The Promise of Civic Engagement in Environmental Issues is a working paper focused on the intersection between environmental education and civic engagement education. Through this paper, NAAEE and its partners seek a deeper understanding of how environmental education can support and complement initiatives geared more broadly toward educating for civic agency, capacity, and participation. Articulating environmental education’s role in civic learning and engagement requires examining how environmental education practices intersect with and complement civic education. Similarly, articulating civic education’s role in engaging learners around environmental concerns requires examining how civic education practices intersect with and complement environmental education. Descriptions of audiences, instructional methods, and a proposed learning framework are all presented. The paper results from discussions held at the Learning from Each Other: Connecting Civic Engagement and Environmental Education Research Exchange co-sponsored by the North American Association for Environmental Education and Kettering Foundation.

We welcome your comments and thoughts on how to improve the paper. We envision this as part of an on-going discussion of practice for both environmental educators and civic educators.