Environmental Education in the 21st Century

Theory, Practice, Progress and Promise

Joy Palmer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134788378
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Environmental education is a field characterised by a paradox. Few would doubt the urgency and importance of learning to live in sustainable ways, but environmental education holds nowhere near the priority position in formal schooling around the world that this would suggest. This text sets out to find out why this is so. It is divided into six parts:
Part 1 is a concise history of the development of environmental education from an international perspective;
Part 2 is an overview of the 'global agenda', or subject knowledge of environmental education;
Part 3 introduces perspectives on theory and research in environmental education;
Part 4 moves on to practice, and presents an integrated model for planning environmental education programmes;
Part 5 brings together invited contributors who talk about environmental education in their own countries - from 15 countries including China, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the USA;
Part 6 returns to the core questions of how progress can be made, and how we can maximise the potential of environmental education for the twenty first century.

Part I

HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

JOURNEY TO THE PRESENT DAY

Re-inventing the wheel?

Does it really matter when the two words ‘environment’ and ‘education’ were first used in conjunction with each other? Indeed, does it matter at all whether the term ‘environmental education’ has been in common or casual use in educational circles for one, two, three or several more decades? Surely the critical matter that should concern us as a new century unfolds is what is going on now to educate the world’s citizens about our relationship with Planet Earth. Of course it is; yet I would argue strongly for three reasons that an overview of the history and development of the field is relevant and important in a text of this kind. Firstly, it is necessary to dispel the illusion held in the minds of some contemporary educators, that environmental education is new; a product of out growing concern for the environment, born out of recent curriculum initiatives. On the contrary, the environmental education movement around the globe has evolved over many years. Secondly, I believe that we owe it to the pioneers of the past: those with such great educational and environmental vision, whose efforts resulted in the landmark events, the conferences, publications, definitions, concepts, curricula, and case studies of good ptactice that are documented on the pages which follow. Thirdly, it is hoped that this book will go some way towards helping the prevention of re-inventing wheels. On my travels around the world I have many times encountered the frustration of discovering dedicated groups of people spending a great deal of valuable time devising aims, objectives and guidelines for environmental education. Worthy as the outcomes of their strenuous efforts may be, they often do little more than replicate the products of previous workshops, conferences and publications. It is my hope that by including a description and, where appropriate, the text of some of the world’s landmark publications on the subject, then readers may direct their energy to refinement, criticism, implementation and development of the ideas they contain, rather than to re-invention of their core content.

So, where and when did it all begin? Whilst the words ‘environment’ and ‘education’ do not appear to have been used in conjunction with each other until the mid-1960s, the evolution of environmental education has incorporated the significant influence of some of the ‘great’ eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thinkers, writers and educators, notably Goethe, Rousseau, Humboldt, Haeckel, Froebel, Dewey and Montessori. While such influential pioneers clearly contributed to environmental thought and practice, many writers (e.g. Sterling, 1992) attribute the ‘founding’ of environmental education in the UK to a Scottish Professor of Botany and an originator of town and country planning—Sir Patrick Geddes (1854–1933). He is regarded by many as being the first to make that all important link between the quality of the environment and the quality of education. Geddes pioneered instructional methods which brought learners into direct contact with their environment. In 1892, he opened an Outlook Tower in Edinburgh, which can still be seen today as the original ‘field’ studies centre. Here, he developed the methods of ‘Civic and Regional Surveying’, with its innovative ideas and field survey methods.

These approaches, and his concern for education of the whole person anticipated and set the foundation for modern environmental education. Geddes’ ideas were disseminated through the Le Ploy society, to which many teachers and teacher trainers belonged in the second quarter of the century.

