'Education for the Environment: A critique'—an analysis

This article analyses Education for the environment: a critique' (Jickling & Spork, 1998). It illustrates ways in which the critique is a partial analysis of education for the environment. Thus, the article addresses Jickling and Spork's concern that education for the environment is a universalising discourse that seeks to marginalise other approaches. It does this by showing how it may be Jickling and Spork's lack of reflexivity over their own ideology of education which leads them to construct such a partial interpretation of education for the environment. This article also argues that the critical pedagogy of education for the environment provides a professionally-ethical way of teaching which contrasts with the allegations of indoctrination in the critique. The article nevertheless reflects an appreciation of the opportunity to engage constructively with contesting ideas in environmental education and concludes with suggestions for further avenues of inquiry for those wishing to engage in discourse analysis in order to deconstruct and, hopefully, reconstruct, education for and also in/through, with and about the environment.     

The Lure of Psychology for Education and Educational Research

Psychology has penetrated many domains of society and its vocabulary and discourse has become part of our everyday conversations. It not only carries with it the promise that it will deliver insights into human behaviour, but it is also believed that it can address many of the problems human beings are confronted with. As a discipline it thrives in the present climate of performativity, where more attention is given to means than to ends. The article observes first that for education and thus for educational research, though psychology's approach can be valuable, other theoretical stances are also necessary. It then analyses why psychology may be attractive nowadays in the educational field and identifies its prestige in academia, partly arising from its professionalization, but above all the use of a particular method and the focus on certain contents. This has historical antecedents, and so some illustrations are given of previous developments, paying attention as well to the controversies in which educational psychology has been involved in the past, as well as to the need of biographical research, which warns us to be careful with generalizations. It is argued that a more balanced approach (invoking the particularities of the situation as well as a broader concept of practical rationality) is required for the study of education and that educational researchers therefore should resist the tendency to see psychology as the default auxiliary science of education; instead they should reclaim their territory, do justice to the responsibility that is required and highlight the importance of understanding social practices to a large extent in terms of reasons and intentions.     

If It Doesn't Directly Affect You,You Don't Think About It’: a qualitative study of young people's environmental attitudes in two Australian cities

This article presents a range of findbigs from a qualitative study of the environmental attitudes of young people across their final 2 years of secondary school in the two Australian cities of Melbourne and Brisbane. Focus groups comprising the same 16‐ to 17‐year‐old students in 12 schools were interviewed twice, 12 months apart. Several minor differences were found in the attitudes of students between the two cities, but these pale alongside the common, indeed, overwhelming feelings of environmental concern mixed with frustration, cynicism and action paralysis that were reported. The ambivalence towards the environment that results, together with the individualistic frameworks for explaining environmental issues that were displayed, point to areas for renewed curriculum attention in secondary schools and directions for future research.     

Towards education for a sustainable future in Asia and the Pacific

Conclusion The second phase of education for a sustainable future (the widespread reorientation of educational practices, systems and structures) is not yet widespread in the Asia-Pacific region. This is a very large undertaking and one that the economically wealthy regions of the world have yet to make. Therefore it is not surprising that one of the world's economically poorer regions has yet to enact such reforms. However, there is sufficient leadership in the region (in the form of international and regional agencies and active NGOs) to indicate that if Member States can be convinced that a whole-of-government approach to sustainable development is desirable, the teacher educators, curriculum development officials and teachers of the region will have the requisite support to make the necessary reforms. Original language: English John Fien (Australia) Director of the Centre for Innovation and Research in Environmental Education, Griffith University. Teaching and research interests focus on the reorientation of education towards sustainability in the formal school sector, teacher education and community education. He is the author ofEnvironmental education: a pathway to sustainability and education for the environment andCritical curriculum theorising and environmental education. Editor of several UNESCO project publications, includingTeaching for a sustainable world (1995),Learning for a sustainable environment (1997) andTeaching and learning for a sustainable future (2000). Osamu Abe (Japan) Professor in Education at Saitama University in Japan and the Project Leader of the Environmental Education Project of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies. A leading authority on conservation education and a well-known figure in both the environmental NGO and environmental education movements in Japan. Bishnu Bhandari (Nepal) Senior Research Fellow in the Environmental Education Project of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Japan. Former Director of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's conservation programme in Nepal. With Osamu Abe, he has convened a series of international conferences on environmental education in the Asia-Pacific region. They have publishedAn overview of environmental education in the Asia and Pacific region (1999) andA regional strategy on environmental education in Asia-Pacific (1999).     

Multimodal learning analytics to investigate cognitive load during online problem solving

To have insight into cognitive load (CL) during online complex problem solving, this study aimed at measuring CL through physiological data. This study experimentally manipulated intrinsic and extraneous load of exercises in the domain of statistics, resulting in four conditions: high complex with hints, low complex with hints, high complex without hints and low complex without hints. The study had a within-subject-design in which 67 students solved the exercises in a randomized order. Self-reported CL was combined with physiological data, namely, galvanic skin response (GSR), skin temperature (ST), heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV). Multiple imputation was used for handling missing data from resp. 16 and 19 students for GSR/ST and HR/HRV. First, differences between conditions in view of physiological data were examined. Second, we investigated how much variance of self-reported CL and task performance was explained by physiological data. Finally, we investigated which features can be used to assess (objective) CL. Results revealed no significant differences between the manipulated conditions in terms of physiological data. Nonetheless, HR and ST were significantly related to self-reported CL, whereas ST to task performance. Additionally, this study revealed the potential of ST and HR to assess high CL.     

