencies and sixty three percent of these were from government conservation agencies. Teachers were highly selective of the resources used. Interviews with people involved in developing and implementing the programs most often preferred showed a high level of expertise involved developing such programs. However responses also raised questions about the role of conservation agencies in agenda setting, whether conflicts occur between corporatisation and environmental education, and the degree of fragmentation and territoriality between agencies. It is concluded there are limits to the role conservation agencies can play in school environmental education and that there needs to be greater cooperation in providing school environmental education resources.
Environmental Concerns among Tertiary Business School Students
Authors: Schaper Michael 
Published: July 2016

AbstractThis study evaluated the current level of environmental concern amongst business school students, and attempted to determine if the personal characteristics of respondents (namely, their nationality, gender and age) were reliable predictors of scores. Two hundred students in three nations (Australia, France and Singapore) were surveyed, using a modified version of the Environmental Concern Scale originally developed by Weigel and Weigel (1978).It was found that, in general, students displayed a relatively high level of environmental concern. However, whilst substantial differences in mean scores were not found between all three nationalities, the results did show that statistically significant differences exist between at least two countries – the Australian and Singaporean samples.There was no statistically significant link between gender and environmental concern. However, the results did indicate a significant correlation with age, with older students displaying higher levels of environmental concern than their younger counterparts.
Towards a New Cosmology of Environment
Authors: May Murray 
Published: July 2016

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to review and integrate a number of concepts and perspectives recently developed or revived which challenge society's current attitudes towards the environment. The concepts discussed include, for example, ecophilosophy and deep ecology, holism, cultural transformation, the Gaia hypothesis, transpersonalism and world, national and state conservation strategies.It is concluded that the notion of living in harmony with nature is central to any view spirituality. The implications of this view in terms of individual personal action are discussed.
Energy Education for the Environment
Authors: Davis Peter 
Published: July 2016

AbstractLearning about the utilization, development and perhaps conservation of energy for our expanding world population has long been a part of science curricula. The world “about” is, however, paramount in describing the nature of these courses, and parallels a similar phenomenon observed in numerous so-called environmental education programmes in schools. Despite the close association between energy use expansion and environmental impact, little “energy education for the environment’ has occurred in this country.This paper examines some of the reasons for this situation and highlights the difficulties facing the environmental education teacher who wishes to lead a valid study of energy sources. External community influences, a lack of breath and problems with information availability are identified as factors which contribute to the present status of energy education. It is perhaps fortunate that the majority of students seem to possess positive attitudes towards energy conservation and the environment, and so, hopefully, remain receptive towards improvements in this aspect of environmental education.
Biodiversity: Who Knows, Who Cares?
Authors: Zemits Birut 
Published: July 2016

AbstractBiodiversity is an abstract concept, attracting various responses from different people according to where they have come from and what ecosystems they have been closely linked to. In theory, most people would agree that protecting biodiversity is an important process, but in practice, few people commit to actions on a local level. This paper explores a situation faced in the Northern Territory where environmental educators seek to engage hearts, hands and minds to protect biodiversity but it is difficult to gain commitment given a diverse and transient community such as exists in Darwin. The survey of 175 tertiary students at Charles Darwin University develops insights into how individuals perceive and name local mangrove and savanna ecosystems, and which areas they would want to conserve. Results have implications for local environmental education. Suggestions are made about how awareness of and actions for biodiversity in the Top End could be extended.
Learning to Care: Education and Compassion
Authors: Fien John 
Published: July 2016

AbstractIn 1993, John Fien wrote Education for the Environment: Critical Curriculum Theorizing and Environmental Education. Applying a critical perspective to his own ideas, he concluded the book with an examination of three criticisms that deep ecologists would make of critical environmental education. Acknowledging the validity of much of their case, he concluded that the critical curriculum theory of education for the environment proposed in the book was an incomplete one, and that “more theorizing, reflection, action, and more reflection again” would be necessary to develop the ideas more fully than they were. In this paper, which was the Professorial Lecture he presented on 14 May 2003, he returned to this task seeking to broaden the theoretical frameworks of environmental education to encompass deep and wide caring for human and non-human nature.
Measure Twice, Cut Once: Developing a Research-Based Interpretive Signs Checklist
Authors: Ballantyne Roy , Hughes Karen 
Published: July 2016

