Environmental education is often taught as a science subject. Yet many teachers work in the arts, languages or early childhood, and wonder how environmental issues fit their teaching. Could art, literature and time outdoors help teachers understand these issues more deeply and teach them in new ways?
The course. Dafna Gan, an environmental educator, and Netta Baryosef-Paz, a literature scholar, taught the course together. It was part of a master's degree in visual literacy for working teachers. It mixed scientific facts about environmental problems with reading poems and stories, listening to music, looking at artworks and making art. Classes took place in a classroom, an office tower, a city park, a museum and online.
The course rested on two ideas:
- Holism: teaching the whole person, including body, feelings, thoughts and creativity, not just the mind.
- Ecohumanism: caring for people and nature together and seeing them as deeply connected.
How the study worked. The 24 teachers were aged 30 to 55, mostly women, and taught kindergarten through grade 12. Their subjects included science, environmental education, literature, dance, art and special education. The instructors collected everything the teachers produced across the semester: photos, videos, drawings, poems, written explanations and final projects. Each instructor analyzed the work separately, looking for what it showed about nature, people, place, art forms and reflection. They then compared notes and agreed on the main patterns.
What they found:
- Ordinary places sparked close observation. Early in the course, the instructors read the class a short story that makes climbing stairs feel strange and new. Small groups then explored a 36-story office tower, starting at the 29th floor. They recorded what they saw and felt on each floor using photos, videos, poems and even dance. About a third of the groups' products combined art, observation and personal reflection. One group described stuffy stairwells, construction noise and lobbies without plants. From the windows, they also noticed the sea, and towers blocking the view of it.
- Outdoor settings pulled teachers toward the concrete. Midway through, pairs wandered silently in a small city park near campus. Each then drew the idea of "environmental education" and wrote an explanation. Most drew realistic scenes, such as plants between buildings, and almost none showed anything about teaching. Only one drawing showed environmental problems directly. A few teachers drew abstract ideas. One crumpled a blank page to show the care needed when changing our surroundings. Others drew a person slowing down to look, and described this as part of environmental education.
- Final projects were richer and called for action. For the final project, teachers created or analyzed an artwork linked to an environmental issue, then explained it and presented it to the class. They combined art forms such as sculpture, dance, video, music, photography and poetry. Topics included waste from the fashion industry, overconsumption, noise and city waste management. Many projects asked for personal change, such as slowing down, buying less or reusing. One group posed on a sculpture in a desert sculpture garden, echoing a dancer's well-known work about bodies in city spaces. They said it made them think about their own place in nature. The instructors note that community and social issues appeared only a little in the final projects.
- Bodies and feelings shaped the learning. Walking, climbing and noticing sensations and emotions showed up in many products, through movement, posture, dance and written descriptions.
- The approach takes time. Some teachers found this way of learning difficult. The instructors felt one semester was too short to take it all in.
What this means for your practice:
Start with places people pass every day. You don't need wilderness. An office tower and a small city park gave these teachers plenty to notice and question (finding 1).
Make time for silence. Silent wandering and quiet looking before creating helped teachers notice more, including their own feelings and sensations (findings 2 and 4).
Pair art with words. Ask learners to explain their drawing, photo or video in writing. In this course, the explanations revealed what teachers understood, including ideas the images alone did not show (finding 2).
Watch the pull of what's in front of you. If you want learners to think about big ideas, an outdoor setting may keep them focused on what they can see (finding 2). Vary the settings, and leave at least one task open so learners can think more broadly, as the final project did (finding 3).
Invite the body and feelings in. Ask what learners felt, heard, smelled or sensed, not just what they thought (finding 4).
End with action. A final project that asks for a personal or community step helped teachers move from noticing to doing (finding 3).
Allow enough time. This approach builds over weeks, and one semester felt short (finding 5). If you can, plan for more than one short unit.
Bring the arts and sciences together. The researchers recommend using these approaches in teacher training and schools. Their own course paired an environmental educator with a literature scholar. This is a recommendation based on their course design, not a tested comparison.
The Bottom Line
Two instructors analyzed photos, drawings, videos and writing from 24 teachers in their course, from early outdoor activities to final projects. Early on, the teachers documented what they noticed around them, such as pollution, waste, crowding and missing green space. Outdoor tasks sharpened their attention but also kept them focused on what was in front of them. By the final project, most combined several art forms, linked several environmental issues and called for action in their own lives. For educators, the study suggests that combining outdoor experience, art and quiet reflection, across varied settings and over time, can deepen how teachers understand environmental issues and move them toward action.