A reminder about the pledge being promoted by GEEP: the Global Environmental Education Partnership – with the purpose of reinvigorating environmental education in the light of current sustainability challenges. As such, we – the global environmental education community – are asked to ACT NOW FOR EE and work toward three visionary goals:
- Every nation has an environmentally informed, empowered, and active populace and workforce.
- The leadership of every government, business, NGO, and educational institution uses environmental education to achieve environmentally sustainable outcomes.
- Every educational institution incorporates environmental literacy into its mission, goals, and activities.
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There’s a new OECD publication linking the PISA tests with ESD which will be of interest if you’ve been following the OECD’s attempts to marry up the PISA tests and the SDGs. Work in progress.
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Sustainability: The Journal of Record will publish a special issue focusing on the study and practice of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the learning foundations necessary to achieve the SDGs and create sustainable well-being societies. The editors are looking for articles that focus on higher education planning and policy; leadership and team building; organizational change; and the core competencies — skills, knowledge, values, and habits of mind — that cut across four main domains in higher education—content, pedagogy, modeling, assessment — to implement and achieve the SDGs. This special issue is interested in empirical and theoretical papers, evocative essays, and a series of case reports
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RSPB reports that almost 90% of the UK population now live in towns and cities and that only 10% of children in the UK regularly play in natural spaces. As such, as we know, children are becoming more disconnected from nature and the immense benefits that it brings for their health, well-being, education and developing personal and social skills. You can read RSPB’s seminal report here.
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The Circle of Life Rediscovery programme for 2019 is:
- 26 / 27 Jan: Forest School First Aid Course (two-day training)
- 2 Feb: Natural Musicians
- 9 Feb: Fire and Winter Tree ID
- 4 March: Forest School Training Level 3
- 21 / 22 March: Exploring the Natural World & Feeling Self
- 1 / 2 April: Nature Play & the Therapeutic Space
- 27 April: Nature Pedagogy and Games for Learning
- 25 May: Foraging and Plants
- 23 / 24 Sept: Exploring the Natural World & Feeling Self
- 19 October: Tools and Ropes, Forest School Skills Session
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There’s a new Welshwise Quiz coming up from the Wales SIG giving students the opportunity to show their geographical knowledge, understanding and skills, especially in relation to current events and matters of global and local significance. You can enter the quiz here.
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There are new titles in the GA’s In the Know series:
- Mountains and Volcanoes
- Rivers and the Water Cycle
- Settlements
- Weather – Clouds, wind and precipitation
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The latest Butterfly Conservation newsletter is here. There’s a feature on some of our most common butterflies:
Despite high hopes that the warm weather would boost butterfly populations, this summer’s Big Butterfly Count results bring bad news as well as good. The Small Tortoiseshell really struggled, with sightings falling by 32% compared to 2017. Populations of Red Admiral and Comma were also well down on last year’s figures. Meanwhile the Large, Small and Green-veined Whites leaped up the charts with their combined numbers amounting to more than half of all the butterflies counted. You can read the results to see how other species fared here.
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Finally, NAEE’s AGM is being held on November 3rd at Birmingham Botanic Gardens (a 1030 start). All members welcome.