Identification, let alone an understanding, of assumptions in the visitor use management (VUM) field are poorly understood and addressed in the literature. While various assumptions -- statements or assessments that are not necessarily rooted in factual evidence -- that comprise certain outdoor recreation and VUM theoretical frameworks or methods…

This dissertation focuses on "Community Roots," an instantiation of urban, garden-based environmental education that employs a "critical-transdisciplinary" design framework and pedagogies. The "crit-trans" construct, articulated by the Urban Environmental Studies Research Coven (Strong et. al., 2016) is offered as…

Marine communities are experiencing rapid environmental changes including warming temperatures and ocean acidification (OA). For organisms within these communities, responses to ocean change are shaped by population- and community-level interactions which may modify their responses. This dissertation integrates experimental, field, and modeling…

Popular instructional approaches in Early Childhood Education for Sustainability (ECEfS) are co-construction learning, transformative learning and ecological learning. These rely on constructivism that could challenge human-nature relationships of ECEfS. In this study, we aim to discover and reshape human-nature relationships embedded in the…

Sustainability-minded young professionals are needed to facilitate movement toward a sustainable planet. Their development has largely been left to Higher Education Institutions charged with equipping future generations of professionals to address current and future intractable problems, with limited research on how they perform in these important…

We reflect about the role of creative and innovative design/fabrication technologies in processes of learning to become with the world and understanding our place as humanity within nature. In particular, we present part of the work of Aconcagua Fablab, a mobile design and digital fabrication laboratory. We situate it in relation to the Fablab…

The concept of "sustainable development" was proposed to re-examine the human development model. Initiated by the United Nations, education for sustainable development (ESD) has become an important tool for educators to achieve sustainable development. Although "Early Childhood Education" (ECE) is often taken as a starting…

A team of teacher-researchers in a large urban school board is working in partnership with researchers from a leading Canadian university to use action research to broaden and deepen environmental education in their teaching practice. This research-informed approach involves teachers, students and their communities in collaboratively deepening…

This study explored the use of collaborative action research (CAR) in a year-long professional development (PD) for global climate change (GCC) education. The purpose was to understand how high school science teachers' engagement in CAR affected their classroom practice. The teachers exchanged stories of practice, shared and tried out new ideas in…

Food and sustainability are intrinsically linked, yet the majority of food education in the Republic of Ireland focuses solely on health, and this form of education fails to address the complicated nature of the modern food system and its negative impact on biodiversity. Using the capabilities approach as a framework, this article argues that the…

As environmental education and sustainability education play a fundamental role in training citizens who are more aware of global change and more environmentally responsible, organic learning is a recommended alternative learning experience for young children. This article describes how one kindergarten class in South Korea applied organic…

Prior research on environmental and sustainability education policies has largely focused on the international to national policy uptake. This article explores such policies at the subnational level in a fragmented education system. Over the past two decades, a growing number of school districts in the United States have enacted…

University students crave immersive, collaborative, interdisciplinary, applied learning contextualized to real world sustainability challenges. Liberal arts and sciences institutions are particularly well positioned to respond. Here we report on our high impact, cross-disciplinary, biomimicry-themed firstyear experience (FYE) curricula. Biomimicry…

This study theoretically aligns with research that purports that nature play positively contributes to sustainability stewardship. Early childhood teachers can plan for and nurture children's capabilities and dispositions for sustainability stewardship. Initial teacher education programs contribute to the professional learning of preservice early…

This project used a story book for young readers (aged 6-8) to explore environmental identity features and their potential impact upon its young readers. A variety of different units of analysis from the narrative practice approach were employed to explore: (a) how the story's narrative constructs the environmental identity of the main character;…