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Environmentalism as Social Purpose in Higher Education: A Green Education Agenda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Ken Dyer*
Affiliation:
Mawson Graduate, Centre for Environmental Studies, University of Adelaide
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Abstract

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This paper considers some recent ideas about tertiary environmental education and about environmentalism as an emerging social purpose of universities. It shows that total reliance on education about the environment results in unacceptable views of the environment, environmental education and environmental problems'. The paper considers approaches to teaching, arguing for one which assumes that learners construct their own concepts of the environment It distinguishes between current discipline-based teaching in universities and the more holistic Green Education. The paper concludes with a list of characteristics of Green Education which follow from the arguments presented.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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