(Sterling, 1992)

Whilst Geddes developed studies in an urban location, the nature studies movement gained momentum in its growth out of the Victorian era’s preoccupation with the natural world and its life. In 1902, the School Nature Study Union was founded, and by the 1940s this area of study had broadened into rural studies, with the founding of a number of local associations of rural studies teachers. It was from this rural studies movement that the term ‘environmental studies’ evolved. Indeed the present day National Association for Environmental Education in the UK (NAEE as from 1970) developed from a National Rural Environmental Studies Association formed in 1960, which became the National Rural and Environmental Studies Association, and then the NAEE. By the mid-1940s, the term ‘environmental studies’ was well in use, largely consisting of a mixture of teaching elements of geography, history and local nature study. The term and practice of ‘field studies’ also increased in popularity around this time. The teaching of history, geography and biology in the field was well enhanced by the establishment of the Council for the Promotion of Field Studies in 1943 (now the Field Studies Council) and the opening of the first residential field study centre in the UK at Flatford Mill, Suffolk, in 1946. The establishment of the Nature Conservancy in 1949 was also significant for the ongoing development of environmental teaching.

The first recorded use of the term ‘environmental education’ in Britain may be traced to a conference held in 1965 at Keele University, Staffordshire, with the purpose of investigating conservation of the countryside and its implications for education. This conference was significant for the UK in that it marked the first occasion where educationists and conservationists came together, and led to the establishment of the Council for Environmental Education (CEE), which first met in July 1968 (CEE, 1970). The CEE was founded as a focus for organisations involved or concerned with environmental education, having three broad goals:

Development: CEE aims to facilitate the development of the theory and practice of environmental education.

Promotion: CEE aims to promote the concept of environmental education and facilitate its application in all spheres of education.

Review: CEE aims to monitor the progress of environmental education and assess its effectiveness.

Whilst the first attributed use of the term ‘environmental education’ in the UK was at the 1965 Keele Conference, internationally it is claimed (Disinger, 1983) that it was first used in Paris, in 1948, by Thomas Pritchard at a meeting of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN); whilst Wheeler (1985) suggests that the term first appeared in the book Communitas by Paul and Percival Goodman, published in 1947.

Formulation of a definition

After acknowledgement of the term, organisations concerned with the development of environmental education moved towards defining its meaning and promoting its legitimacy. Key events on the development timeline, discussed below, are summarised in Figure 1.1. The IUCN was to, and indeed still does, play a critical role in this process. The IUCN, otherwise known as the World Conservation Union, was established in 1949 as a major international union of both government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) concerned with conservation. As early as September 1965, a meeting of IUCN’s Education Commission’s North West Europe Committee called for ‘environmental education in schools, in higher education, and in training for the land-linked professions’ (Wheeler, 1985).

In 1968, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) organised a Biosphere Conference in Paris, and in a later report on the event IUCN declared that ‘perhaps for the first time, world awareness of environmental education was fully evidenced’ (IUCN, 1971). The 1968 UNESCO Conference called for the development of curriculum materials relating to studying the environment for all levels of education, the promotion of technical training, and the stimulation of global awareness of environmental problems. It also advocated the setting up of national co-ordinating bodies for environmental education around the globe. The UK was at the forefront of

See table

Figure 1.1 Environmental education: key events on a development timeline

this initiative with its founding of the CEE as an umbrella body to co-ordinate environmental education initiatives at all levels and in all sectors of society.

Probably the greatest landmark in the history of attempting to define the term ‘environmental education’ was an IUCN/UNESCO ‘International Working Meeting on Environmental Education in the School Curriculum’ held in 1970 at the Foresta Institute, Carson City, Nevada, USA. There an influential and what might be described as the ‘classic’ definition of environmental education was formulated and adopted:

Environmental education is the process of recognising values and clarifying concepts in order to develop skills and attitudes necessary to understand and appreciate the inter-relatedness among man, his culture, and his biophysical surroundings. Environmental education also entails practice in decision-making and self-formulation of a code of behaviour about issues concerning environmental quality.

(IUCN, 1970)

IUCN continued to promote this definition and its meaning around the world. A series of conferences and workshops on environmental education was set up, including meetings in the UK, India, The Netherlands, Canada, Kenya and Argentina. The IUCN ‘Nevada definition was adopted by the National Association for Environmental Education in Britain. In that same year (1970) an Environmental Education Act passed in the USA gave a welcome stimulus to the promotion of environmental awareness there.

Milestones of the 1970s—Stockholm, Belgrade and Tbilisi

The support of key international institutions continued to raise the profile of environmental education during the 1970s, leading to a great deal of common understanding of the aims, objectives and approaches to the subject. Principle 19 of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972 declared that:

education in environmental matters for the younger generation as well as adults…giving due consideration for the underprivileged is essential.

