Steps to develop a successful teaching curriculum for complex environmental topics

A primary goal of EE curricula is to help students understand and think about how to solve challenging issues. Both students and teachers have preconceived thoughts and ideas about certain environmental problems, such as declining forest health. Forests are important ecosystems for many reasons, such as the economic benefits of timber harvesting, habitat provision to many plant and animal species, and they help combat climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, researchers consider forest health to be a misunderstood environmental issue. In recent years, identifying invasive species and studying insects' relationship with forests have become popular topics in science classes. Focus on these subjects fails to educate youth about other aspects of forest health, such as management, natural disasters, and human interaction with forests. Educators should be aware of preconceived knowledge regarding environmental topics as they develop a curriculum. This study evaluates how students can be encouraged to consider previous knowledge of a complex environmental topic—forest health—while also learning new information. Specifically, authors sought to address: 1) how educators understood forest health, 2) what strategies they used to teach youth about the topic, and 3) what previous actions shaped the educators' current understanding.

The study took place at the University of Florida. The researchers conducted 12 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with preservice teachers. The researchers consulted professors to identify students that had previous knowledge about forests or interactions with forests. The sample included a mixture of graduate and undergraduate students from agriculture classes and life science classes who volunteered to participate in the study. During the interviews, the researchers asked participants to describe forest health, discuss important forest health topics and how they would teach the material, and provide demographic background information including previous experience with forests. The interviews were analyzed for themes.

The findings indicate that educators developing curriculum for forest health (and other complex environmental topics) should focus on the whole ecosystem. By using this approach, teachers can convey the importance of interactions among plants, animals, and the environment.

The majority of participants felt that forest health definitions differed from forest to forest. Respondents also described forest health as an ecosystem-wide issue, but many failed to list indicators of forest health, such as best management strategies or species interaction. Participants most commonly mentioned animal presence as a good indicator of forest health. Specifically, respondents highlighted how insects can benefit a forest through pollination and nutrient cycling. Contrastingly, answers also described how insects—primarily invasive species—can harm forest ecosystems.

The researchers asked respondents to discuss important forest health topics and how they would develop a forest health curriculum. Over half mentioned they would demonstrate the connected relationship among forest elements. Half of the respondents suggested that teachers should lecture about human impacts on forests. The findings imply that granting students a sense of ownership would spark interest in the topic.

However, participants also misunderstood forest health. When asked about possible analogies to teaching forest health, almost every participant proposed using human health. The authors advised against this approach because forests are holistic ecosystems with natural diseases while human health focuses on the individual and associates human diseases with a negative connotation.

Lastly, the researchers asked respondents about previous experience with forests to determine how their backgrounds relate to their perceptions. Not surprisingly, the findings indicated that students who came from rural areas—as opposed to urban regions—mentioned forest management when describing forest health.

While the small sample size allowed for a better understanding of the respondents' knowledge of the topic, if more PSTs had participated, the findings may have varied. Additionally, this research only addressed PSTs in agriculture and life science classes. Educators in other disciplines that may teach forest health may have mentioned different topics. Practitioners should consider that this study is based on what educators think they would teach, rather than evaluating what teachers currently include in forest health curricula. Lastly, the sampling method selected volunteers who were interested in the study, indicating that participants may already know more than other PSTs on the topic of forest health.

Since participants in the study view forest health from a whole-ecosystem perspective, this suggests that the curriculum should incorporate an interdisciplinary approach rather than focus on separate aspects of a forest. Additionally, consulting educators about their familiarity with the topic and their willingness to learn new concepts is important to create a successful curriculum.