Environmental knowledge and awareness of individuals affect their attitudes and behavior toward the environment. In this regard, it is essential to specify how environmental issues are interpreted in individuals' cognitive structures. This study aims to investigate preservice science teachers' cognitive structures on environmental issues. The…

Plant awareness disparity (PAD, formerly plant blindness) is the tendency not to notice plants in one's environment. PAD is made of four components: attention (not noticing plants), attitude (not liking plants), knowledge (not understanding why plants are important), and relative interest (being less interested in plants than in animals). This can…

The inclusion of the climate change topic in the curriculum of school subjects in Singapore was pivotal, such that it positioned the discourse squarely in the structure of Singapore's education system. In an examination of the intersections and disjoints between state policies on climate change against the programmatic curriculum, results showed…

The proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border would significantly affect wildlife. Most animals cannot get past walls that are hundreds of miles long and many meters tall. Some species along parts of the border where a wall already exists, such as jaguars and ocelots, suffer from dwindling populations and difficulty finding mates. This column…

Over the past few decades, the increase in public and scholarly attention to human-animal relations has inspired an animal turn in a number of academic disciplines including environmental education research. This paper reviews the literature on animals in environmental education with respect to its theoretical foundations in critical pedagogy,…

Graduate students are often plagued by stress and anxiety in their journeys of becoming researchers. Concerned by the prevalence of poor graduate student wellbeing in Australia, we share our experiences of kin-making and collaboration within #aaeeer (Australasian Association for Environmental Education Emerging Researchers), a collective of…

Climate communication research suggests strategic message framing may help build public consensus on climate change causes, risks and solutions. However, few have investigated how framing applies to adolescents. Similarly, little research has focused on agricultural audiences, who are among the most vulnerable to and least accepting of climate…

This article explores some of the benefits of outdoor education and examines some of the historical approaches taken to outdoor education, with an emphasis on current trends in the field. Specifically, fostering environmental stewardship through connections to the outdoors, incorporating Indigenous perspectives into practice, and place-based…

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is an educational imperative that requires supporting young learners in developing awareness about--and exploring--concepts, topics and vocabulary of significant importance in environmental education. Chawla (2009, "Journal of Developmental Processes," "4"(1), pp. 6-23) identified two…

In this article, I report the findings from a qualitative study involving seven ecologically minded teachers who participated in a Critical Friends Group. Ecologically minded teachers are not necessarily trained or required to teach about environmental issues, yet they do so because of their values and beliefs. The participants shared the…

Popular and accessible before television and the internet, picture books capture the context of the time they were created and influence the generations of children who consume them. Depictions of the natural world have changed across several generations of picture books as seen in illustrations of all 249 books of an influential collection, the…

This research evaluated the implementation of a climate science curriculum intervention for students in Grades 4 and 5, including those who were typically achieving and those with difficulties in mathematics, reading, or both. Pre- and posttests of measurement and climate change science concepts were administered at the beginning and end of each…

This follow-up study presents a design-based research (DBR) setting implemented over a three-year project called 'eKidZ - Teach Your Parents Well' which uses research-based learning and follows the four phases of DBR. In an iterative cycle, 20 teenagers aged 14-16 took on the role of researchers and investigated intergenerational learning and the…

Teaching geography creates an opportunity for the transfer of knowledge about environmental problems and ways of solving them. Teachers from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Turkey, and the United Kingdom indicated strengths and weaknesses of physical geography as well as the selected geographical concepts of: Maps/Cartography,…

Based on the concept of action competence, the current study introduces an integrated framework of Professional Action Competence in Education for Sustainable Development (PACesd) described by three defining features: willingness, knowledge of pedagogical approaches, and self-efficacy. To validate this framework, we developed a questionnaire…