Eco-literacy's Effectiveness

Eco-literacy's Effectiveness

As we've found out, E.L. can be integrated into any subject.  It is not a separate subject that needs to be added on to your curriculum or limited to special events like field trips, or outside experts, clubs, and after school programs. 

 

The question that remains to be answered is 'how effective is E.L.?'

 

There are multiple ways of looking at effectiveness- all of which are valid and valuable.  These are the questions I have when thinking about effectiveness:

• Can the students integrate ecological concepts into non-ecology topics?
• Does learning E.L. orient students' toward more sustainable attitudes and behaviors?
• Do students retain E.L. concepts long-term?

These too have been questions for researchers and there are numerous studies available on the topic.  The research points toward E.L. being moderately effective, with the manner of it's implementation being a large factor.  Some of the main points of the research include:

• E.L. incorporation does improve students' environmental knowledge and attitudes
• E.L. needs to be integrated for the entirety of a child's education; starting in kindergarten and going all the way through college
• Even limited E.L. exposure in middle and high school can increase environmental understanding
• E.L. can be an effective means for working with at-risk youth but requires special attention to cultural barriers
• We need to develop a framework for assessing E.L.
• Improved environmental knowledge and attitudes does not always translate into more sustainable behaviors
• I could not find research about students' ability to retain E.L. concepts long term
• More research is needed

For even more information, please check these out:

• Addressing Barriers to Ecological Literacy
• Quantifying and Ecological Literacy
• National Environmental Literacy Assessment Project: Year 1
• Cross Regional Assessment of Factors Affecting Eco-Literacy
• Designing for the Future: Eco-literacy for Children's Outdoor Play Environments
• Environmental Education Reform: Using Experiential Learning to Influence Environmental Policy-Making By Fostering a Sense of Environmental Citizenship and Eco-Literacy
• Eco-Literacy is Not Enough to Fix Climate Change

Eco-Literacy & Physical Education

Eco-Literacy & Physical Education

I admit that when I think of Physical Education (P.E.), E.L. does not come to mind. I think of sports, aerobics, and maybe even dance.  However, the truth is that Physical Education isn't limited to the gym.  More and more frequently called 'Physical & Health Education' P.E. also includes health, nutrition, anti-drug, growth and development, and more.  

When it comes to integrating E.L. with P.E., it is possible to build connections via physical activities in outdoor spaces.  Sports like soccer, football, track and field, baseball usually occur outdoors and can at least help kids feel comfortable with being outside.  Other activities such as an obstacle course, rock climbing, or backpacking tend to occur in outdoor spaces that are less modified by humans.  Using such 'adventure activities' promote physical health and wellbeing while also helping kids to build an attachment to the 'wild world'. 

To go beyond the warm fuzzies of getting kids be to active and outside, the health side of P.E. is where we can create the strongest connections to E.L.  Nutrition education is a direct tie-in to learning how food is produced, about the environmental impact of our food choices, as well as about how we can make better food choices personally and ecologically.  For older children, nutrition education would be a great area to dive into controversial topics like vegetarianism, Genetically Modified Organisms, or organic farming.  General health education could cover topics like the connection between air pollutants and asthma or the rise in allergies as a result of our increased cleanliness. Older students could also explore how endocrine mimicking chemicals in plastics affect human growth and development.

P.E. and E.L. can integrate together.  We as teachers need to help our students see the connections and then explore them.

Check these out too:

• Connecting Health with educational goals
• What in Health is Going on Here?
• Media Literacy & Advocacy for Nutrition & Heath Education
• Big Ideas: Linking Food, Culture, Health, & the Environment

A class garden
Photo source:gotfarms.wordpress.com

Ecological Literacy & Math

Eco-Literacy & Math

When most people think about math they don't necessarily think about nature.  Physics or engineering or even chemistry seem to come to mind well before biology & ecology.  However, the fact is that math originated as a way for people to understand patterns they found in nature.  For instance, Eratosthenes estimated the diameter of the Earth with over 99 percent accuracy in 228 B.C. using only basic geometry. (Describing Nature with Math)  Meanwhile,  the Fibonacci sequence and fractal math were mathematical models for patterns found in the natural world. 

