By Kristina K. Sullivan
“Knowledge of the nearest things should be acquired first, then that of those farther and farther off.” — Comenius, 17th C. educator (Dubel and Sobel, 2008)
On the day of my twenty first birthday, I arrived in the small Appalachian town of Whitesburg, Kentucky (population 2,000) on a university field study. Though [...]
Continue reading " Place-based Education: Building Sustainable Communities "
By Jay Roberts
A recent post on climate change and race (http://tinyurl.com/b6fzp7) brings up an issue that really needs to be on the forefront of outdoor and environmental education moving forward. It is becoming increasingly clear that climate change will become the defining issue of our times. Just as with civil rights in the 1960’s, this [...]
Continue reading " Race, Class, Climate Change and Outdoor Education "
By Shamu Fenyvesi Sadeh
Portland State University, Center for Learning and Teaching West (NSF)
If students were asked to define “environment” and “community” what would they come up with? What would it look like if students designed their own methods for investigating community environmental issues? What would it mean if the teacher encouraged students to make connections [...]
“The librarian tells me that there have been skirmishes over books, especially on topics we’ve been discussing in class. She and the librarian see this as a problem but not me. I see small steps towards victory with my class. The interest [in Environmental Literacy] is ‘kindled’ and I hope to have a ‘forest fire’ [...]
Continue reading " Literacy as a Stepping Stone to Environmental Citizenship "
Engaging students in the marine sciences
by Susie Vanderburg
enny Ross, a N.A.M.E. teacher at Strawberry Vale Elementary in Victoria, BC, shared with us a creative and challenging way to engage students in the marine sciences. When Lenny was a middle school teacher, he developed a partnership with The Rowing Center, a waterfront business on the Strait [...]
Continue reading " Rowing and the art of environmental education "
by John F. Borowski
For more than a decade, writing for numerous newspapers, magazines and websites, I have attempted to cast a light on “industrial strength” science curriculum: “that curriculum of the corporation, by the corporation and for a corporation’s profits…shall indeed hasten the rate of destruction of the earth’s resources and indeed, people may perish [...]
Continue reading " Corporate Curriculum: Teaching the ‘Science of Death’ "
By Sue Steinacher, Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game
Teenagers can be a tough audience to impress. The students from northwestern Alaska let it be known they’d seen plenty of caribou, and had been riding in boats and camping all their lives. So coming to a place called Onion Portage, downriver from Ambler on the Kobuk [...]
ISBN: 0-8403-9584-1
Copyright: 1994
Number of Pages: 400
Binding: Soft Cover
Author: Kathleen Hogan
Publisher: Kendal/Hunt Publishing Co.
Reviewed by Fletcher Brown
Over the last two decades the educational reform movement has been pitching a variety of methodologies to get educators to be more student-centered and inquiry minded. Curriculum and textbooks have been slowly adapting, most often offering supplements to existing materials [...]
Michael Becker, 
David Greenwood, Lakehead University, 
Tony Deis, 
Lindsay Huettman, 
