Environmental Values Education: an exploration of its role in the school curriculum

Abstract

No matter how much our thinking about environmental education has changed over the years, and irrespective of whatever ideological perspectives have held sway, the notion that a consideration of values should have a central part in the process of such an education has been an enduring theme. This paper explores the role of environmental values education within the school curriculum and how it might contribute to the moral development of individual pupils and of society. This paper looks, from a number of perspectives, at what a consideration of environmental values might bring to education, and draws upon recent critiques of established ways in which environmental education tends to be conceptualised. In particular, the paper comments on the assumption that an education for the environment necessarily has to be located within a socially critical framework. Additionally, the paper challenges conventional notions of “balance” and “fairness” when dealing with controversial issues in the classroom, arguing that there are circumstances where it would be imperative for teachers to make explicit the “green theory of value” which they espouse and try to enact. It goes on to set out a range of “sustainability values” which schools might consider promoting. The paper concludes with a call for a research‐led IT/INSET model of professional development with values education at its heart as a means of boosting effective environmental education, and of exploring the relationship between education and sustainable living.