 

Some ideas for how teachers can incorporate E.L. into math lessons include:

• having students calculate their daily, weekly, monthly, and annual water usage and then brainstorm ways to reduce that
• having high school students track, model, and analyze water quality data for nearby lake
• haveing student graph weather data over the last decade + and make predictions based on that data
• writing word problems relating to real world science questions or actions
• using equations to motion and velocity to explore the motion of the planets around the sun
• conducting a patterns in nature scavenger hunt
• calculating how much energy is needed to power LEED buildings vs. a traditionally constructed building

 

There is no reason why math and E.L. can't be integrated together.  Really it's entirely up to the teacher and their own creativity. 

 

Here are some other interesting resources:

• The Brain or the Universe
• In Mysterious Pattern, Math and Nature Converge
• Understanding: Math and Nature
• Using Math in Nature: Activities for Kids
• Outdoors: the new place to learn
• National Environmental Education Week

Two different types of cedar fronds displaying fractal patterns

Photo Credit: Nicole Carbone

 

Ecological Literacy... in Science!

Eco-Literacy... in Science!

View from Eight Dollar Mountain near Selma, OR
Photo credit: One of my classmates

It makes sense to me to start with looking at teaching E.L. in science given that by it's very nature science is entirely focused on understanding the world around us.  No matter whether we're talking about biology, physics, or chemistry, ultimately what we are talking about are the phenomena and processes that enable life's existence.  In that regard, the study of science is the foundation of E.L. as students need to gain a strong understanding of core ecological principles  before they can apply them to disciplines outside of science.  

There are a number of means for incorporating E.L. into a standard science classroom.  For students at all grade levels these could include: 

• working and exploring in a classroom or community garden
• exploring individual student's or organization's ecological footprints and generate ideas to reduce them
• start and maintain a compost (or vermicompost) and use that to study decomposition, soil chemistry, bacteria, and more
• engineering or computer science students could design a tool based on biomimicry
• in chemistry or biology, explore how ocean acidification affects shellfish growth and development
• asking students to create a building based on sustainable and ecological design principles
• in physics or chemistry, explore how how to generate renewable energy or improve energy efficiency within existing electrical systems
• conduct or join citizen science surveys to help track specific at risk species
• do repeated water quality tests and look for macro invertebrates in a local waterway

However E.L. gets incorporated, it's important to keep lessons inquiry based and close to home.  When I say inquiry based, I mean that students not only have the ability to make choices about their own learning, but they are engaged in learning in order to solve a problem or answer a question.  There has been discussion about how curiosity or inquiry based learning helps to keep students focused on the topic and encourages them to make connections between previously learned and knew information.  

Keeping the focus 'close to home' is in part about utilizing place-based education.  The school playground can offer just as many opportunities for learning as the state park 30 minutes outside of town.  'Close to home' is also about helping kids to build personal connection to their local environment, and to develop a sense of place within it and responsibility for it.

Here are some additional resources worth checking out:

• Why Curiosity Enhances Learning
• How Curiosity Changes the Brain to Enhance Learning
• How Much a Video Ways
• Solar Inventors
• The Perennial Plate
• Out to Play

Ecological Literacy's 5 Core Aspects

In the Cascade-Siskeyou Monument
Photo: Bri Foster

Eco Literacy's 5 Core Aspects

Given E.L.'s broad definition, it may help to narrow our focus slightly.  E.L. has five core aspects (Draft Global Issues Pilot August 2011):

1. Principles of Living Systems: Refers to understanding of the web of life, Earth systems cycles, material-energy exchanges, etc.  The goal is to provide students with a "deep sense of place and an understanding of their local environment."
2. Design Inspired by Nature: The application of our knowledge and understandings of natural systems to the (re)design of human groups, systems, and goods in order to align with ecological principles; e.g. "to transform how humans act in the world to provide food, shelter, energy, materials, and seek their livelihood." 
3. Systems Thinking: A.K.A. 'holistic' or 'relational' thinking; it "involves applying a way of thinking that emphasizes relationships, connectedness and context." 
4. Ecological Paradigm and the Transition to Sustainability: with a focus on ethics, this aspects focuses on understanding how humanity is part of the larger ecological picture and
   "needs to take responsibility for the social and environmental consequences of our activities."
5. Collaboration, Community Building and Citizenship: collaboration and partnership are integral to living systems and require the ability to associate, create links, draw on collective distributed intelligence of many individuals. "Ultimately, sustainability is a community practice."  