Effects of a read aloud intervention on first grade student vocabulary,listening comprehension,and language proficiency

Reading and Writing - We examine the effects of a read aloud replication intervention designed to improve the vocabulary, comprehension, and expository and narrative language outcomes of first...     

Education and Conservation: Lessons from an evaluation

This article presents an analysis of the lessons for programme design and management that were distilled from a recent evaluation of the Worldwide Fund for Nature's (WWF) global educational programmes. The aim of the evaluation was to clarify and document the contribution that education is making to the achievement of the conservation goals of the organisation. Aspects of the findings of the evaluation are presented but these are not the focus of the article. Rather, the emphasis is on the generalisations that can be drawn from an analysis of the evaluation process and the lessons to be learnt from the findings. This emphasis affords this article a degree of currency and utility that goes beyond its immediate value to WWF and may provide ideas and, in places, a vocabulary for thinking about planning and evaluating environmental education programmes, especially within conservation groups and resource management agencies.     

Fostering writing in upper primary grades: a study into the distinct and combined impact of explicit instruction and peer assistance

As writing is a complex and resource demanding task, high-quality writing instruction is indispensable from primary grades on to support beginning writers in developing effective writing skills. Writing research should therefore provide teachers and schools with evidence-based guidelines for teaching writing in daily practice. In this respect, the present study first investigates the distinct and combined effectiveness of two instructional writing practices (i.e., explicit instruction and writing with peer assistance). Second, the present study aims to examine differential effects for students with different background characteristics (i.e., gender and general achievement level). Eleven teachers and their 206 fifth and sixth-grade students participated in the study and were randomly assigned to either one of the four experimental conditions (i.e., EI + IND: explicit instruction + individual writing, EI + PA: explicit instruction + writing with peer assistance, IND: matched individual practice comparison condition, and PA: matched peer-assisted practice comparison condition) or the business as usual condition. Multilevel analyses showed that EI + IND, EI + PA, and PA students outperformed the business as usual students. As to the distinct impact of explicit instruction, EI + IND students outperformed IND students at posttest, revealing the effectiveness of explicit instruction. As to the effect of peer-assisted writing, there were no significant differences between the individual writing conditions (EI + IND and IND) and the peer-assisted conditions (EI + PA and PA respectively).     

Education for peace in the secondary school: The contribution of one subject to an across-the-curriculum perspective

The pedagogical literature on education for peace advocates an across-the-curriculum perspective rather than the development of discrete courses in peace studies. Advice on appropriate concepts and generic teaching strategies has been provided to teachers in a number of publications and has been taken up in many primary schools, where interdisciplinary themes and flexible time schedules are conducive to the innovatory dimensions of education for peace. The subject compartmentalization and rigid timetabling in secondary schools do not provide as much flexibility for interdisciplinary planning. However, much of the education for peace literature has neglected considerations of how peace themes and processes can be integrated within the curriculum of individual subjects in the secondary school. This paper addresses this situation by providing some guidance on how this may be done in one subject, geography, and hopefully might serve as a model for curriculum specialists in other areas.

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Zusammenfassung In der pädagogischen Literatur über Friedenserziehung wird eher eine das ganze Curriculum umfassende Perspektive als die Entwicklung einzelner Friedensstudienkurse befürwortet. In einer Reihe von Veröffentlichungen wurden Lehrern passende Konzepte und allgemeine Lehrstrategien zur Verfügung gestellt. Sie wurden in viele Grundschulen, in denen interdisziplinäre Themen und flexible Stundenpläne die innovativen Dimensionen der Friedenserziehung fördern, aufgenommen. Die Aufteilung der Lernstoffe in Fächer und streng festgelegte Stundenpläne in Sekundarschulen lassen weniger Flexibilität bei der interdisziplinären Planung zu. Ein Großteil der Literatur zum Thema Friedenserziehung stellt jedoch kaum Überlegungen an, wie man Friedensthemen und -prozesse in das Curriculum einzelner Fächer in Sekundarschulen integrieren könnte. Die Studie greift diese Situation auf, indem sie Möglichkeiten bei der Integration in einem Fach, Geographie, aufzeigt und vielleicht sogar als Modell für Curriculumspezialisten in anderen Bereichen dienen könnte.

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Résumé La littérature pédagogique sur l'éducation pour la paix plaide en faveur d'une perspective transcurriculaire plutôt que pour l'organisation d'études de paix en disciplines cloisonnées. Diverses publications ont apporté aux enseignants des conseils quant aux concepts appropriés ainsi que des stratégies pédagogiques génériques. Ceux-ci ont été suivis par de nombreuses écoles primaires où les thèmes interdisciplinaires et les emplois du temps flexibles sont favorables aux dimensions novatrices de l'éducation pour la paix. La compartimentation des disciplines et l'emploi du temps rigide dans les écoles secondaires n'offrent pas une flexibilité aussi grande à une planification interdisciplinaire. Cependant, la littérature relative à l'éducation pour la paix n'a pas pris en compte les considérations sur la manière dont on peut intégrer les thèmes et les processus de paix dans le programme d'études des différentes matières enseignées à l'école secondaire. On examine cette situation dans le présent article en donnant quelques conseils sur la façon dont on peut procéder dans une matière, la géographie, et en espérant que cet exemple pourra servir de modèle aux spécialistes du curriculum dans d'autres domaines.