As social, economic and environmental issues have become more prominent in the 21st century, there has been increased critical scrutiny into the ways that outdoor learning interacts with sustainability issues and concepts. As a result, a number of discourses have emerged which interrogate human/nature relationships in traditional outdoor education…

Education for Sustainability (EfS) has an intimate relationship with professional employment as we seek to develop graduates who will take EfS values and understanding into their workplaces to build a sustainable future. The connection is through the capabilities that employers are wanting in the people they employ, and they are the outcomes of…

This article reports the findings of a pilot Education for Sustainability (EfS) program implemented in 2011 for international students in a multi-campus distributed learning environment at an Australian university. It outlines the context of the pilot EfS program and reports survey findings of the environmental attitudes and sustainability…

Higher education institutions are considered by many to be pivotal in shaping the next generation of thinkers and practitioners required to further work towards addressing the sustainability challenges faced by contemporary societies. The extent to which higher education has embraced this responsibility is debateable. Notwithstanding, this article…

The expectation is that higher education curricula which purports to incorporate education for sustainable development (ESD) supports university graduates in becoming more sustainable. It would then follow that if academics are to offer such curricula they need to be adequately equipped with the motivations, knowledge and skills to teach it.…

This article documents the emergence of environmental education in the curriculum discourse in Aotearoa/New Zealand in 1988, and proceeds to trace its path through a succession of curriculum documents over the subsequent two decades. As well as exploring the form environmental education takes in these documents, the way it emerges in educational…

A philosophy of action consists of a theory about how and why we do things and what motivates us to act. By juxtaposing the theory of environmental action implied by the works and life of John Muir with the philosophy of action suggested by Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic, we will illuminate the importance of a philosophy of action in determining one's…

Theories of responsible environmental behavior (REB) have most often been applied in developed countries and to direct forms of REB such as recycling and conserving water. This study applied a model of REB to a developing country setting in Tanzania based in part on variables from a Hungerford and Volk (1990) model and targeting an indirect form…

This article investigates benefits and challenges of forest education in view of 257 Swiss elementary school teachers (1st-3rd grade), by means of a written questionnaire and 15 in-depth interviews. Two thirds of the teachers carried out forest education during normal lesson hours (mean visits = eight per year). Forests were clearly considered as…

In a survey of Canadian university students (N = 205), the relationship between majoring in an outdoor recreation university program and environmental concern, cooperation, and behavior were examined. Stepwise linear regression indicated that enrollment in outdoor recreation was predictive of environmental behavior and ecological cooperation; and…

Several studies have found a relationship between college students' academic majors and their environmental attitudes and behaviors. Results from this study of incoming first-year students at a medium-sized public university suggest that students majoring in different programs of study were likely to have different environmental attitudes and…

This qualitative case study of Island Community School provides a detailed description of how one school incorporated place-based, environmentally conscious education over the course of more than a decade. The study explored the conditions that supported and constrained this approach in an isolated rural community. Data came primarily from…

We conducted a qualitative study of the experiences of 23 Outdoor Adventure Education (OAE) participants to determine what participants found significant about their course and to what course elements they attributed this significance. Participants experienced personal transformations, which they attributed to spending extended time in pristine…

We conducted an evaluability assessment of the U.S. Forest Service's "More Kids in the Woods" internal grant initiative based on a review of 26 funded proposals, the creation of logic models, and a survey of project leaders. Evaluations of the initiative are warranted because it has clear outcome objectives, is implemented as intended, and results…

This exploratory study investigated elementary teachers' beliefs about, perceived competencies for, and reported use of scientific inquiry to promote students' learning "about" environmental issues and "for" environmental decision making and action. Data were collected through a questionnaire administered to a simple random sample of elementary…