November 19 – News Round up

NAEE  received a Green Apple award at a ceremony at the House of Commons last week at the 2018 International Green Apple awards.  In particular this was in recognition of its project which provides bursaries to schools in Birmingham and the West Midlands.  These allow young people to visit environmental study centres and link the visits with…

Reflections on a Green Apple

Nina Hatch, chair of NAEE’s executive committee writes about the award of a Green Apple. Awards come in all shapes and sizes and can mean a great deal (or not) to the recipient.  The one NAEE has just received really is Green Apple shaped and mounted on a gold coloured engraved plinth.  I do not know what the apple is made from…

Shanghai, a model of sustainability?

Henricus Peters NAEE’s e-journal Editor writes from Shanghai: Sustainability, the key concept interwoven with the 2016-17 UN Year of Sustainable Tourism, is seen in many facets of daily life.  Since the United States stepped aside from its role as a world leader regarding the environment, via its withdrawal from the Paris agreement and UNESCO, China is now…

Why does environmental education need imaginative literature? 

David Whitley argues that environmental education needs imaginative literature. Ecoliteracy was a term that gained currency in environmental education from the late 1990s.  During the period leading up to this, the concept of ‘literacy’ had been extended to encompass a whole range of new areas – even including ‘emotional literacy’ – where existing cultural norms seemed inadequate.…

November 12 – News round up

NAEE has published its 2017/18 Annual Review. This is an account of key developments in the year, but it also contains a number of contributions that reflect on the context in which our work is carried out.  These are from young conservationists Louis Driver and Finlay Wilde, from NAEE Fellow, Ben Ballin, and from Ian Humphreys, CEO…

CLOTC blogs

The Council for Learning Outside the Classroom publishes a number of blogs.  Here is a small selection of the recent ones: Born Outdoors – Outdoor Citizens Anita Kerwin-Nye, founder of Every Child Should, begins … “My love for the outdoors and the role it has played in my personal well being is well documented. Similarly, how outdoor…

November 5 – News Round up

The new Connecting Classrooms for Global Learning programme has now been launched.  Details of what’s on offer are here.   The website says: “The new Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning programme supports schools internationally to learn about and collaborate on the big issues that shape our world.  Connecting Classrooms is a flexible journey for schools around the world of…

The Windmill Index

Ronald Rovers‘ latest blog is about the necessary transition to renewable energy, and he has been calculating how many wind mills (2GW turbines) the world will need to cater for life’s necessities (some of which are clearly luxuries).  For example, he calculates (it’s a guesstimate) that 110 wind turbines are needed for the operation of…

October 29 – News Round up

What do you make of the research report from King’s College: the Understanding Environmental Education in Secondary Schools. Where is it, what is it and what should the future be?  It’s available here.  NAEE’s chair of trustees, has been blogging about the report, and you can read the first posts here.  Bill is writing in a…

National Poetry day

We mark National Poetry Day with John Clare’s Anticipating the Coming Autumn.   Clare was not strong on punctuation, and is likely frowned upon in these puritanical days where the ability to put your apostrophes in the right place is so important, and knowing how to analyse sentence structure sometimes seems more crucial than any meanings it might…

The locally threatened Dead Sea Sparrow

Mervat Batarseh Head of Environmental Education Section at Jordan’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature writes about their interactive community and school-based programme on the locally threatened Dead Sea Sparrow. Talking about birds is always an interesting issue for both students and elders.  As a professional in the field of environmental education. I have been monitoring…