This creative volume demonstrates the urgent importance of engaging students cognitively and affectively with the climate crisis and environmental education, underpinning the vital role the language arts play in expanding this engagement for a better future. Moving beyond the basic modalities of English, chapters written by an internationally…

Now in its second edition, "Nature and Young Children" promotes the holistic development of children by connecting them with nature. It offers advice and guidance on how to set up indoor and outdoor nature play spaces as well as encouraging environmentally responsible attitudes, values and behaviour in your early childhood setting. Covering topics…

Defines environmentalism both as a concept and an activity. As a concept, it encompasses not only environmental conservation but also social, economic, and political issues. As an activity, it focuses on a coordinated, networking, holistic issue approach to environmental problems. Implications of environmentalism (based on the definitions…

The goal of environmental education is to develop an environmentally literate citizenry, thus environmental education focuses on empowering individuals to deal effectively with positive and negative relationships between people and their environments. In 1993, the Secretaries Advisory Group on Environmental Education (SAGEE) subcommittee on…

Presents descriptions of special programs in environmental studies. They include: historical geography (University of Illinois); internship program (Miami University); public service projects (Miami University); philosophy of ecology program (University of Montana); and a research program at the Center for Conservation Biology (Stanford…

Traces the development of ecological thought and ideas and offers a new human ecological perspective for educators. Stresses the need for meta-disciplinary views and proposes greater exploration of the subjective, aesthetic, historical, and psychological implications of ecology. (ML)

Presents descriptions (syllabi, outlines, goals) of interdisciplinary environmental studies courses. Topic areas of these courses include: environmental sociology; human ecology (politics, institutions, and the environment); humans and the environment in historical perspective; environmental management; humans, hazards, and disasters; and other…

An artist and parent describes the potential for a schoolyard renaturalization to be integrated into arts curriculum and some art activities that have been inspired by planting in a schoolyard. (LZ)

This article addresses the use of spring and fall equinoxes as inspiration for a multidisciplinary miniunit for primary grades on the concepts of equilibrium and balance. (LZ)

Describes the transdisciplinary approach taken by the University of Tasmania's Center for Environmental Studies. Reviews the center's options for postgraduate degrees. Specifically explains the center's major course orientation, "Human in Environment," and outlines the difficulties in this type of approach. (ML)

This teacher's guide accompanies a videotape of the same name. Experts from the fields of energy and the environment, along with an official from the U.S. Department of Energy, discuss these concerns. The video is a condensation of five programs produced by Close Up Television and Video as part of a national institute for high school social…

This report describes a classroom project that groups sophomore biology students into "companies" bidding for a "contract" to build a self-sufficient, enclosed city by producing a manual and model of their version of a biosphere. Students must develop technological support systems, social and economic parameters, and systems…

This digest contains an abridgment of a section of a chapter on "Environmental Education Research Related to Issue Awareness" from the 1984 National Commission for Environmental Education Research (NCEER) Report. The paper was prepared by Randall Wiesenmeyer, Maureen Murrin, and Audrey Tomera. Only the section of the paper dealing with…

Presents descriptions (syllabi, outlines, goals) of special topics environmental studies courses which approach the discipline from a humanistic perspective. Topic areas of these courses include: wilderness studies; biocultural patterns of population, land use, energy, and war; religion, ethics, and the environment; landscape perception; and…

Argues that interdependence among all living systems on earth is a necessary element in solving environmental problems, stressing similarities among international political systems and cultures. The ultimate challenge of environmental education is to bring individuals of all ages to critical understanding of the oneness of the earth. (DH)