Strategies

that Characterize
Environmental
Education
EED 318. 12-May 2021
Outline

• Activity Guides
• Integration into Standards-based Education
• Connecting People with Nature
• Urban Environmental Education
• Investigating Issues
• Service Learning and Citizen Science
• Social Marketing
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 Activity Guides

• provide basic background information, step-by-step instructions for classroom

activities like role-plays, discussions, experiments, and often student worksheets.
• provide strategies for students to explore concepts while educators guide and
facilitate the exercise.
• Three programs are considered international leaders due to the quality of their
activity guides:
• Project Learning Tree (PLT) uses forests and trees to introduce youth to environmental issues,
• Project Wildlife in Learning Design (Project WILD) covers wildlife and conservation issues
• Project Water Education for Teachers (Project WET) is a water education curriculum.4 Each is
sponsored and implemented by different environmental agencies and organizations at the
national and local level.

PLT, WET, and WILD materials are made available to educators

through workshops and trainings.

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Activity Guides

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 Integration into Standards-based Education

• Community educators have responded to the demand for

standards-driven programs by emphasizing EE activities and
experiences that help teachers support subject-area
standards.
• One way this is done is through the correlation of EE activities
to relevant standards.
• Educators at the Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, Florida, developed
classroom activities to supplement the Lagoon Quest program, tying
each activity to relevant state standards.
• Another strategy is to design curricula that specifically address skills
included in achievement tests, such as activities to help biology
students practice and improve writing skills.

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 Integration into Standards-based Education

• In addition to subject area curriculum standards, many school systems

establish goals for process skills such as critical thinking, problem
solving, and communication. Because the emphasis of EE is not just on
content but also on skills, EE programs that engage learners in
interdisciplinary, community-based projects can be used to increase
student achievement, interest, motivation, and test scores.
• A study in Florida found that 9th and 12th graders who participated in these projects
improved their critical thinking skills and the likelihood that they would use those
critical thinking skills.

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 Integration into Standards-based Education

• Following guidelines for best practices is yet another strategy to

promote quality education. Seeking to assist educators in their
endeavors to provide high quality EE that promotes an environmentally
literate citizenry, the National Project for Excellence in Environmental
Education (NPEEE) developed a set of Guidelines for Excellence in
Environmental Education

• NPEEE began in 1993 through the leadership of the North American

Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), a professional
association for environmental educators in Canada, Mexico, and the
United States.

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Connecting People with Nature
• Environmental education strives to reconnect people of all ages with
nature for educational, psychological, and physical benefits.
• In his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv popularized what
environmental psychologists have known for a long time—that direct
exposure to nature is critical for the development and sustenance of an
emotionally and physically healthy individual.
• He presented the idea that children today suffer from “nature-deficit disorder,” a
consequence of a growing divide between children and the outdoors.
• As children spend more and more time with technology and entertainment that
keeps them indoors, and as parents’ fears about their children’s safety and security
grow, children fail to gain the many benefits derived from playing outdoors.
• Louv reported evidence from a number of studies and coined the term “nature-
deficit” to help describe several alarming trends, including increased childhood
obesity, attention disorders, and depression.

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Connecting People with Nature

Activities that speak people’s interests in enjoying nature:

• Family events at parks and other natural areas

• The annual Get Outdoors Day, the More Kids in the Woods campaign,
and many other examples sponsored through local, state, and federal
agencies and organizations acknowledge that spending time outdoors
should be a priority.

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Connecting People with Nature

Activities that speak people’s interests in enjoying nature:

• In Honduras, a nationwide program established nine environmental
education camps with the goal of providing rural and urban youth an
alternative pastime.
• Young and not-so-young adults were recruited to participate in a three-phase
leadership training program where they used intensive experiences in nature to
develop teamwork, self-esteem, leadership, and ecological knowledge and behaviors.

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Connecting People with Nature

• On the policy front, a No Child Left Inside (NCLI) movement grew from
the popularity of Louv’s book to establish a national campaign in the
U.S. to help teachers use the outdoors as a classroom.
• The campaign sought to amend the federal emphasis on testing and standards by
adding funding for EE and encouraging outdoor classroom activities.

• Similarly, states such as California and Florida established Children’s Rights to Nature
statements that promote connections between state and federal agencies and EE and
outdoor recreation opportunities.

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Connecting People with Nature

• Through policy and programs, a variety of strategies are

designed to provide opportunities for individuals of all ages
to connect with nature and receive the social, psychological,
and physical benefits of outdoor experiences.
• Many educators believe that in addition to these benefits,
outdoor experiences can help develop an individual’s
connection with the local environment and result in the
development of environmental awareness and behaviors.

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 Urban Environmental
Education

• Helen Ross Russell’s Ten-Minute Field Trips,19 first

published in 1973 and recently revised, was one of the first
manuals to help educators use sidewalks, playgrounds, and
other sources of nearby nature to enthrall youngsters and
convey science.
• Since its beginning, EE has addressed environmental issues
associated with urban environments including air and water
quality, toxic and hazardous wastes, food production, and
energy.

