Planning education to care for the earth - IUCN Knowledge Network

Influences on pro-environmental practicescountries. Environmental programmes may be marginalized in the processof curriculum reform. Such developments tend to reduce the number ofwell qualified and caring environmental educators and curriculumdevelopment staff.These trends have serious policy implications. The data gathered in thePalmer project could have a crucial influence on the people responsible forschool budget preparation and curriculum development programmes, byproviding the understanding that positive experiences in the environmentare vital to the development of concern for it.It seems appropriate in the light of the study to reconsider the content ofcourses for intending teachers at all levels (not only those concerned withadvanced examination work). All teacher trainees must be given not onlythe subject-matter knowledge of environmental issues but must alsounderstand the ways in which this may effectively be passed on to pupils ina classroom. In educational terms, knowledge of the pedagogic content isas important as knowledge of the subject itself.Finally, the importance of the sense of “ownership” has to be stressed.Many of the autobiographical accounts make this obvious. If young people- and indeed adults - feel that they belong to a place or a project, andperceive the direct relevance of the environment to their own lives, thengenuine care, concern and a desire to take positive action will result. Surelythe development of such a sense should underlie the aims of programmes ofenvironmental education.Explanatory note:The study described in this chapter is the first phase of an extendedinvestigation into the development of peoples’ concern for the environmententitled: Emergent Environmentalism. This is an international study,currently funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in theUnited Kingdom (for work in England and the United States) and theBritish Council (in Slovenia). Data on the formative experiences ofenvironmental educators now being collected in the United States andCanada will significantly enlarge the research base.Another aspect of the overall project (ongoing at the University ofDurham) involves a study of the environmental knowledge base of younglearners. In this phase we are considering what children know andunderstand about selected environmental issues as and when they startschool and how that knowledge develops during the first two to three yearsof formal education.The overall project will generate data with far-reaching implications for thedesign and development of EE programmes. These data will also serve as asound academic research base with relevance for all those engaged in theplanning and implementation of policy at both national and localcommunity levels.7