JB: Well, I would say that, in environmental education, one of the ways we look at the whole picture is moving from awareness -- looking at knowledge, looking at skills -- that hopefully will lead to some type of action or behavior change, but we don't like to prescribe what that behavior change is. We like to provide opportunities and skills for how to get involved. And, if we're talking specifically about biodiversity, there are all kinds of things that people can do. As people learn about issues, or experience getting involved, they often will change their behavior, based on what they know what they do -- and what they feel.

CF: Research has indicated that it is through action that attitudes really begin to change. In the past, research has been done on people that are environmentally active, and what has caused those of us who are to become such. It's usually been an action that you have taken that you feel good about, and that has made a very small change or a very large change -- either one. So providing those opportunities for self-determined action is one of the things that we like to do. But it's very important that we stick to teaching people how to choose appropriate action, based on their own thinking, and not action based on what we think they should do. And that gets to be pretty tricky -- particularly with elementary-age students, when teachers are often very influential and have the one-size-fits-all: we will all write a letter; we will all donate; we will all .... That can be very troublesome.

JB: I think that one of the other things is that we realize that different people respond to different things. We all have different learning styles. What will make me take action versus what would make Carol take action is very different. For me it might be information, it might be a TV program. For others it might be actually going through the process of getting involved in some project in the community. Our education programs need to reflect that diversity of ways to get people involved in something. There is some research that is showing that if kids experience the process of doing an action project that they come up with, they're more likely later on to continue to take action and feel like they're empowered and can actually make a difference.

CF: A project that I had been very closely associated with -- the program called Ecoset -- the students were in the program for two years before we began to see behavioral change. This was an outreach program from a museum, and we were involved with the students -- probably 15 interactions over the course of two years. The first series of action projects were ones that students chose on their own -- very small things that they could do at home, or with their family. Then, in some cases, the schools decided to do large action projects, based on what the students suggested be accomplished.
But we're talking about a long-term commitment here. And if we're talking about youngsters and it takes two years, I don't know. Do you know anything about adults? Does it take longer, or the same amount of time?

JB: I don't think there's much research, because it costs money to do longitudinal research, to follow people through an educational process, and then see what they actually do later on. But I think more people are trying to look at that.

Q: How do we keep kids' intrinsic love for things alive?

JB: I think one way we can continue to cultivate that is to provide experiences where kids can feel appreciation and love for the out-of-doors, and have an opportunity to go outside. In our educational system, it's easier to do that when you're younger -- in preschool and elementary. Then you get to middle school -- you never go outside; in high school, you never go outside. And we don't have those opportunities in society. Add to that how many more people are living in urban areas, and it's really hard to make that connection. I would like to see a combination of more field trips, more getting out into the community as part of just status-quo education, leading through adulthood -- it's lifelong learning.

CF: You might hope that will happen with the new interest in process science. And in fact, now with the national standards and sciences inquiry, it's not the answer that's important, it's how you got the answer; it's observing, it's analyzing. The school culture will be more inclined to the kind of learning that supports discovery. Think about the way we all learned in high school -- the menu way of learning science. Everybody did the experiments the exact same way, with the exact same ingredients, got the exact same answer -- and if you didn't that was wrong. That's not science; that's not discovery. I think we have an opportunity, with this new way of thinking about education and about teaching, that will allow us to capitalize on this -- providing we get in there and make a pitch for it.

Q: How do you integrate concepts of environmental education into the general curriculum?

JB: I think the most exciting trend in education is the interdisciplinary trend. We're training future citizens and the real world is interdisciplinary. It's not segmented into these little disciplines -- you do science here and you do history here. It's never connected to the broader world. I think that is changing. We're seeing more team teaching in science and social studies, math being integrated into real life. And the environment is the perfect interdisciplinary tool because it is interdisciplinary and you cannot separate the disciplines. Most of us don't get into the community in our formal school system; then all of a sudden we're citizens who are supposed to know how to make things change. How does change happen in my community? That's not what we're educated on -- we're educated mostly on facts, following disciplines.

Q: What special things can we do to include urban audiences?

CF: I think we have to have the urban student. We have to come to grips with the way we've been teaching about the environment in urban areas. Maybe the message we've been sending is that the environment is out there somewhere and not where we are. And that it's nicer there -- and not so nice here; we're reinforcing negative images and lack of empowerment. In fact, what we want to get across is the environment is where you are, or where we are. It can be made different in working with local communities on issues of how environments -- your local environment -- can be changed, and how you can help make that change.

There are very few models of effective urban environmental education in the urban setting. My own feeling, being at a museum, is that this is where museums can play a key function, because we have the experiences; we have all of the resources for this kind of experiential education. We need to begin to form partnerships with urban schools in ways to provide these experiences for students.

JB: I actually think we are in a new era, with so many people living in urban areas. We all grew up with more rural areas around us. Now we're in urban areas. On one hand, I think people learn more similarly than they do differently, and that good education that facilitates learning, which is locally based, will be fine for urban students as well as for rural students. But one of the issues is, many of our urban areas are scary places to be, and it's hard to go outside. As a society, we do need to think about bringing that diversity back into communities, because they are not very appealing places for many kids to learn and experience and understand the natural world.

The other issue that's changing, of course, is all the multicultural audiences that teachers are dealing with. What is a good multicultural education like?. You've got a lot of learners where English is their second language -- and we teach in English. For kids that are coming in, when English isn't their first language, we create roadblocks to learning.

CF: Well, cultural context for the environment is often different, based on people's ethnic background, and we haven't begun to deal with that.

JB: It's a real way to link biodiversity in schools, to look at culture. Look at cultural diversity; look at how people come to issues. You see that the environment is shaped by people, and people shape the environment. And that interplay is perfect to incorporate into both formal and nonformal education.

Q: What is the most important thing to do as a parent?

CF: I would say exposure and immersion. I would say give them opportunities, from the time they're really young, to be in places where they can mess around, play with frogs, have all kinds of experiences that they're not going to get in school.

JB: I really agree. Just getting outside. The first three years of life are so important for touching, feeling, being read to, sung to, all of that. Caring about the environment needs to be transferred from parents to kids. I think parents also have a responsibility, to look at the formal school system. What kind of education do we want our kids to have? What kind of future world do we want to have?

Parents also have a responsibility to see what their kids are learning in school, to influence the curriculum, to get involved with the school board. If environment is not a piece of what's happening in the formal school, we need to make that happen. We can do that by being involved.

CF: Especially now with site-based management of schools. While you have an umbrella of things that need to be taught, how it's going to be taught, what the emphasis is, and when is now determined by local schools in many large metropolitan areas. So that's a real opportunity for parents who want something -- no matter what it is -- to voice their choice.

Braus presentation | abstract | bio


Fialkowski presentation | abstract | bio