Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:26:20.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ecological Education: Extending the Definition of Environmental Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Gregory A. Smith  and
Dilafruz R. Williams
Gregory A. Smith
Affiliation:
Lewis & Clark College, USA
Dilafruz R. Williams
Affiliation:
Portland State University, USA
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Except in small measure, environmental education in the United States has not yet challenged the status quo of Western notions of progress or monoculturalism, or recognized that moving through the environmental crisis may require significant shifts in generally unquestioned cultural attitudes and beliefs. In the U.S., environmental education has instead tended to focus on information regarding environmental problems and to explore topics such as endangered species, global climate change, or the water quality of local streams and rivers. Even this has become a source of controversy in the United States since the mid-1990s as a coalition of right-wing organizations has mounted a well-coordinated political campaign charging environmental educators with bias and a failure to present both sides of controversial issues (Sanera & Shaw 1996, Independent Commission on Environmental Education 1997). Despite this, we believe that if environmental education is to live up to its promise as a vehicle for developing a citizenry capable of making wise decisions about the impact of human activities on the environment, examining and altering fundamental cultural beliefs and practices that are contributing to the degradation of the planet's natural systems will be imperative.

We have chosen to call this extended form of environmental education ecological education. For us, ecological education connotes an emphasis on the inescapable embeddedness of human beings in natural settings and the responsibilities that arise from this relationship. Rather than seeing nature as other—a set of phenomena capable of being manipulated like parts of a machine—the practice of ecological education requires viewing human beings as one part of the natural world and human cultures as an outgrowth of interactions between our species and particular places. We believe that the development of sustainable cultures will in fact require widespread acceptance of a relationship between humans and the earth grounded in moral sentiments that arise from the willingness to care. As Indian physicist and ecofeminist Vandana Shiva writes, the term ‘sustainability’ implies the ability and willingness ‘to support, bear weight of, hold up, enable to last out, give strength to, endure without giving way’ (Shiva 1992, p. 191).

Type
Research Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 15: Volume 15-16 , 1999 , pp. 139 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

References

Bowers, C. A. 1993, Education, Cultural Myths, and the Ecological Crisis: Toward Deep Changes, State University of New York Press, Albany.Google Scholar
Bowers, C. A. 1995, Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture: Rethinking Moral Education, Creativity, Intelligence, and other Modern Orthodoxies, State University of New York Press, Albany.Google Scholar
Capra, F. 1993, Guide to Ecoliteracy: A New Context for School Restructuring, Elmwood Institute, Berkeley, CA.Google Scholar
Daly, H. 1996, ‘Sustainable growth? No thank you’, in Mander, J. and Goldsmith, E. (eds.), The Case Against the Global Economy and for a Turn Toward the Local, pp. 192-196, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco.Google Scholar
Fourez, G. 1982, Liberation Ethics, Temple University Press, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. 1990, The Consequences of Modernity, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.Google Scholar
Gregory, T. & Sweeney, M. E. 1993, ‘Building a community by involving students in the governance of the school, in Smith, G. A. (ed.), Public Schools that Work: Creating Community, pp. 101–128, Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
House, F. 1990, ’To learn the things we need to know: Engaging in the particulars of the planet's recovery, in Andross, V., Plant, C., Plant, J., & Wright, E. (eds.), Home! A Bioregional Teader, pp. 111-120, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
House, F. 1995, Reinhabitation and ecological restoration. A marriage proposal. Talk delivered at the Society for Ecological Restoration's International Conference, Seattle, Washington, September 14-16.Google Scholar
Independent Commission on Environmental Education 1997, Are we Building Environmental Literacy? George C. Marshall Institute, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Kaza, S. 1999, ‘Liberation and compassion in environmental studies, in Smith, G. A. & Williams, D. R. (eds.), Ecological Education in Action: On Weaving Education, Culture, and the Environment, pp. 143–160, State University of New York Press, Albany.Google Scholar
Lewis, B. 1991, A Kid's Guide to Social Action: How to Solve Problems you Choose—and Turn Creative Thinking into Positive Action, Free Spirit Publishing, Minneapolis.Google Scholar
Macy, J. R. 1983, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Nabhan, G. P. & St. Antoine, S. 1993, ‘The loss of floral and faunai story: The extinction of experience’, in Kellert, S. R. & Wilson, E. O. (eds.), The Biophilia Hypothesis, pp. 229–250, Island Press, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Orr, D. 1992, Ecological Literacy, State University of New York Press, Albany.Google Scholar
Purpel, D. 1987, The Moral and Spiritual Crisis in Education: A Curriculum for Justice and Compassion in Education, Bergin and Garvey, Granby, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Pyle, R. M. 1993, The Thunder Tree: Lessons from an Urban midland, Houghton Mifflin, Boston.Google Scholar
Sanera, M. & Shaw, J. 1996, Facts, not Fear: A Parents' Guide to Teaching Children about the Environment, Regnery, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Shiva, V. 1992, ‘Recovering the real meaning of sustainability’, in Cooper, D. & Palmer, J. (eds.), The Environment Question: Ethics and Global Issues, pp. 187–193, Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Smith, G. A. 1992, Education and the Environment: Learning to Live with Limits, State University of New York Press, New York.Google Scholar
Smith, G. A 1998, ‘Rooting children in place’, Encounter, Winter.Google Scholar
Smith, G. A. & Williams, D. R. 1996, The greening of pedagogy: Reflections on balancing hope and despair. Holistic Education Review, 9: 1, pp. 43–51.Google Scholar
Smith, G. A. & Williams, D. R. 1999, Ecological Education in Action: On Weaving Education, Culture, and the Environment, State University of New York Press, Albany.Google Scholar
Wachtel, P. 1989, The Poverty of Affluence: A Psychological Portrait of the American Way of Life, New Society Publishers, Philadelphia.Google Scholar