New NAEE guide highlights ‘environment’ in the school curriculum
How can teachers respond to the challenge of teaching about pollution, endangered species, deforestation, climate change, and other environmental issues?
The National Association for Environmental Education (NAEE UK) has looked carefully at the numerous opportunities that the new early years and primary curriculums provide, for teachers and children in early years settings and primary schools, to explore a wide range of the world’s most pressing issues with their pupils.
Professor William Scott, NAEE’s President, said: ‘These same issues have been at the heart of environmental education for 60 years. Whilst some in the UK saw the Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as the end of environmental education as we knew it. The UK’s National Association of Environmental Education never accepted this, thinking that as the Earth’s problems became more acute, environmental education would become more necessary, not less.’
Whilst some commentators bemoan the lack of a national curriculum emphasis on sustainability and ESD, NAEE’s curriculum guide shows where the new curriculum provides numerous opportunities for schools to explore the world’s most vital issues in an appropriate manner.
Professor William Scott: ‘The power of this handbook lies not just in its careful analysis of what the curriculum says, but also in its excellent exemplification of how teachers are seizing opportunities to explore them with their students. The beautifully illustrated case studies of practice are particularly helpful in enabling us to see what’s possible in today’s schools.’
NAEE Chair Nina Hatch: ‘A highly accessible guide for Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 teachers to see how they can incorporate environmental issues into many of their learning outcomes‘.
Copies of the guide are freely available on the NAEE website:
NOTES
Membership to NAEE is open to all teachers, schools and other educational organisations and NGOs. It is free to students. NAEE receives no government funding.
All enquiries to Heatha Gregory: info@naee.org.uk To write for Environmental Education, the NAEE journal, contact Henricus Peters editor@naee.org.uk