"Scientists of the Sea": an environmental education project promoting scientific literacy

In 1988, New York City’s West Harlem community had a problem. The recently opened North River Sewage Treatment Plant, which stretches eight blocks along the Hudson River, was doing a poor job of processing about 170 million gallons of raw sewage daily. Residents were concerned about the foul smells coming from the plant, and parents complained that their children were suffering from respiratory problems. The community knew it needed help, but it also needed something else: information on the exposures it was facing, on the health effects of those exposures, and on the courses of action open to the people. When the community mobilized months later to form West Harlem Environmental Action Inc. (WE ACT), it had taken the first step toward cultivating just that sort of environmental literacy.

summary The social, economic, political and ecological imperatives of sustainable development outlined in ’Our Common Future, Agenda 21’ and ’Caring for the Earth’ have established a renewed agenda for environmental education which links it very closely with development education. Teacher educators in Australia have responded to the need to link environmental and development education and to raise the level of attention usually devoted to them in teacher education programmes. The ’Environmental and Development Education Project for Teacher Education’ has been the result. The project has involved 20 educators, drawn from 11 universities, government departments and NGOs across Australia, in writing and trialing a set of 18 3‐hour workshop modules on environmental and development education for use in pre‐service teacher education courses. These modules, published in the project manual, ’Teaching for a Sustainable World’, illustrate how environmental education and development education are related and provide practical assistance for teacher educators who wish to include these important fields in their programmes. An intensive dissemination programme in 1993‐94 involves workshops for all Faculties of Education in Australia.

The aim of this study is to review trends in environmental education studies in the electronic database. Moreover, journals published in the electronic database were searched using the same keyword. 28 studies trends in environmental education context were analyzed by means of standards obtained from the related literature. A qualitative thematic review was used in this study. All articles were downloaded and read by the researchers. Each researcher studied together to determine themes. The themes were decided as attitudes toward environmental awareness and education, relation between environmental education and other variables, effectiveness of environmental education and review studies. Results reviewed in terms of trends in environmental education studies. Some implications of these results were proposed for determining and developing trends in environmental education studies.

This article explores teachers’ views regarding the support by environmental non- governmental organizations in managing environmental education (EE) projects in primary schools. In this qualitative case study research, a purposive sampling approach was used to sample thirteen (n=13) teachers from thirteen primary schools. Data was collected by means of using semi-structured interviews and findings were analysed and discussed. The study was grounded in the total quality management theory and the interpretive paradigm, as it was concerned with the management of environmental education projects in primary schools. In order to examine how the environmental NGOs and, teachers’ management of environmental education projects in schools, the researcher drew on the concept of opportunity to learn (OTL). Findings indicated that teachers viewed environment NGOs as valuable in sharing the knowledge, skills, and experience in managing EE projects. Lack of time and resources were identified as additional barriers towards managing environmental projects in primary schools. Teachers were not trained as environmental educators, and they viewed managing EE projects in schools as additional work. Therefore, despite the efforts made by environmental NGOs managing school EE projects, the sustainability of these projects after NGOs disengagement was a problem in most schools. The article concludes with suggestions based on the findings, outlining how environmental NGOs can impart knowledge and skills in managing EE projects towards awareness of and involvement in the fight against pollution and the desecration of natural resources.

Over the past twenty years, the use of electronic mobile sensors by children and youngsters has played a significant role in environmental education projects in Portugal. This paper describes a research synthesis of a set of case studies (environmental education projects) on the use of sensors as epistemic mediators, evidencing the technological, environmental, social, and didactical dimensions of environmental education projects over the last two decades in Portugal. The triggers of the identified changes include: (i) the evolution of sensors, information and communication platforms, and mobile devices; (ii) the increasing relevance of environmental citizenship and participation; (iii) the recognition of the role of multisensory situated information and quantitative information in environmental citizenship; (iv) the cause–effect relation between didactical strategies and environmental education goals; (v) the potential of sensory and epistemic learners’ practices in the environment to produce learning outcomes and new knowledge. To support the use of senses and sensors in environmental education projects, the SEAM model was created based on the developed research synthesis.

Climantica is an environmental education project that approaches all environmental problems in relation to climate change. It represents one of the four pillars on which the Galician Action Plan against Climate Change (Plano Galego de Accion contra o Cambio Climatico) is based (see figure 1). The remaining three pillars are mitigation, research and adaptation. It started with the publication of eight books structured as teaching units, the first of which deals generally with the issue of climate change. The other seven books cover energy, waste, the water cycle, biodiversity, the territory, the rural environment and the urban environment. These general teaching units fuel the entire project, and their contents are the bases for comic strips, magazines, documentaries, and multimedia resources for autonomous learning through the website, www.climantica.org. This project is aimed at the general public through the website, where besides having access to all educational contents, visitors also have the opportunity to ask questions, give their opinions and participate in discussions through a blog. However, the starting point is secondary education, since the authors teach at this level and consider it a key stage to begin a thorough scientific study of such a global, complex and interdisciplinary issue. For the time being, the approach in primary education is to appeal to children’s imagination through comic strips, animated short films and educational video games. University education is another area, which will be targeted in the coming academic year.

