Knowledge

Indigenous environmental knowledge (IEK) has increasingly been used in environmental education to create more meaningful learning experiences that draw on diverse sources of knowledge. IEK is usually attached to particular places, people, and cultural traditions, and taught through spoken word, imitation, and demonstration. Often this knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation by elder community members. The authors point out that IEK is reflective of everyday life and therefore tends to be integrative, holistic, and practical.

As the school year began, a teacher and doctoral student had a shared vision: to turn a vast, brown landscape of dry grass in the elementary schoolyard into a thriving, productive garden. Together, these two realized that bringing the outside world into the school day could cultivate a sense of environmental stewardship inside their classroom. They wondered: Could a vegetable garden, designed and maintained by elementary students, be an ideal way to bring the outside in?

Global consumption of materials and energy is one of the greatest contributors to current environmental crises. However, sustainable consumption curricula and corresponding educational research are in their infancy. The author of this paper used recent case studies and EE literature to investigate discrepancies between consumption patterns and attitudes within different socioeconomic contexts. Based on her findings, the author proposes that the Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) framework could address challenges of teaching sustainable consumption behavior by shifting the paradigm altogether.

Understanding how ecosystems function is a critical element of environmental education. However, learning about ecosystems can be difficult because of the complexity of the relationships between the different ecosystem components. Past research has shown conceptual representations that enable students to organize these relationships may help them develop the necessary reasoning skills to understand complex systems. These conceptual representations may also allow students to bring these skills to other contexts.

Place-based environmental education provides opportunities for students to learn in a context that is local, familiar, and relevant. The author of this paper focused on a place-based teaching technique—community mapping—to see how it might influence students' relationships to nature. Community mapping allows community members to express their knowledge, values, and visions spatially as they draw connections between people and place. Additionally, it gives participants a voice as they express their own representations and connections.

Energy can be considered the “currency of humanity.” Everything we do relies on energy, and historically, societal advancements—such as the Industrial Revolution and the corresponding increase in human population—parallel energy-related developments. Despite our dependence on energy, particularly in the United States, and a looming energy crisis, various energy studies demonstrate a general lack of energy-related knowledge and awareness among the general U.S. population.

Environmental education (EE) has often been touted as a tool for environmental conservation due to its potential to enhance environmentally related knowledge and attitudes and influence conservation-oriented behaviors among participants. Although many see value in EE, there have been active debates about the appropriate—and most effective—audience for EE programs.

Written materials are often used to enhance environmental knowledge acquisition, one of the primary goals of nature centers. Despite the importance of these resources, the content and form of written materials have not been deeply studied. In this article, the author presents the results of a survey on the use of written materials at nature centers throughout the United States. The survey investigated the content that is presented as well as the medium.

Despite the potential of climate change education programs to inspire the younger generation to change current behaviors and embrace possibilities for mitigation, the education community remains torn over addressing climate change, and related behaviors, with youth in younger grades. This study set out to address the feasibility and appropriateness of teaching about climate change at a young age—in particular, third through fifth grades. The authors used student artwork both as a teaching and an evaluation tool; they also reported on the effectiveness of these methods.

Past research suggests that digital augmentation, when used as a scaffolding device in science museums, can have a positive impact on both conceptual (content) and cognitive (thinking process) understanding. There is a danger, however, that “overformalization” can occur from scaffolding devices, and that informal learning behaviors—such as experimenting, asking questions, and collaborating with others—can be diminished. Reduction in these behaviors is problematic because of the unique affordances that informal education settings provide over more formal approaches to learning.