AbstractInterpretive signs are used extensively in tourism and leisure settings to convey important messages and concepts to visitors. While the installation of signs ensures information is widely available and can be repeatedly accessed by large numbers of visitors, their static and inflexible nature means interpretive signs have to be particularly well-designed if they are to interpret topics in a manner that visitors find attractive, interesting and meaningful. This paper provides suggestions for how the six key features of interpretation can be successfully incorporated into signs, and arises from research conducted while developing a website to illustrate “best practice” design of signs and exhibits. The paper concludes with the Interpretive Signs Checklist which consists of a set of criteria against which interpretive signs can be judged. This checklist is designed to be used “in situ”, and provides a systematic, objective tool for designing new signs as well as evaluating and improving existing signage.
Implementing an Ecological Simulation: Do Children's Knowledge and Attitudes Change?
Authors: Harrison Terry , Clark Julie 
Published: July 2016

AbstractEnvironmental education is concerned with developing both environmental knowledge and positive attitudes towards the environment. An experiential simulation activity about a native Australian bird was designed to develop both these aspects. The simulation was implemented with nine classes of 10-12 year old children. The children completed a survey before and after the simulation and their teachers reported on their responses. The results showed that the children developed additional knowledge of kookaburras and their survival and that their attitudes towards the environment became more positive. Moreover, the children themselves believed they had increased their knowledge and changed their feelings of responsibility towards the environment as a result of the simulation.
Young People and the Environment in Australia: Beliefs, Knowledge, Commitment and Educational Implications
Authors: Connell Sharon , Fien John , Sykes Helen , Yencken David 
Published: July 2016

AbstractThere is a paucity of research in Australia on the nature of young people's attitudes, knowledge and actions. This paper reports on the findings from one such study of Australian high school students. The research was based on a survey of 5688 students from Melbourne and Brisbane. These young people identified protection of the environment as the most important problem In Australia and strongly supported the belief systems characteristic of an ‘environmental paradigm’. Despite this, the majority displayed relatively low levels of knowledge of key environmental concepts, and were involved in little environmental action-taking outside of household activities. Differences are reported between: students from Melbourne and Brisbane; girls and boys; high performing and general schools; and teachers and students. The paper concludes with a discussion of some implications for environmental education in Australia.
Role Playing and Environmental Issues
Authors: Errington Edward 
Published: July 2016

I wish to make clear from the outset that I am not an environmental educator and therefore do not claim to be steeped in particular contemporary issues. I am aware of environmental concerns from a generalist viewpoint, one which I share with primary teachers expected to deliver environmental educational policy in practice. As an educator and researcher in the area of arts education, I frequently apply role playing methodologies to a range of curriculum areas focusing on human issues and would like to share some insights into its specific application to environmental education. I also wish to state that I have a particular interest in developing a socially critical approach to educational issues, so that the use of role play is coloured by this stance.I have examined a number of policy statements which attempt to influence the content and teaching approaches to environmental education in schools. The Victorian Ministry of Education (1990) Environmental Education makes reference to the importance of student/teacher attitudes, beliefs and dispositions in the social construction of environmental education. Role play deals ‘up front’ with the dispositions of all participants, and thus would seem an ideal vehicle for investigating the human aspects of learning for the environment. The Victorian document (1990: p. 11) further makes clear the approaches teachers should adopt when realising environmental education in practice. Approaches to environmental education should be ‘based on real problems’, ‘clarify values’, be ‘socially critical’ and ‘action oriented’, and also ‘involve students working together in groups’. I wish to demonstrate how this cluster of recommended approaches can be met through the use of role play.The paper has two intentions: The first is to discuss how role play can facilitate recommended environmental education in theory. The second is to show how these ideas may be practically realised during the investigation of a selected issue.
Towards School-level Curriculum Inquiry in Environmental Education
Authors: Fien John 
Published: July 2016

