Environmental learning is a lifelong, lifewide, and life-deep endeavor, much of which occurs in the spaces in between those that are studied, remarked upon, and documented. Within this everyday-life context, we examine the concept of learningscapes--intersecting sociocultural, intellectual landscapes where people learn about and undertake…

To understand both immediate and longer-term effects of a short duration, interpretive wildlife tourism program, we studied responses from participants in a sea turtle watch program. This program comprised an interpretive presentation followed by an opportunity to view a nesting loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta). We conducted 37 programs in…

Children's connection to nature increasingly is of interest in education, psychology, urban planning, and other related fields. Research findings emphasize the central importance of early connections due to resulting benefits for environmental awareness, knowledge, social-emotional learning, health, and wellbeing. To more clearly conceptualize the…

Nature centers can serve as valuable community institutions if they are seen as providing important services to the community. Through survey research in communities surrounding 16 nature centers in the United States, we examine the attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs that drive hypothetical support for nature centers from local residents.…

While nature center's missions often point to connecting people to nature in various ways, their potential to provide a broader array of services to their communities remains largely unexplored. To better understand the values local community members hold for nature centers, we conducted survey research around 16 centers in the United States.…

Environmental Field Days (EFD) are held throughout the country and provide a unique opportunity to involve students in real world science. A study to assess the validity of an observation tool for EFD programs was conducted at the Metro Water Festival with fifth grade students. Items from the observation tool were mapped to students' evaluation…

Environmental learning, or how individuals make sense and meaning about nature, the environment, ecology, and environmental issues, is best understood as lifelong, life-wide, and life-deep (Banks and others, 2007). Lifelong learning refers to acquisition of skills, competencies, attitudes, and knowledge over time; life-wide is learning across…

Critical consideration of the role of environmental education in meeting conservation outcomes is increasingly necessary for environmental agencies and organizations. Evaluation can help move organizations to alignment between educational goals and organizational mission. Moving theory-driven evaluation into mission-based program theory, this…

Environmental field days offer a distinct opportunity to connect students with science and the environment. The literature on field days, informed by research on field trips, provides a framework for best practices. If there are best practices, however, then presence or lack of the practice should have a discernible impact on the outcomes of the…

One view of environmental education suggests that its goal is to "develop a world population that ... has the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations and commitment to work individually and collectively towards solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones" (UNESCO-UNEP 1976). Embedded within this charge is the teaching of skills…

Increased concern with the environment has increased opportunities for employment in the environmental job market. This digest helps clarify the meaning of environmental employment and discusses aspects of its present state. An examination of trends in environmental employment indicates a growing demand for new jobs in environmental fields created…

This collection of essays by various authors draws on resources from a series of "EETAP Resource Library Info Sheets" developed for the Environmental Education and Training Partnership (EETAP) by the Ohio State University (OSU) Extension and the OSU School of Natural Resources. Forty Info Sheets are categorized using six major themes intended to…

This series of nine information sheets was published by the Environmental Education and Training Partnership. The first six sheets describe the title topic, then provide a list of print resources indexed in ERIC and the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education (ENC). Titles include: (1) "Environmental Education and…

Learning activities in environmental education require the use of the physical environment or moving into nature and natural settings to explore issues of the environment. These approaches are sometimes labeled as "nonformal." This informational bulletin examines a taxonomy of four learning environments and explore the application of nonformal…

Research on education for sustainable development (ESD) is not a unified body of work and, much like the literature for environmental education (EE), research is published in many arenas. The trends, however, capture some of the major foci of the research that is emerging on ESD, especially in the early years of the Decade of Education for…