The Role of Care in Environmental Education

Abstract

Environmental education and environmental advocacy are a complicated pair. To avoid indoctrination of children, environmental educators must be cautious and distinguish between teaching students about environmental problems and telling students what actions should be taken on education and advocacy (Johnson and Mappin, Environmental education and advocacy: changing perspectives of ecology and education. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005). In this chapter, we utilize a critical approach to environmental education which purports teachers’ need to support students’ understanding of the reasons for environmental problems, encourage them to deconstruct normative rhetoric around environmental issues, and then provide opportunities for students to participate in the conceptualizing of these issues with the values of social justice in mind (Fien, Aust J Environ Educ 19:1, 2003). This work relates to current research on well-being but also draws on emotions literature to introduce a focus on care. The chapter focuses on both John Fien’s (Aust J Environ Educ 19:1, 2003) and Peter Martin’s (Aust J Environ Educ 23:57, 2007) application of an ethic of care in environmental education, further theorizing Noddings’ notions of care in the context of environmental education and finally highlighting an experience of care-based environmental education pedagogy. The experience, a student-initiated investigation of the Aedes mosquito, describes nurturing an ethic of care in environmental science in a middle school setting. The chapter concludes with a section on further directions for an ethic of care in environmental science, as well as the implications of and complications with teaching students to care for the environment.