Teaching strategies for environmental education

Summary It is possible to distinguish four target groups for tertiary environmental education: the Technical Group, the Subject Specialist Group, the Management Group and the Lay Group. Each of these groups requires different sets of skills and abilities. The Technical Group needs to know how to measure environmental parameters. The Subject Specialist Group needs to know about environmental systems. The Management Group needs to have the skills and abilities to resolve complex environmental issues and problems. The Lay Group needs to have attitudes, philosophies and values about the environment. Each of these in turn require different teaching strategies. For the Technical Group, practical experimental teaching methods based on the traditional subject approach appear to be the most suitable. The Subject Specialist Group needs presentational methods based on either an infusion approach or a new subject approach. For the Management Group, a combination of high level disciplinary teaching combined with intensive short skills courses and more extensive junctions or environmental encounters, all of which make use of practice methods of teaching, are suggested. For the Lay Group, experiential methods, where the student's attitudes are challenged by experiences in either an in-service situation or through simulation exercises, seem to be most appropriate.Dr David Stokes is Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Head of the Department of Environmental Studies at Victoria College, and Bruce Crawshaw is currently a lecturer seconded to the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia.     

Integrators: An outcome of environmental education

Summary People working in the environmental field may refer to themselves as environmentalists, but this does not indicate how they approach their work. The term environmental integrator has been used to describe people who are specialists with breadth, in comparison to generalists with no speciality. The training of integrators involves the integration of knowledge with the teaching of problem solving and ways of dealing with people and complex organisations. A recent evaluation of the Master of Environmental Science programme at Monash University, which has an interdisciplinary focus, provided an opportunity to see if the training of environmental integrators was feasible. A questionnaire survey of graduates, and interviews with a sample of their employers, indicated that the majority of graduates worked as integrators, and valued the broad perspectives and integrative team work opportunities gained through the programme. While it is difficult to define and measure the qualities of integrators, it is apparent that the Monash programme contributed to the training of such people, and that other tertiary programmes could do likewise.Dr Ian G. Thomas graduated as a Civil Engineer and worked with a State government authority and consultants in traffic and transportation, before moving into the area of environmental assessment at State government level. The environmental area was the focus of his position at Monash University where he undertook his PhD and the research into the Monash course. Since 1990, Ian has been lecturing in the BSocSc (Socio-Environmental Assessment and Policy) course at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology where he is researching energy conservation and education, environmental policies for tertiary institutions, and environmental education in the Department of Planning, Policy and Landscape.     

Use of environmental teaching kits in Hong Kong

A systematic postal survey of 449 schools in Hong Kong (including kindergartens, primary and secondary schools) was conducted to investigate the use of environmental education teaching kits and to obtain feedback from teachers about the view and comments in using these kits. Results indicated that kindergartens used teaching kits more frequently than secondary and primary schools. Most of the schools found the existing teaching kits helpful. Appropriate content, updated information, attractiveness to students and inclusion of a teachers' guide were considered important criteria in deciding the use of the teaching kits. Good illustrations, quality production and appropriate duration for the class were considered important factors too. The tight teaching schedule was the major hindrance for secondary and primary schools in the use of the environmental teaching kits. However, the main hindrance for using environmental teaching kits in kindergartens was that they did not have sufficient copies. Hong Kong schools would like to see new teaching kits about waste recycling, energy conservation, green behaviour, air pollution, noise pollution, sewage treatment and wildlife endangering, focusing on Hong Kong and China.     

Two paradigms of professional development in environmental education

Summary In environmental education in this information age, it is particularly important to adopt the approach of enquiring critically into the environmental, educational and social values informing environmental, educational and social actions when and where required, rather than to simply adopt the approach of emphasising the acquisition and retention of information of an alleged universal type — information drawn from the stockpile of objective knowledge collected by others. This paper argues that to achieve this aim, environmental education in an information age requires aparadigm shift in the areas of professional development — a shift from a paradigm of information technology to a paradigm of information critique. A perspective on the form of this paradigm shift in the particular field of professional development in environmental education is the subject of this paper.Dr Ian Robottom is Senior Lecturer in the Curriculum Studies Centre of the School of Education, at Deakin University, Australia. His main interests lie in teacher education, educational enquiry, and environmental education. He conducts an off-campus environmental education course (B.Ed level) for practising teachers studying at a distance, is a member of the Council of the Australian Association for Environmental Education., and Editor of theAustralian Journal of Environmental Education.     

Back-alley sustainability and the role of environmental education

Environmental education can be a catalyst for sustainable development in local communities as long as it is recognised that communities have different challenges and needs. From a perspective of social change and sustainable development, environmental education can be broadly defined as the process that enables students and teachers to participate in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of educational activities aimed at resolving an environmental issue that they themselves have identified. What an 'environmental issue' is, then, depends on the perceptions and earlier experiences of the learner as well as the context in which education takes place. An illustration of such a participatory approach to environmental education is provided by the case of Pistons Middle School in Detroit, Michigan where teachers, students and outside facilitators combined action research and community problem solving.     

体育教学反馈与自我反馈运用的探讨

体育教学过程中,教学效果的好坏取决于师生双方对过程的调控程度,而对技能教学的调控,则依据教师的教学反馈和学生的自我反馈来实现。在体育教学过程中,教学反馈与自我反馈的有机结合,是提高教学质量的关键。     

The need to integrate values into environmental curricula

Many environmental problems are controversial because of conflicting values people hold and because there is not a consensus as to which values should have precedence over others. If environmental managers are to make ethical decisions that reflect environmental values, they must have full understanding of such values and types of ethics and principles of moral reasoning to use in the decision-making process. Unfortunately, integration of values into environmental curricula has often not been explicit or comprehensive. One result is that university-trained environmental managers do not possess the knowledge, skills, and methods necessary for more ethically based decisions. An analysis of attitudes about integrating values and/or ethics into environmental curricula and approaches to do so yields the conclusion that environmental programs should more fully include teaching about values and ethics so that environmental managers can make more ethically sound decisions.