Ecological Education in Action: On Weaving Education, Culture, and the Environment - Paperback

by Gregory A. Smith (Editor), Dilafruz R. Williams (Editor)

Celebrates the work of educators who explore ecological issues in school and non-school settings. Gives examples of ways to impact the thinking of children and adults in order to affirm the values of sufficiency, mutual support, and community.

Ecological Education in Action celebrates the work of innovative educators in North America who explore ecological issues in school and non-school settings. These educators demonstrate how to reshape the thinking of children and adults to affirm the value of sufficiency, mutual support, and community.

Courses in environmental education often focus on scientific analysis and social policy-not cultural change. Children are exposed to information regarding environmental problems and explore such topics as endangered species, the logging of tropical rainforests, or the monitoring of water quality in local streams and rivers. Some adopt manatees or whales, or create school-wide recycling programs. These topics and efforts are without question commendable, however, missing is a recognition of the deeper cultural transformations that must accompany the shift to a more ecologically sustainable way of life.

Ecological Education in Action describes courses, programs, or projects that are transformative in nature, aimed at engendering the experience of connectedness that lies at the heart of moral action. The book creates a powerful and useful image of what an ecologically grounded form of education for our own era could look like.

[Contributors include Ray Barnhardt, C. A. Bowers, Gregory Cajete, Peter Blaze Corcoran, Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, Stephanie Kaza, Martin Kemple, Joseph Kiefer, Paul Krapfel, David W. Orr, Madhu Suri Prakash, Hedy Richardson, Elaine Schwartz, Gregory A. Smith, Sarah Taylor, and Diafruz R. Williams.]

Author Biography

Gregory A. Smith is Associate Professor in the Education Department at Lewis and Clark College. He is the author of Education and the Environment: Learning to Live With Limits, also published by SUNY Press, a coauthor of Reducing the Risk: Schools as Communities of Support, and the editor of Public Schools That Work. Dilafruz R. Williams is Associate Professor in the School of Education at Portland State University.