This paper is an outgrowth of my work for the Bicentennial Australian Studies Schools Project (BASSP) for which I wrote the booklet, Education for the Australian Environment (Fien 1988). This was one of ten booklets on Australian Studies distributed to every primary and secondary school in Australia early in 1988. The purpose of Education for the Australian Environment was to provide guidelines for injecting an Australian Studies perspective into environmental education. In the final chapter of the first draft of the booklet I sought to provide a framework for the development of an environmental education policy through a process of curriculum inquiry at the individual school level.In part, I was moved to include a framework for school level curriculum work in environmental education by concerns expressed by Gough (1987) and Robottom (1987a) about the value of centrally-developed policy statements on environmental education. While the 1977 Tbilisi Declaration urged UN member states to prepare policies “to introduce environmental concerns, activities and content into their education systems”, Gough and Robottom urged caution over the use of centralised policies as instruments for educational change. In summary, the reasons for their concern stemmed from the potential danger that centrally developed policies might foreclose debate over the nature, goals and practices of environmental education and, thus, supplant local innovations and variations in environmental education with uniform prescriptions. They also expressed concern that the hierarchical pattern of authority embedded in centralised curriculum decision making was inappropriate to environmental education and that it could easily lead to the deskilling and disempowerment of environmental educators at the grassroot levels.
Encouraging Water Saving: the Role of Knowledge, Attitudes, and Intention
Authors: Murphy Margot , Watson Raymond , Moore Susan 
Published: July 2016

Few would doubt the need, in today's world, to promote behaviours that actively conserve environmental resources. At a general level, this often involves encouraging behaviours that involve a short-term cost for the individual in order to avoid a long-term negative outcome for the community. Examples of such behaviour are, taking the trouble to turn off lights to save electricity and fixing leaking taps to conserve water. It is these latter kinds of behaviours, namely those associated with the efficient use of water resources, which are the focus of this paper.Faced with the high economic and practical costs of attempting to supply unlimited amounts of water for the Melbourne metropolitan area, the Board of Works has sought, by a number of means, to persuade its consumers to use water more efficiently. One aspect of its strategy was to promote water conservation within the educational curriculum by designing various educational materials and programs for different school levels. These and other promotional materials were made available to schools in the Melbourne metropolitan area in 1988. Prior to the distribution of this material, the data reported in this paper were gathered as the first stage of a longitudinal evaluation of the Board's education strategy.The assumption underlying the Board of Works' educational program was that behaviour change is preceded by changes in knowledge. For example, it was assumed that a person, knowing something about the water cycle, and the system by which water is fed into our taps, would believe that it is important not to waste water. The result would be active water conservation in daily life. Some basis for this assumption has been provided by the report on domestic water use in Perth, Western Australia (Metropolitan Water Authority, 1985), where knowledge and attitudes were found to be predictors of actual water consumption. Such an assumption is based in a general way on a cognitive or information processing model of behaviour change, in which changes in behaviour are seen as proceeding from changes in relevant information or knowledge. This cognitive model is the basis for many social education programs both in schools and in the community. For example, the Quit Campaign and the AIDS campaign have both used strategies that aimed to inform the public about particular health-related behaviours.
Spirituality and Environmental Education
Authors: Skamp Keith 
Published: July 2016

