Environmental identity, or how we orient ourselves to the natural world, leads us to personalise abstract global issues and take action (or not) according to our sense of who we are. For example, are we willing to give up our luxurious cars for more fuel-efficient models even though we know that the earth is warming? In an era where web-based…

Although the need for education for sustainability in pre-service teacher education is well recognised, little has been published to indicate how this might be incorporated into university courses in Australia. This paper describes one attempt to encourage pre-service primary teachers to include education for sustainability in their future work.…

Scottish official curricular texts, including guidelines and examination papers, are analysed for representations of "self and the environment". The environment is represented as fragmented when it is the curricular focus and is only "whole" when it is background context; "human-environment relations" are dualized;…

During the summer of 1993, some 10,000 people, young and old, joined logging road blockades to protest the clear-cutting of old-growth temperate rainforest in Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia, Canada. By the end of the summer, more than 900 protestors had been arrested for acts of civil disobedience in refusing to leave the road. In subsequent…

Over the last few decades, environmental work has increased significantly. An important part of this has to do with attitudes. This research presents the design and validation of an environmental attitudes scale aimed at university students. Detailed information on development and validation of the scale is provided. Similarly, it presents the…

Participation of environmental chemistry students in mock congressional hearings is described, as a means of helping them better develop their speaking and debating skills. The activity brings active learning principles into the classroom and greatly increases student participation in an otherwise traditional lecture course.

Community groups often seek to engage with schools in promoting environmental education goals. A collaborative initiative is described in which university pre-service teacher education students were encouraged to create Web-based teaching and learning resources, related to rainforests and world heritage areas, for use at primary and secondary…

More than 90% of vascular plants in terrestrial ecosystems form symbiotic root-fungal associations known as mycorrhiza; in Mediterranean biomes all known mycorrhizal types co-exist. However, the understanding of mycorrhizal diversity and structure and their ecophysiological impact in soil productivity and conservation has been shown to be very…

There is growing recognition of the importance of helping children to develop an ability to think about biological and environmental issues in terms of systems interactions and impacts. Several progressions have been published that suggest how their conceptual understandings may develop over time. However these are not necessarily as informative…

Often in green communities, homeowner understanding is left out of the project. We evaluated the impact of a new environmental education program installed in a green community, Town of Harmony, Florida. Consisting of educational kiosks, website, and brochure, we evaluated whether Harmony residents' environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors…

Michel Foucault's concept of power/knowledge is applied to an exploration of how managerial discourse affects the practice of public environmental education at a publicly owned electric utility. Emerging from interviews with people at SaskPower is a managerial discourse with a particularly instrumental approach to environmental education. The aim…

Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in African Universities Partnership (MESA) is a programme which grew out of the coming together, in 2004, of a number of African universities met with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), UNESCO and several African regional environment and education projects to assess the status of…

This article describes an educational experiment, a student-led course called "Learning in Sustainable Development" offered at the teacher training programme at Stockholm University, Sweden. Its purpose was to foster empowerment and action competence among teacher-students in the field of education for sustainable development (ESD). The…

Investigating the effects of educational programmes on children's environmental perceptions has been hampered by the lack of good theoretical models and valid instruments. In the present study, Bogner and Wiseman's Model of Ecological Values provided a well-developed theoretical model. A validated instrument based on Bogner's Environmental…

This article reports on a longitudinal study of a two-semester middle school environmental learning course that departs from traditional Mexican expository pedagogies through the incorporation of experiential and service learning approaches. In the short term, course participants acquired a heightened awareness of environmental issues, augmented…