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Urban Environmental
Education

• Urban EE is essential, since the majority of the earth’s

population lives in urban areas, and residents of urban areas
are uniquely poised to positively impact their own
environment.
• Current trends in urban EE include urban agriculture on
school grounds, in community gardens, in public spaces, and
at private residences. The public is encouraged to practice
local organic gardening to promote appreciation of nature,
reduce the use of chemicals for food production, reduce the
amount of transportation required to bring food to the
home, provide quality and specialty foods more
economically, and promote healthier lifestyles.

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 Urban Environmental
Education

• There is a clear and important link between these goals,

environmental health, and urban environments. In the
United States, Vermont FEED is a school-based program that
links the curriculum, school lunch program, and school
garden with local farmers. Youth learn about nutrition and
farming practices as they grow their own food and eat local
produce in the cafeteria.

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 Urban Environmental
Education

• Other examples of urban environmental education include

municipal solid waste programs and urban beautification.
• King County, which includes the city of Seattle,
Washington, provides not only curbside recycling of most
materials, but also curbside compost.
• Residents can place their used paper and food and yard waste in a
compost container that is taken to the city’s larger compost facility.
• Online videos and brochures educate the public about this
technique, and result in less trash in the landfill and the creation
of usable compost.
• Urban-focused environmental educators can be found in formal
and non-formal education working with both youth and adults.

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 Investigating Issues

• Teachers who orchestrate the interdisciplinary study of a local issue in

concert with local stakeholders can serve a helpful role as community
educators.
• Issue investigation programs enable youth and adults to increase their
environmental literacy by developing the knowledge and analytical skills
that can contribute to behavior change.
• For adults, faith-based organizations, Cooperative Extension Service
offices, and public libraries may sponsor study circles, workshops, or
classes where people can investigate environmental issues and work
together to take action.
• In Australia, an EE program called Sustainability Street enables people to
meet each other, develop friendships, and support each other’s efforts
to reduce waste and save energy.

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Investigating Issues

Youth from Stetser Elementary in Chester, PA, get their hands

dirty while addressing food access in their community by
planting a garden on their school grounds.
Photo from Earth Force.

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Service Learning and Citizen Science

• Service learning and citizen science are two popular

strategies educators use to help learners participate
in real-world activities that provide mutual benefits
to learners, communities, and researchers—thus
helping to bring about change.
• Though not focused exclusively on the
environment, service-learning opportunities engage
learners with local issues that are intrinsically
interesting.
Service Learning and Citizen Science

• Authentic service learning experiences, while almost endlessly

diverse, have general characteristics that are similar to EE. They are
positive, meaningful, and real to the participants, and they involve
reflecting on one’s experiences to enhance learning.
• They often involve cooperative experiences, promote citizenship skills,
address complex problems in real settings, and offer opportunities to engage
in problem solving.
• Finally, they promote deeper learning because the results are immediate and
uncontrived, and as a consequence, service-learning activities are more likely
to support social, emotional, and cognitive learning and development.

• Service-learning programs link youth with the community and

provide a multitude of ways that schools can engage in community
EE, which can be a benefit to community educators.
Social Marketing

• Social marketing is used to guide people toward a

particular course of action.
• Many people fail to engage in environmental behaviors
either because they do not know how, they forget, they
do not have the resources, they do not have the time,
their neighbors are not doing the behavior, or they are
reluctant to change their habitual ways of doing things
Social Marketing

• Social marketing applies concepts from marketing

and social psychology to promote specific,
generally accepted environmentally responsible
and sustainable behaviors.
• Social marketing is not oriented toward developing
critical thinking and problem solving skills, but
focuses on promoting behavior change when the
audience generally understands why the behavior is
important and agrees that the behavior is a good
one.
Social Marketing

• Social marketing programs employ basic tools to

reduce barriers and increase perceptions of
benefits of a particular behavior. Common social
marketing tools include visual reminders, modeling
the behavior, using role models, providing
feedback, establishing incentives, and requesting a
commitment.
Social Marketing

• The World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour is an example

of a social marketing campaign that uses many of
these tools.41 Every March since 2007, the Earth
Hour project has asked people from all over the
world to commit to turning off their lights for one
hour to save energy. The project first provides
information and persuades a visitor to the World
Wildlife Fund website to participate and to make
commitment to join this global effort.
 Summary

• In any community it is likely that various agencies and

organizations use all of these seven strategies to help
achieve their own missions as well as improve residents’
environmental literacy.
• Community educators may wish to organize offerings to best
provide age-appropriate, repeated, and sequential
opportunities to residents. This coordination may help
reduce the overlap between programs, provide better
coverage to the community, and match strategies to those
best able to implement them. Such coordination could help
community educators make the most of their EE
opportunities.
Thank You!

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