This paper contextualizes the 5th World Environmental Education Congress, discusses the theoretical underpinnings of the Congress theme "Earth Our Common Home," and relates this theorizing to the research project that was woven through the Congress. We provide a rationale for engaging in this research project, as an invitation for Congress…

It is not altogether uncommon now to hear environmental educational theorists speak of the need to develop pedagogical methods that can work both for ecological sustainability and social justice. However, the majority of the socio-ecological turn in environmental education has failed to integrate nonhuman animal advocacy as a serious educational…

This article explores the intersection of art education and place-based education as a means of developing ecological literacy. The author advocates the development of a model of place-based art education, one that integrates the real-world, community-centred learning of place-based education with the affective, subjective orientation of art…

Newspapers and other media are often used as a source of information on science issues, both by the public and teachers in classrooms. Over six months, we collected discussions of global warming issues from the online forums of a national newspaper. Our analysis of these contributions suggests there is a considerable effort in these forums,…

It is argued that the view of nature and the relationship between human beings and nature that each of us holds impacts our decisions, actions, and notions of environmental responsibility and consciousness. In this study, I investigate the discursive patterns of selected environmental science classroom resources produced by three disparate…

This paper discusses the conceptual foundations for "Education for Sustainable Patterns of Living," the mission of the Center for Ecoliteracy in California. It offers an operational definition of ecological sustainability, and proposes study of living systems as a framework for understanding ecology. It considers key concepts for understanding…

This paper complements Fritjof Capra's paper in this issue, "Sustainable Living, Ecological Literacy, and the Breath of Life." It explores how concepts essential to ecological literacy can also guide strategies for overcoming barriers to introducing integrated, multidisciplinary pedagogy into school curricula. It examines how the crisis of…

This article develops the notion that virtues can be utilized as a means of understanding the professional expertise that science teachers demonstrate when they deal with socioscientific issues. Socioscientific issues are those contentious issues that connect science to the society in which it operates--environmental issues being a prime example.…

In response to environmental degradation, the Lesotho government, in collaboration with the Danish government, introduced an Environmental Education Support Project in schools in 2001. In order to optimise the achievement of the project goals the, Monitoring and Research Team was established to formatively evaluate the project as it unfolded. The…

In this paper, we explore greening initiatives in school grounds as sites where ecological, pedagogical, and social transformation might be promoted and take place. Reflecting on our evaluations of school ground greening initiatives in Canada and England, we note that these initiatives are often at the margins of young peoples' experiences in…

I propose that for ethics to become a normal activity, practiced by citizens on a daily basis, we begin by identifying barriers to this activity. Once things that get in the way have been identified, I examine ways that environmental educators can create conditions for ethics to become part of mainstream practices and processes of inquiry--to…

The root of the ecological crisis lies in an ethic of nature consumption. In order to reconstruct our cultural framework, it is necessary to cultivate another ethical approach, an ethic of care. It is the responsibility of school to encourage students to learn how to care for not only the human world, but also for the natural world. This paper is…

This paper outlines briefly some of the factors and forces that have led to the multiplicity of approaches to and the dis-integration of the objectives of environmental education. It traces the evolution of the understanding of the concept of action competence, and of its application in environmental education research and practice in Portugal.…

In this paper I present a narrative approach to environmental education research. This approach evolved through a dynamic interplay between research questions, theory, experience, conversation, and reflection. I situate the approach with respect to narrative inquiry and clarify the key conceptual metaphors underpinning my study, including "story,"…

We reflect on methodological issues arising in two of our own research projects as a form of practice, as a way of engaging in a praxis of project research. The projects chosen for this purpose are themselves concerned with teacher education and curriculum development in environmental education: they include participatory "reflective practice"…