The Policy Institute at King’s College London has published a report on what the UK public knows about environmental issues. Its title is: Britons hugely underestimate how hot planet has become and how much plastic waste is in the environment which neatly captures the problem. The study was accompanied by the publication of The Perils of Perception: Why We’re…
Ahead of next week’s parliamentary reception to promote attempts by Teach the Future to increase the effectiveness of climate change education, the Department for Education is resisting. A parliamentary question [ #4444 ] was asked by Darren Jones (Labour: Bristol North West) “To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect of…
In today’s blog, Richard Dawson and Ben Ballin explore the work they are doing on climate change education within primary schools in the Change the Story project. Over the next three years, a group of six European education organisations will be exploring effective climate change education within upper primary schools as part of a project called Change the Story. Through…
The Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP Prime Minister 10 Downing Street London SW1A 2AA 14th February 2020 Dear Prime Minister We are writing in support of the letter recently sent to you by Zamzam Ibrahim, President of the NUS and SOS_UK, in which she called for your personal help in ensuring that the education…
Across Sweden, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands three collective residencies brought together an intergenerational group of people who, as Arjen Wals reports: “played, ate, (re)imagined, learned and created together” in order to design “alternative futures around a selected glocal (sic) issue”, and explore “what needs to be disrupted” to realise these imagined realities. Wals…
Is there one book that you think every environmental educator should read? Is it Silent Spring, perhaps? Or Walden? The Natural History of Selbourne, maybe, or A Sand County Almanac? Then there’s Last Child in the Woods, Small is Beautiful or The Web of Life. The Prelude, perchance, The Deserted Village, or The Mores? And Emile? And what about Bedford 2046, Marx’s…
This is the latest update from Natural England in relation to Nature & Schools; Learning & Development. . Psychological benefits of a biodiversity-focussed outdoor learning program for primary school children DJ Harvey et al – Journal of Environmental Psychology This investigation sought to discover whether engaging school children with nature could produce sustained improvements in mood…
This is the text of the letter sent this week by Zamzam Ibrahim, the President of SOS_UK and the NUS to the Prime Minister reminding him that, thirty years ago, Margaret Thatcher called for urgent action on the greenhouse effect at the UN General Assembly. The letter asks for the Prime Minister’s personal help in ensuring that…
In an article in The Conservation, Bobby Duffy (King’s College London) writes that “people still don’t realise how bad the world’s climate and natural environment have become. Misperceptions about climate change and the ecological crisis are all too clear from a new survey of Americans that tested their understanding of how far the problem has…
Today’s blog is by Morgan Phillips, an NAEE trustee. Its focus is the request from Global Action Plan (GAP) and Reboot the Future for organisations to join them on a project to reframe environmental education. The project is grounded in research into the importance of values to the development of environmental attitudes and behaviours. Morgan Phillips is working on…