Environmental Learning and Experience
An Interdisciplinary Guide For Teachers (2007)
Summary of Environmental Learning Principles
This document has described how environmental education is a way of understanding environments, and how humans participate in and influence these environments. In using the term ‘environmental learning’, we refer to a range of approaches to environmental issues, including environmental education, ecological education and education for sustainable development. All of these forms aim to integrate concepts and principles of the sciences and social sciences under a single interdisciplinary framework.
In the ecological view, students may come to know and understand more deeply that all human environments, societies, or cultures are all deeply dependent on natural systems, both for their development and, ultimately, their survival. In this framework, we present numerous principles for organizing teaching practices related to the environment. These principles are organized into two areas.
First, the widely supported principles for the teaching and learning of direct experience, critical reflection and negotiation are related and described in the form of the Experiential Learning Cycle model.
Second, the organizing principles for environmental concepts are summarized and described. The principles demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of environmental concepts, while showing a progression in the development of ideas that lead towards deeper engagement with environmental learning in all of its forms.
Students are assisted by the organizers of Complexity, Aesthetics, Responsibility and Ethic (CARE) to guide their developing ideas about the environment. We hope that this document is useful to teachers in their important task of incorporating environmental themes into teaching and learning.