A key recommendation of this first world meeting on the state of the environment endorsed the need for environmental education, thus greatly enhancing its international status and perceived importance. This Stockholm Conference reflected the rapidly growing global interest in and concern for the environment of the 1970s. It led to the establishment in 1975 of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which together with UNESCO founded the UNESCO/UNEP International Environmental Education Programme in 1975.

The IEEP was launched at an International Workshop on Environmental Education held in Belgrade by UNESCO/UNEP. IEEP produced the first inter-governmental statement on environmental education. It listed the aims, objectives, key concepts and guiding principles of it in a document prepared at the meeting known as ‘The Belgrade Charter—A Global Framework for Environmental Education’. The brief but comprehensive set of objectives for environmental education prepared at Belgrade are summarised as follows:

1. To foster clear awareness of and concern about economic, social, political, and ecological inter-dependence in urban and rural areas;
2. To provide every person with opportunities to acquire the knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment and skills needed to protect and improve the environment;
3. To create new patterns of behaviour of individuals, groups and society as a whole towards the environment.

(UNESCO, 1975)

A key feature of the Belgrade event is that whilst it was attended by educationists, it was planned to hold a follow-up conference with the crucial involvement of politicians. Thus it was hoped that recommendations would be:

translated into policy at national levels in those countries where environmental education is not yet integrated into development strategies.

(Tolba, 1977)

Belgrade also saw the launch of Connect, the UNESCO/UNEP international periodical on environmental education.

The plan to involve government representatives in environmental education policy and debate came to fruition at a milestone event held in Tbilisi, Georgia, USSR in October 1977. This was the UNESCO First Inter-governmental Conference on Environmental Education, attended by official government delegations of 66 UNESCO member states together with representatives of numerous NGOs. The Conference prepared recommendations for the wider application of environmental education in formal and non-formal education. Its Final Report contains a Declaration—largely based on the principles outlined at the Belgrade Conference. This established a framework for an international consensus which without doubt has been the seminal influence on the development of environmental education policies around the globe. Indeed, the Tbilisi event and the subsequent publications based on it continue to provide the blueprint for the development of environmental education in many countries of the world today.

Such is the historic significance of the Tbilisi Conference that there follows an extract from the Introduction to the Papers prepared as part of the UK delegations contribution to the event. Following this extract is a set of statements based on the Conference’s Recommendation 2, which may be regarded as guiding principles of environmental education, and the ‘Three Goals’ of environmental education as agreed at Tbilisi.

Environmental education in the UK: extract from Introduction to Papers prepared as part of the UK delegations contribution to the UNESCO inter-governmental conference, Tbilisi, 1977

While a science-based and inter-disciplinary approach to environmental education is the first consideration of many, there are also important initiatives from the side of the humanities and from the full spectrum of individual subjects. A report of the Council for Environmental Education sums up the situation like this: ‘As an educational approach it (environmental education) can permeate a range of disciplines, both traditional and new, as well as form the mainspring of many integrated courses. With its methodology firmly inter-related it can impart the balanced understanding of, and active concern for, the whole environment which alone can enable man to plan and realise a world fit to live in.’ Environmental education is regarded as the embodiment of a philosophy which should be pervasive, rather than a ‘subject’ which might be separately identified.

An important review was provided by the report Environmental Education published by the Scottish Education Department in 1974. Some of its recommendations, quoted here in adapted form, are:

1. Both formal and informal education should use the local and distant environments to provide knowledge, training in appropriate skills, and first hand experience;
2. pupils and young people should be introduced to environmental concepts and values, given practice in decision-making and afforded opportunities for personal involvement;
3. pupils and young people should be trained to assess critically the many views being expressed today on current environmental issues;

1. environmental education should permeate the whole curriculum both inside and outside the school;
2. every school should have adequate arrangements for planning and implementing a programme of environmental education;
3. to make environmental education a separate subject is neither desirable nor possible;
4. the programme of environmental education begun i...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Key to Acronyms
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Part VI