Teaching Environmental Literacy: Across Campus and Across the Curriculum

To prepare today's students to meet growing global environmental challenges, colleges and universities must make environmental literacy a core learning goal for all students, in all disciplines. But what should an environmentally literate citizen know? What teaching and learning strategies are most effective in helping students think critically about human-environment interactions and sustainability, and integrate what they have learned in diverse settings? Educators from the natural and social sciences and the humanities discuss the critical content, skills, and affective qualities essential to environmental literacy. This volume is an invaluable resource for developing integrated, campus-wide programs to prepare students to think critically about, and to work to create, a sustainable society.

As the title indicates, this book advocates teaching environmental education at the university level. Taking it a step further, the editors and chapter contributors recommend requiring not just environmental appreciation courses but also adjustments to general curricula that would incorporate environmental education into all classes. This work provides a justification for adjusting curricula across the board. Contributors suggest content for inclusion and useful strategies for engaging students in learning about the environment as well as in the environment. Most chapters are accompanied by bibliographies, which offer support for this significant adjustment to college education campus wide and nationwide. The authors also discuss current successful programs at universities across the US that could function as models for change elsewhere. This book serves as an excellent, literature-based guide for adapting current curricula to educate college students about their disciplines of interest using the environment as a context. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and above. -- ChoiceD. L. King, University of Georgia, August 2010

"What makes Teaching Environmental Literacy noteworthy is its coherence and accessibility.... Providing useful overviews of topics such as ecosystem services, population, and sense of place, the authors focus on specific disciplines as well as cross-disciplinary topics. While not designed as a how-to guide, Teaching Environmental

Literacy would serve well any institution seeking to implement revisions to the curriculum--or individuals looking to create or revise courses that foreground environmental literacy.

T" --Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment Indiana University Press

"Anyone reading this book will walk away with ideas for how to address the most critical issue of the 21st century in his or her classroom. For that reason, I recommend this book for a much larger audience than college and university faculty. Even educators who work with our youngest children will find fodder in this book for self-reflection about what, why, and how to teach. I recommend it for teachers of all stripes who work to promote a sustainable future for our children." --National Science Teachers Association, July 2011

"[This] book is well written, engaging, thought provoking, and refreshingly free of errors. A particularly detailed and effective index is provided, as is an appendix. The volume is both inspirational and functional." --BioScience, August 2011, Vol. 61 No. 8

"This collection is an invaluable resource for developing integrated, campus-wide programs to prepare students to think critically about, and to work to create, a sustainable society." --Abstracts of Public Administration, Development, and Environment, 2010 Indiana University Press Indiana University Press

"Even as interconnected environmental, social, and economic problems have become increasingly prominent in public discourse, the training people receive to understand and address such concerns has lagged behind. Thirty-odd years after the first Earth Day, for example, only one-third of Americans can pass basic tests of environmental knowledge with grades of C or better...." --from the introduction

"...Teaching Environmental Literacy would serve well any institution seeking to implement revisions to the curriculum- or individuals looking to create or revise courses that foreground environmental literacy." --Annie Merrill Ingram, Davidson College, Advance Access, October 19, 2011

Heather L. Reynolds is Associate Professor of Biology at Indiana University Bloomington.

Eduardo S. Brondizio is Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington.

Jennifer Meta Robinson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University Bloomington and former Director of Campus Instructional Consulting. She is author (with J. A. Hartenfeld) of The Farmers' Market Book: Growing Food, Cultivating Community (IUP, 2007).

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Rationale for Teaching Environmental Literacy in Higher Education / Heather L. Reynolds, Eduardo S. Brondizio, Jennifer Meta Robinson, Doug Karpa, and Briana L. Gross

Part 1. A Model for Grassroots, Multidisciplinary Faculty Inquiry

Jennifer Meta Robinson and Heather L. Reynolds

Part 2. Core Learning Goals for Campus-wide Environmental Literacy

Overview / Heather L. Reynolds (Biology)

1. At the Forest's Edge: A Place-Based Approach to Teaching Ecosystem Services / Keith M. Vogelsang and Eric J. Baack (Biology)

2. Population, Energy, and Sustainability / Bennet B. Brabson (Physics)

3. Population, Consumption, and Environment / Emilio F. Moran (Anthropology)

4. Economics and Sustainability / Christine Glaser (Economics)

5. A Sense of Place / Scott Russell Sanders (English)

6. Environmental Justice and a Sense of Place / John Applegate (Law)

7. Environmental Literacy and the Lifelong Cultivation of Wonder / Lisa H. Sideris (Religious Studies)

8. Teaching Environmental Communication Through Rhetorical Controversy / Phaedra C. Pezzullo (Communication and Culture)

Part 3. Strategies for Teaching Environmental Literacy: Beyond the Traditional Classroom

Overview / Doug Karpa (Campus Instructional Consulting)

9. Effective Education for Environmental Literacy / Craig E. Nelson (Biology)

10. Learning in Place: The Campus as Ecosystem / James H. Capshew (History and Philosophy of Science)

11. Environmental Literacy and Service-Learning: A Multi-Text Rendering / Nicole Schonemann, Andrew Libby, and Claire King (Office of Service-Learning)

12. Sense of Place and the Physical Senses in Outdoor Environmental Learning / Matthew R. Auer (Public and Environmental Affairs and Hutton Honors College)

13. A Natural Environment for Environmental Literacy / Keith Clay (Biology)

14. Teaching Outdoors / Vicky J. Meretsky (Public and Environmental Affairs)

Part 4. Beyond Courses: Teaching Environmental Literacy Across Campus and Across the Curriculum

Overview / Jennifer Meta Robinson (Communication and Culture)

15. Environmental Literacy and the Curriculum--An Administrative Perspective / Catherine Larson (Spanish and Portuguese)

16. Faculty, Staff, and Student Partnerships for Environmental Literacy and Sustainability / Briana L. Gross (Biology)

17. Food for Thought: A Multidisciplinary Faculty Grassroots Initiative for Sustainability and Service-Learning / Whitney Schlegel (Human Biology), Heather L. Reynolds (Biology), Victoria M. Getty (Health, Physical Education, and Recreation), Diane Henshel (Public and Environmental Affairs), and James W. Reidhaar (Fine Arts)

Conclusion / Eduardo S. Brondizio (Anthropology)

Appendix

Contributors

Index