Environmental Education in the 21st Century


Book Description

Environmental education is a field characterised by a paradox. Few would doubt the urgency and importance of learning to live in sustainable ways, but environmental education holds nowhere near the priority position in formal schooling around the world that this would suggest. This text sets out to find out why this is so. It is divided into six parts: Part 1 is a concise history of the development of environmental education from an international perspective; Part 2 is an overview of the 'global agenda', or subject knowledge of environmental education; Part 3 introduces perspectives on theory and research in environmental education; Part 4 moves on to practice, and presents an integrated model for planning environmental education programmes; Part 5 brings together invited contributors who talk about environmental education in their own countries - from 15 countries including China, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the USA; Part 6 returns to the core questions of how progress can be made, and how we can maximise the potential of environmental education for the twenty first century.




Conceptualizing Environmental Citizenship for 21st Century Education


Book Description

This Open Access book is about the development of a common understanding of environmental citizenship. It conceptualizes and frames environmental citizenship taking an educational perspective. Organized in four complementary parts, the book first explains the political, economic and societal dimensions of the concept. Next, it examines environmental citizenship as a psychological concept with a specific focus on knowledge, values, beliefs and attitudes. It then explores environmental citizenship within the context of environmental education and education for sustainability. It elaborates responsible environmental behaviour, youth activism and education for sustainability through the lens of environmental citizenship. Finally, it discusses the concept within the context of different educational levels, such as primary and secondary education in formal and non-formal settings. Environmental citizenship is a key factor in sustainability, green and cycle economy, and low-carbon society, and an important aspect in addressing global environmental problems. It has been an influential concept in many different arenas such as economy, policy, philosophy, and organizational marketing. In the field of education, the concept could be better exploited and established, however. Education and, especially, environmental discourses in science education have a great deal to contribute to the adoption and promotion of environmental citizenship.




Advancing Online Course Design and Pedagogy for the 21st Century Learning Environment


Book Description

The current learning environment is substantially different than what existed for most of the 20th century. Learners and teachers today must navigate in perpetually changing contexts where education is influenced by technological advancement and obsolescence, economic barriers, a changing employment landscape, and even international politics. Studies indicate that employers seek to hire graduates with strong skills in areas coalescing around international awareness, creativity, communication, leadership, and teamwork. Skills and experiences in these areas are necessary preparation for the current economy and to pursue jobs that do not exist yet, while providing some insulation against the obsolescence of industries that lack these characteristics. These interpersonal skills are not often the subject of students’ degrees, yet there are opportunities in online education to cultivate them. With increased interest in new career options comes the need to reconsider how to teach subjects in the increasingly online environment. Advancing Online Course Design and Pedagogy for the 21st Century Learning Environment is a critical reference book that navigates today’s dynamic education requirements and provides examples of how online learning can foster growth in skill areas necessary for career advancement through effective course design. Moreover, it helps educators gain insight into online pedagogy and course design for the 21st century learner and prepares them to convert traditional courses and enhance existing online courses, thereby supporting students’ growth and development in the highly dynamic online learning environment. Focusing on specific learning activities, assessments, engagement, communication techniques, and more, this book provides a valuable resource for those seeking to upgrade teaching and learning into the online environment, those that seek better employment outcomes for their students, and those seeking to explore contemporary online course design strategies or examples. This includes teachers, instructional designers, curriculum developers, academicians, researchers, and students.




Implementing Deeper Learning and 21st Century Education Reforms


Book Description

This open access book is a comparative analysis of recent large scale education reforms that broadened curriculum goals to better prepare students for the 21st century. The book examines what governments actually do when they broaden curriculum goals, with attention to the details of implementation. To this end, the book examines system level reforms in six countries at various levels of development. The study includes system level reforms in jurisdictions where students achieve high levels in international assessments of basic literacies, such as Singapore and Ontario, Canada, as well as in nations where students achieve much lower levels, such as Kenya, Mexico, Punjab-Pakistan and Zimbabwe. The chapters examine system-level reforms that focus on strengthening the capacity to teach the basics, as in Ontario and Pakistan, as well as reforms that aim at building the capacity to teach a much broader set of competencies and skills, such as Kenya, Mexico, Singapore and Zimbabwe. The volume includes systems at very different levels of spending per student and reforms at various points in the cycle of policy implementation, some just starting, some struggling to survive a governmental transition, and others that have been in place for an extended period of time. From the comparative study of these reforms, we aim to provide an understanding of how to build the capacity of education systems to teach 21st century skills at scale in diverse settings.




Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

This book describes how different nations have defined the core competencies and skills that young people will need in order to thrive in the twenty-first-century, and how those nations have fashioned educational policies and curricula meant to promote those skills. The book examines six countries—Chile, China, India, Mexico, Singapore, and the United States—exploring how each one defines, supports, and cultivates those competencies that students will need in order to succeed in the current century. Teaching and Learning for the Twenty-First Century appears at a time of heightened attention to comparative studies of national education systems, and to international student assessments such as those that have come out of PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment), led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This book’s crucial contribution to the burgeoning field of international education arises out of its special attention to first principles—and thus to first questions: As Reimers and Chung explain, “much can be gained by an explicit investigation of the intended purposes of education, in what they attempt to teach students, and in the related questions of why those purposes and how they are achieved.” These questions are crucial to education practice and reform at a time when educators (and the students they serve) face unique, pressing challenges. The book’s detailed attention to such questions signals its indispensable value for policy makers, scholars, and education leaders today.




EarthEd (State of the World)


Book Description

Today's students will face the unprecedented challenges of a rapidly warming world, including emerging diseases, food shortages, drought, and waterlogged cities. How do we prepare 9.5 billion people for life in the Anthropocene, to thrive in this uncharted and more chaotic future? Answers are being developed in universities, preschools, professional schools, and even prisons around the world. In the latest volume of State of the World, a diverse group of education experts share innovative approaches to teaching and learning in a new era. EarthEd will inspire anyone who wants to prepare students not only for the storms ahead but to become the next generation of sustainability leaders.




21st Century Skills


Book Description

This important resource introduces a framework for 21st Century learning that maps out the skills needed to survive and thrive in a complex and connected world. 21st Century content includes the basic core subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic-but also emphasizes global awareness, financial/economic literacy, and health issues. The skills fall into three categories: learning and innovations skills; digital literacy skills; and life and career skills. This book is filled with vignettes, international examples, and classroom samples that help illustrate the framework and provide an exciting view of twenty-first century teaching and learning. Explores the three main categories of 21st Century Skills: learning and innovations skills; digital literacy skills; and life and career skills Addresses timely issues such as the rapid advance of technology and increased economic competition Based on a framework developed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) The book contains a video with clips of classroom teaching. For more information on the book visit www.21stcenturyskillsbook.com.




Beyond Free College


Book Description

Beyond Free College outlines an audacious national agenda—consistent with, but far more comprehensive than, the current “free college” movement—that builds on the best of US higher education’s populist history such as the G.I. Bill and the community college transfer function. The authors align a wide constellation of higher education trends—online learning, prior learning assessment, competency-based learning, high school college-credit— with a rapidly shifting student transfer environment that privileges college credit as the pivotal educational catalyst to boost access and completion. The book’s agenda seeks greater productive investment in postsecondary education by privileging a single metric—lower-cost-per-degree-granted—as the animating driver of a transfer pathway that will fulfill the potential of its historical, progressive innovators. Beyond Free College’s goal is as simple as it is urgent: To galvanize higher education advocates in an effort to reorganize, reorient, and reignite the transfer function to serve the needs of a neotraditional student population that now constitutes the majority of college-goers in America; and in ways that advance completion, not just access to higher education.




The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy


Book Description

A vital resource for sustainability educators, learners and decision-makers on how we can build a more sustainable future. In this ground-breaking book, leading sustainability educators are joined by permaculturists, literary critics, ecologists, artists, journalists, engineers, mathematicians and philosophers in a deep reflection on the skills that people need to survive and thrive in the challenging conditions of the 21st century. Responding to the threats of climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, economic uncertainty and energy insecurity demands the utmost in creativity, ingenuity and new ways of thinking to reinvent self and society. Among the many skills, attributes and values described in The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy are values reflection, coping with complexity, permaculture design, transition skills, advertising awareness, effortless action, and ecological intelligence, each accompanied by ideas for active learning exercises to help develop the skill. Far from being a rigid or definitive statement of the one right way however, the handbook is exploratory, aiming to open up new, unthought-of paths, possibilities and choices. With contributors including John Naish, Satish Kumar, Patrick Whitefield, John Blewitt, Stephan Harding and Stephen Sterling, this is intended for educators, learners and anyone else interested in the vital issue of the skills we need to survive and thrive in the 21st century and build a more sustainable future.




Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century


Book Description

Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century: Embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution explores responsive and innovative pedagogies arising from findings of research and practitioner experiences, globally. This book clarifies concepts and issues that surround teaching and learning for the 21st century.