Currently, several cities show unhealthy conditions based on visual monitoring of the Air Quality Index. This problem certainly has an impact on declining public health. This study aims to measure the environmental literacy of schools participating in an environmental education project. This type of research is quantitative. The research method used in this research is a survey with a quantitative research design. Sampling was done by way of voluntary response sampling. The population is 24 public high schools with a total of 22,250 students. The research sample was 1,058 students from 19 schools. The method used in collecting data is a test. The instrument used in collecting data is a test question sheet. The techniques used to analyse the data are descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. The results showed that the average environmental literacy of students was in the moderate category. Aspects of awareness and attitude in environmental education show exemplary achievements. Other aspects, namely knowledge, skills, and participation, show sufficient achievement. The ability to identify and analyse environmental issues are in the less category. Even though the contribution of school activity factors in environmental projects to environmental literacy is very significant. The more actively the school participates in the project, the higher the students' environmental literacy.

Ilha do Mel (in Paraná) is a privileged place for the development of Environmental Education (EE) projects. In this article, we argue that environmental education projects can be resized in importance on the island and can contribute to contemporary socio-environmental debates, especially by incorporating a multi-species perspective. To do this, we summarize the production that reflects on the main currents of environmental education in Brazil, placing it in dialogue with multi-species studies.

The importance of evaluating the effectiveness of Environmental Education (EE) programs cannot be underestimated. However, only a few evaluation experiments of these programs are implemented and, therefore, it is not easy to collect data about the evaluation of environmental education projects. As a result, we present the design of a tool that helps users implement environmental education projects by collecting raw evaluation data and processing these data using multi-criteria decision making-theories. More specifically, instructors can add EE projects and/or evaluating existing ones. But most importantly, instructors may choose the projects that they are interested in and the system uses a combination of two Multi-Criteria Decision Making theories in order to evaluate all projects added in the system, rank them and present the best ones to the instructor interacting with the system.

The aim of the present study was: (a) the creation of an Online Learning Community (OLC) for the implementation of an environmental education (EE) project in secondary education, and (b) the investigation of the potential impact of student participation in the OLC on students’ knowledge and attitudes regarding the natural environment, on students’ social skills as well as their attitudes towards Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their ICT skills. The sample were 27 lower secondary school students (aged 12–13 years old) who collaborated within an OLC set up by their teacher by means of the free Yahoo Groups service in order to complete an EE project. The experimental intervention lasted for 10 weeks. Before and after the intervention, the students filled in a questionnaire addressing: a) their knowledge and attitudes regarding the natural environment, b) their social skills and c) their attitudes and skills regarding ICT. The study revealed that the OLC was a viable solution for supporting student collaboration in the implementation of the EE project, and that student participation in the OLC had positive effects on students’ knowledge and attitudes towards the natural environment, on their social skills as well as their attitudes and skills regarding ICT.

Historical Development of Non-Formal Environmental Education in Turkey

Environmental education is an important means for the protection of the natural environment. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) support various educational tasks, especially with the aim of WWW environments. Information for environmental education projects about the forest can be acquired through Forest Service. Thus, it is developed a model web site to use as a template for any Forest Service unit, with organized material about the forest, about: historical information and status, forest as an ecosystem, functions and benefits, threats and effects, Forest Service, aims and targets and finally links for further information. The application is structured in a flexible, friendly and appealing arrangement for the enduser, comprises a large amount of reliable information, it meets the needs of various users and projects, it promotes environmental awareness and finally upgrades the role of Forest Service through its contribution in environmental education projects.

In Sao Tome and Principe, changes in lifestyles and consumption patterns have led to an in-crease in the import and marketing of a wide variety of packaged products, leading to an in-crease in the production of solid urban waste. As an island country, waste management has been a major problem. For this reason, environmental education projects are more urgently needed to stimulate reduction, reuse and separation at source. The aim of this study is to know the uses that the people who go to the dump make of the collected residues and the economic importance of this activity for the families, to sensitize the di erent agents related to the waste management to the importance of the prevention and reduction of waste production. A questionnaire was applied to the residents of the Wastebasket and an interview was held with the representatives of the District Chambers of Agua-Grande and Me-Zochi. An action was taken to sensitize the children attending the nearest school. The results show that there is widespread awareness of the adverse consequences of direct handling and non-treatment of waste, but perpetuates its collection for economic reasons and the lack of more restrictive management rules.

At the inaugural national conference of the Australian Association for Environmental Education in Adelaide (October, 1980), it was clear that multiple interpretations existed of the key descriptor ‘environmental education’. At that conference, at earlier international conferences (e.g., Tbilisi, 1977) and in recent Australian curriculum materials (e.g., The Curriculum Development Centre's (CDC's) Environmental Education Project), the terms education about the environment, education in the environment, and education for the environment were and have been used to capture the various interpretations of environmental education. An explication of these terms is offered in the Environmental Education Project (CDC, 1981), and in Fensham (1979).These terms seems to embrace the various facets to emerge in discourse about environmental education — they can, perhaps, be taken as representing the accepted dimensions of environmental education.

The present work addresses didactic aspects of environmental education in schools through bibliographical research. It aims to investigate the theme of environmental education in the environmental context reflecting on their practices and interdisciplinary projects such as school gardens. The importance of the participation of the school community in the teaching of environmental education is perceived as much as the concern with environmental issues. It begins by rescuing the history of environmental education in Brazil, followed by a brief report of possible practices in the school context. Then, the environmental education projects in schools are analyzed, specifically exemplifying school gardens. Research shows that the school faces a great challenge to adapt innovative pedagogical proposals on environmental education in an interdisciplinary perspective in traditional curricular models centered on hierarchies. Even so, studies on environmental education are growing every year in schools, showing the great interest in changing habits and behaviors. In this way, it is credited with improvements in the personal and collective well-being of individuals, and for a better quality of life. The work contributes with motivating information for the implementation of pedagogical projects in environmental education.