Environmental education in Australian schools is generally becoming recognised as education for the environment, as distinct from but usually including education ‘about’ and education ‘in’ the environment (Greenall, 1987). This means that students of environmental education will be encouraged to develop an attitude of caring for the Earth (including the biosphere) and its resources, and to participate actively in maintaining and improving the quality of their environment. What encourages students (and ourselves) to move actively towards these goals?The desire to ‘act’, it will be argued, comes from within ourselves. Until recently taking action for the environment has been seen as the top of a hierarchy of environmental education objectives. It has been assumed that an awareness of environmental problems leads to the acquisition of knowledge, which contributes to the development of attitudes and values and a feeling of concern for the environment, which then prompts one to take positive actions for the environment (see for example, Carin and Sund, 1985, p.88). However more recent research has attempted to formulate theoretical models identifying the factors (and their possible causal connections) which result in individuals taking responsible environmental action. Hines et al., (1988), for example, hypothesised that personality factors (such as one's ‘locus of concern’), knowledge of issues and action strategies, and action skills were positively correlated with taking responsible environmental action. The causal connections are problematic however and Iozzi(1988) concluded that simply being aware of environmental concerns and knowledgeable about them does not automatically lead to taking action for the environment.
EE in Italy: Mantova's Water Analysis Project (WAP)
Authors: Sutti Sandro 
Published: July 2016

AbstractThe Water Analysis Project (WAP) is an environmental research project conceived in the 70s in Mantova, Italy, as a result of a syllabus revision in the chemistry courses of the Istituto Tecnico Industriale “E. Fermi”. Being restricted only to that school at the beginning, the experience, which was run under the sponsorship of Local Authorities, through improvement and expansion, involved four different schools in a pluri-and interdisciplinary investigation.This report presents an account of a significant example of an Italian E.E. experience, examining the historical and socioeconomic context in which it grew and developed, its objectives, its processes, and its results.
Emancipatory Health Education & Environmental Education: The Emergence of the New Public Health
Authors: Colquhoun Derek 
Published: July 2016

AbstractThis paper attempts to illustrate the influence of an emerging New Public Health on the relationship between health education and environmental education. This New Public Health places health on the political agenda. In so doing it involves a critical examination of the underlying and pervasive ideology of individualism which is so embedded within conventional health education. Health education tends to focus on individual behavioural factors for health and ignores the wider environmental, social, economic and political factors. However, a new consciousness within health education serves to critique the existing relationship between individualism and health and is essentially concerned with examining the broader influences on health.The paper concludes optimistically by suggesting that this new consciousness encapsulating the notion of an Emancipatory Health Education in schools has the potential for encouraging emancipatory social change involving a recognition of the social and environmental constraints on health. Because of this there needs to be a rethink and a re-conceptualisation of the relationship between school health education and environmental education.
Environmental Education and Politics: Snakes and Ladders Revisited
Authors: Chapman David 
Published: July 2016

AbstractThis paper revisits the history of environmental education in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s and draws parallels between these and current events in four countries, including Australia. It is argued that little has changed and that few environmental educators confront the inherently political nature of their work. It is concluded that environmental education activity must adopt a wider scope that includes political activity if progress is to be made.
Achieving “Sustainability Education” in Primary Schools as a Result of the Victorian Science in Schools Research Project
Authors: Gough Annette 
Published: July 2016

AbstractScience education in the Australian primary school curriculum is a relatively rare event. Several studies over the past twenty five years have all reported disappointingly low amounts of science being taught and the reluctance of primary school teachers to make science a priority in their teaching. Similar outcomes have been reported for environmental education. Even though primary aged children are very interested in science and the environment, primary school teachers often struggle to teach science/environmental education because they are not confident and competent in the content, lack curriculum resources and equipment, have inadequate time to prepare, and have difficulty finding a place for science/environmental education in what they perceive as an already overcrowded curriculum. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the experiences of primary schools involved in the Victorian Science in Schools Research Project which was concerned with improving science teaching and learning strategies but which also unexpectedly led to more environmental (“sustainability”) education occurring. The paper will also suggest a curriculum strategy for achieving more widespread acceptance and implementation of “sustainability education” through primary school science curricula.