In this study, we explore the influence of student engagement on middle school students' environmental literacy outcomes at a residential environmental education (EE) program. We observed 80 lessons and 17 educators, observing six measures related to engagement. We also administered immediate post-experience surveys measuring students'…

This article builds from scholarship in Environmental Education Research (EER) and Critical Global Citizenship Education calling for more explicit attention to how teaching global issues is embedded in the colonial matrix of power. We also consider the extent to which recent calls in EER for explicit attention to coloniality connect to discussions…

Plant blindness is an important phenomenon with a growing body of literature. According to researchers, the educational system is listed both among the causes and solutions to this issue. Therefore, previous work regarding this matter has mainly focused on the educational context. While sustainable development is a top priority for every modern…

Microplastics (MPs) are small plastic particles (<5 mm in size) that are ubiquitous in the environment and have even been detected in bottled water. In this laboratory experiment, suited for instrumental or environmental chemistry classes, students detect and quantify MPs in bottled water by filtering and staining them with Nile red dye prior…

Popular media often reports on the carbon footprint of certain activities, items or people. We were curious to explore how people make sense of these news pieces, and specifically, whether and how carbon literacy (CL) and quantitative literacy (QL) influences their reasoning. We interviewed and surveyed students of various backgrounds using…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted daily life globally, including education. Environmental science cautions that we must expect further disruptions as the sustainability crisis deepens. Resilience to these disruptions will be key to humanity's survival in years to come. The pandemic constitutes a litmus test for environmental education's…

This paper presents findings from a research study exploring the effectiveness of three environmental education programs. The first was an interpretive program where visitors learned to safely interact with and 'pet' bees (control group), the second was the same interpretive program with the addition of post-visit action resources (interactive…

A team-based learning activity is presented that was created to support a university-level course with an integrative theme of environmental sustainability. Students in a General Education "Environmental Biology" course were asked to relate academic concepts to real-world scenarios by creating a hypothetical ecoresort on an island that…

Water sciences education is paramount to sustainable groundwater resource management, especially of drinking water, but misunderstandings about groundwater among non-experts remain widespread. Groundwater residence is an especially challenging concept to learn because it is not directly visible in typical circumstances. The present study uses a…

Purpose: Although several researchers have statistically analyzed references associated with education for sustainable development based on the co-citation frequency, evolutionary analysis based on high-citation references omits literature with low citation frequency, which has a significant impact on the evolution of a discipline. The purpose of…

We explored the impact of a daytrip for children aged 10-13 (n = 40) to assess perception of nature. Those who perceived risk in nature were 11.25 times more likely to indicate disinterest in spending time outdoors. Those interested in spending time outdoors were 6.9 times more likely to think people should care more about the environment.…

Although teaching of environmental physics and energy-related topics has increased in the last several years, only a small portion of that has been for non-science majors. Environmental physical science can be used to teach physics to non-science majors by applying learned physics concepts to current issues of interest such as climate change,…

This article highlights three key features that appeared to add value to young people's experience of a school-linked environmental education initiative built around conservation activities. The three features -- close-up encounters with other species, working with external experts, and a degree of informality -- were identified through a…

Purpose: The present paper aims to examine the concept of "plant blindness" in the context of current sustainability debates. "Plant blindness" was the term introduced in 1999 by the botanists and educators James H Wandersee and Elisabeth E Schussler to describe what they saw as a pervasive insensitivity to the green…

This article considers higher education's role in climate crisis, reflecting on the potential of action-oriented pedagogy. As a reflection on practice, the authors consider a new postgraduate course, Climate Crisis and Action (CCA), launched in 2022 as one of a suite of new courses using inside-out pedagogy in one of the oldest (and most recently…