Abstract
A variety of environmental education practices are emerging to address the needs of an increasingly urban population. Drawing from social-ecological systems and social learning theory, we propose a conceptual framework to stimulate research questions in urban environmental education. More specifically, our conceptual framework focuses on environmental education programs that are nested within and linked to community-based stewardship or civic ecology practices, such as community forestry, streamside restoration, and community gardening. It suggests ways in which educational programs, stewardship practice, and other social-ecological system components and processes interact through feedback loops and other mechanisms, as well as means by which urban environmental education might lead to local ecosystem services and human and community well-being. Human and community outcomes may in turn result in pressure to change environmental policies.
Highlights
Given the importance of nature-based experiences to pro-environmental behaviors, support for environmental policies, and human and community (Kuo et al 1998, see Louv 2006 for a review of evidence) well-being, coupled with rapid rates of urbanization dictating that such experiences for much of the world’s population will necessarily occur in cities, the question arises of how to provide urban nature-based and environmental education experiences. Frank et al (1994) provide pedagogical support for environmental education in cities, claiming that programs in which youth are taken outside their urban surroundings may communicate that cities are unnatural, are separated from the otherwise integrated functioning of the planet, and offer nothing to teach or learn about
The conceptual framework we present is intended to serve three purposes: (1) suggest how environmental education might become integrated with other activities that foster sustainability or resilience in social-ecological systems, and in so doing, enable us to see the value of environmental education at the scale of a local socialecological system or small urban community; (2) propose research questions and testable hypotheses for environmental education, including questions that cross disciplines linking environmental education to ecosystem science, natural resources management, environmental sociology, and human health and well-being; and (3) propose a means to ground urban environmental education practices in ecosystem theory
Practical considerations regarding the need for environmental education to act as one of a suite of “tools” to enhance environmental quality (Potter 2010), plus work that calls for non-linear solutions that take into the account the complexity of social-ecological systems (Walker et al 2006; Liu et al 2007), suggest the importance of understanding the interactions of educational programs with other system components and processes (Tidball and Krasny 2009)
Summary
Given the importance of nature-based experiences to pro-environmental behaviors, support for environmental policies, and human and community (Kuo et al 1998, see Louv 2006 for a review of evidence) well-being, coupled with rapid rates of urbanization dictating that such experiences for much of the world’s population will necessarily occur in cities, the question arises of how to provide urban nature-based and environmental education experiences. Frank et al (1994) provide pedagogical support for environmental education in cities, claiming that programs in which youth are taken outside their urban surroundings may communicate that cities are unnatural, are separated from the otherwise integrated functioning of the planet, and offer nothing to teach or learn about. In building our conceptual framework, we focus on one particular type of urban environmental education, i.e., civic ecology education, which refers to educational programs that engage participants in community-based stewardship activities, sometimes leading to engagement in the local environmental policy process (Krasny and Tidball 2009; Krasny et al 2009; Krasny and Roth 2010). The conceptual framework we present is intended to serve three purposes: (1) suggest how environmental education might become integrated with other activities that foster sustainability or resilience in social-ecological systems, and in so doing, enable us to see the value of environmental education at the scale of a local socialecological system or small urban community; (2) propose research questions and testable hypotheses for environmental education, including questions that cross disciplines linking environmental education to ecosystem science, natural resources management, environmental sociology, and human health and well-being; and (3) propose a means to ground urban environmental education practices in ecosystem theory. E.g., the New Environmental Paradigm scale where agreement with statements such as the following are considered to reflect a pro-environmental outlook: “When humans interfere with nature it often produces disastrous consequences” or “Mankind is severely abusing the environment;” Dunlap and Van Lierre 2008
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