In response to growing concern about the increased disconnect between youth and their outdoor environment, this study examines how nature-based citizen science experiences with a local animal (American eels) influence urban adolescents' (high-school students) sense of place in a US city. The juvenile American eel is a unique animal due to its…

This article provides an overview of the ethical and educational functions of storytelling in fishing and hunting practices and pedagogies. I explore various psychological, anthropological, and ethical theories surrounding storytelling as a way of encouraging deeper, more robust engagement among humans, nonhuman animals, and myriad beings that…

The likeability of organisms is an effective tool for conservation education. However, stimulating the cute appeal of animals can also bolster the desire to possess them, and thus can encourage the trade in animals as pets. We assessed the perception of primary French schoolchildren (7-11 years old) for the Hermann tortoise (Testudo hermanni), a…

The term "charismatic" refers to visually or empathetically appealing animals. They act as flagship species to garner interest and participation. This study explored the impact of charismatic animals featured in three virtual reality (VR) tours of an estuary system on youths' learning, connectedness to water (CTW), and tour perceptions.…

I use value-belief-norm theory to frame how environmental education program participants interpret important messages and set behavioral intentions in response to environmental education program content. I compare participants at three animal-themed environmental organizations with different missions, postulating that institutional mission frames…

This article presents a Pedagogical Framework for Invasive Species to shift how we understand, teach, and study invasive species, especially when people are responsible for their expansion into new ecosystems. The focus is on a species originating from countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that humans extracted and introduced in certain regions of the…

This paper develops a cosmopolitical approach to multi-species inquiry in environmental education and its associated research. Drawing on Isabelle Stengers' concepts of "etho-ecology" and an "ecology of practices", the paper explores ethical and political questions of what it means to think-with nonhuman animals as sentient…

Similar to other fields, environmental education has begun to embrace the significance of nonhuman animals. This essay examines developments in the natural sciences, particularly in the field of cognitive ethology, that focus on the concept of empathy as a paradigm for conceptualizing human/nonhuman animal relationships. Drawing on my own…

This small study reveals the value of story writing as a pedagogical technique in environmental education. The qualitative research conducted in 2020 examines 14 Indian children's place-ecological meaning as expressed in the story books they authored. Thematic analysis of the story books, interviews, journals, creative writing assignments &…

Since the 1990s, scientists and Indigenous peoples have worked together across Inuit Nunangat (Inuit homeland in Canada) to conduct research on contaminants in ringed seals ("Pusa hispida"; "natsiq," "natchiq" or [foreign characters ommitted] in Inuktut), a species of high cultural, economic and nutritional importance…

Children comprise many of the visitors to zoos every year, yet few studies have explored the impact of a zoo visit on children's learning. This study employed a repeated measure design using data gathered from 500 questionnaires to investigate students' knowledge, attitude, and behavior before and after visiting a zoo or aquarium in Ireland. A…

According to the American Association of University Professors and the "Chronicle of Higher Education," instances of targeted faculty harassment are rising. I therefore begin this article by discussing how I ended up on the receiving end of a sweeping harassment campaign because of my critical scholarship on environmental and social…

This article enacts Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) concept "assemblage" to craft a riverScape pedagogy that is informed by, and responsive to, the Murray Cod, the river, and its circumstances. The Murray Cod, the largest fish species in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin, has diverse cultural meanings. Cod are at once a creation being of…

Environmental education (EE) scholars view intergenerational learning as a means to influence adult understandings of and relationships with the environment. Yet EE researchers have studied intergenerational learning in a limited fashion, with no emphasis on its role in higher education. The purpose of this article is to use feminist posthumanist…

We join scholars who criticize the Western separation of humans and the more-than-human (MtH) and believe that an emphasis on the MtH within students' local community is supported by repeated exposure. We take an ethnographic approach to study a collaborative program between a university, a local nonprofit, and a US public elementary school that…