Abstract
Place-based Ecology Education (PBEE) has emerged as a compelling approach to achieving the sustainability goals of Environmental Education (EE), including helping children understand, care about, and take action to protect the environment. Collaboration for teacher training can amplify and expand the reach and effectiveness of PBEE within a given geographic region. This case study of a collaborative of five PBEE professional development organizations provided a noteworthy example of collective evaluation. The primary data source was quantitative and qualitative analysis of 156 survey responses from K-12 classroom teachers, administered from 2016 to 2018 in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire and Vermont. On average, teachers reported medium-sized (Cohen’s d 0.4 to 0.6), statistically significant changes over the prior year for all six PBEE core practices measured. Teacher responses to open-ended survey items suggested that PBEE often involves coordination between and contribution from multiple players with different roles but similar goals. Cross tabulation with quantitative results suggested that collaboration within schools was a central factor associated with high levels of PBEE practice.
Highlights
Over thirty years ago, the founding document establishing Environmental Education (EE) as a strategy for achieving sustainability at national and global levels called for EE to focus outward toward the community [1]
The main finding relevant to our research question was that teachers reported strong, medium-sized, statistically significant changes over the prior year for all Place-based Ecology Education (PBEE) core practices
Place-based Ecology Education be usefully transferred to other contexts?
Summary
The founding document establishing Environmental Education (EE) as a strategy for achieving sustainability at national and global levels called for EE to focus outward toward the community [1]. Geography as a discipline is well suited as a conceptual framework for translating these broad goals into tangible educational action. Geo-literacy has been defined as “the ability to reason about Earth systems and interconnections to make far-reaching decisions” [3,4]. Environmental educators have often used the geographic notion of “place” to examine food systems, forest resources, watersheds, and other local resources to make broader and more complex ecological phenomena more relevant and understandable [5].
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