I admit that these core aspects are still rather broad, but they at least help us to understand that E.L. is about much more than the standard content of an ecology class.  Rather, E.L. is cross-disciplenary in nature and should help students to think critically about not only scientific topics, but social, artistic, and mathematical topics as well.  My hope for my own future students is that they would be able to explore an 'essential question' about an ecological issue and find avenues of exploration in not only biology, but also history, ethics, literature, etc.  Conversely, I would want them to be able to connect core ecological concepts to non-scientific topics as well.  (An example of this could be explaining how a desert-dwelling population changed their culture and way of life as a result of adapting to an arid environment.  Another example could be the exploration of US politics and democratic governance with regard to natural resource management decisions and policy.)  Essentially, E.L. is not an add-on curriculum, but a means of broadening student learning within the disciplines we already teach.

Over the next several posts I plan to explore more specifically how E.L. may be integrated and find practical tips/ideas for using E.L. to teach various classroom disciplines.

Ecological Literacy

 



Northward view from Cape Ferrelo at Lone Ranch Beach, OR
Photo: Bri Foster

Ecological Literacy: What is it?

There's a term that I've heard often since joining the Environmental Education (EE) masters program at Southern Oregon University: Ecological Literacy. Given that literacy itself can be a broad term, I thought it would be good to explore what exactly 'Ecological Literacy' (E.L.) is.

It terns out that the term 'Ecological Literacy' has only been around since the early 1990's when it was coined by David W. Orr and Fritjof Capra.  (Draft Global Issues Pilot August 2011)  At the time, David Orr simply defined E.L. as "Ecological literacy, according to Garret Hardin, is the ability to ask 'what then?' -David W. Orr Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World

Since then the definition has changed and grown as researchers have applied the term to their own investigations.  In looking for definitions in publications and other sources, I came of across multiple possibilities.  These are some of the highlights:

"Environmental literacy is the capability for a contextual and detailed understanding of an environmental problem in order to enable analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and ultimately sound and informed decision making at a citizen's level. This means that "environmentally literate" students will have the knowledge, tools, and sensitivity to properly address an environmental problem in their professional capacity, and to routinely include the environment as one of the considerations in their work and daily living. Environmental literacy is about practices, activities, and feelings grounded in familiarity and sound knowledge." -Carnegie Mellon

"It is a way of thinking about the world in terms of its interdependent natural and human systems, including a consideration of the consequences of human actions and interaction within a natural context. Ecological literacy equips student with the knowledge and competencies necessary to address complex and urgent environmental issues in an integrated way, and enables them to help shape a sustainable society  that does not undermine the ecosystems upon which it depends."-Draft Global Issues Pilot August 2011

"The definition of sustainability implies that in order to build sustainable communities, we must understand the principles of organization that have evolved in ecosystems over billions of years.  This understand is what we call 'ecological literacy.'"- Fritjof Capra Sustainable Living, Ecological Literacy, and the Breath of Life.  Canadian Journal of Environmental Education. 12, 2007.

"Education for sustainability or ecological literacy means to teach ecology in depth, in a systematic and multidisciplinary manner.  It means to know not only natural metabolism and study the impacts of human actions on the environment, but also the social metabolism with nature, the repercussions of the impacts of ecosystems on the social relations, re-designing class and power structures. Education for sustainable life is to promote understanding of how ecosystems sustain life, thus obtaining the necessary knowledge and commitment to design sustainable human communities.  In the pedogogy of education for a sustainable life, the curricula and the contents are the context that support the learners so that they can creatively develop behaviors and values for understanding the world. -Miriam Duailibi Ecological Literacy: What Are We Talking About?

"three types of environmental literacies: 

• functional: ability to understand ecological “facts” and to understand the landscape in biophysical terms;

• cultural: ability to comprehend the cultural significance of natural images and to be able to grasp human dimensions of landscapes; and

• critical: ability to actively explore the significance and meaning of one’s environment to self and others, and to develop an understanding of how to contribute to environmental change through action.

 

An ecologically literate citizen in a bioregional sense is defined as someone who knows about, cares for, and acts on behalf of the cultural and ecological integrity of their home-place. Ecological literacy has no endpoint. Rather, it is an active engagement with place, an ongoing dialogue with place, and it is nurtured through celebration of place." -

Lesley P. Curthoys & Brent Cuthbertson  Listening to the Landscape

  Given the wide variety of definitions, I personally prefer to work with a simpler definition for the term.  For that reason, my working definition of E.L. will be: the understanding and application of ecological knowledge within all educational disciplines so that students can integrate that knowledge and effect positive interactions with the environment and society.
As I explore avenues and methods for teaching E.L., I will use this definition to help keep my explorations on track.