The Geographical Association, and SSAT, are offering professional development in critical thinking and problem solving, through the new British Council Connecting Classrooms programme. This ‘Teaching the core skills’ training package gives primary and secondary teachers of geography or history the knowledge and approaches they need to effectively integrate the teaching of core skills in their…
Tom Arsuffi, Director of the Llano River Field Station, explores the importance of a sense of place. A ‘sense of place’ in nature is fundamental to learning, understanding and an informed citizenry. Texas Tech University’s Llano River Field Station (LRFS) is the place that brings diverse stakeholders together to address and provide solutions to critical…
Here’s a new Soil Association film, ‘From Potato to Planet’. It’s by Aardman Animations and aims to help us understand the importance of soil to the planet. It also spotlights the role of organic farming and shopping in protecting soils. The Soil Association aims to increase soil organic matter content by 20% in 20 years which would make a difference…
Environmental Education Research [EER] has published a paper from the USA on practitioners’ perspectives on the purpose of environmental education. You can download it here. The Abstract says: Since the 1980s, scholars have suggested that environmental education (EE) has a ‘definitional problem’ represented by a multiplicity of perspectives that have critically impacted its discourse, practices,…
Natural Connections alerts us to Devon CPRE (the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England) which is supporting outdoor learning with their “My Outdoors” competition which will run from March to June. it is open to all primary schools in Devon, Torbay and Plymouth. CPRE Devon hopes to encourage children to engage with and appreciate…
Home Advisor – a US website – has a feature on “home energy conservation for kids”. It begins … Energy is very important. It is something that kids need and use every day at home and at school. In fact, some form of energy is used just about anywhere that you can imagine! It is…
We recently carried a guest posting from Geoff Guy about the enclosure of land and the benefits to environmental and outdoor education arising from more recent legislation open it up again through the ‘right to roam’. If you are interested in the enclosures, then you might like A Short History of Enclosure in Britain by Simon Fairlie which is published in the Land…
The GA has produced a list of websites which it thinks will be of interest and help to geography teachers. We think they might help environmental educators as well. Here are a few of them: Biodiversity Rainforest Resources Climate and weather How stuff works Earth Hour Air Quality Real Time Mapping Air Quality Mapping –…
“Crazy! Lunatic! What is he talking about? How dare he challenge our way of life?” When a character in Plato’s Republic sees that things might change – even though it’s for the better, long term – he calls out for the status quo, for things to be as he is used to. Anyone with a message…
UNESCO has just released a Clearinghouse on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), containing information, news about events, good practices and links around the Global Action Programme on ESD (GAP). It aims to serve as an online platform to share knowledge, experiences and competences of the ESD global community of practice. The Clearinghouse comes with a comprehensive Resource Bank, gathering hundreds…
You can read the latest Learning Away newsletter here. You will remember that Learning Away was a Paul Hamlyn Foundation [ PHF ] special initiative, and due to finish at the end of this month. However, in December, the PHF trustees agreed to provide a further two years of Learning Away ‘legacy’ funding to help ensure that…
Green Teacher is a Canadian environmental education journal – similar to NAEE’s Environmental Education. It is offering insights into its work with free access to two of the articles published in its latest edition. They are: Put up a Paradise, and Let the games begin