Environmental Studies - Environmental Education Program

Faculty and Staff

Overview - Environmental Education - Environmental Studies - Antioch University New England

Environmental Education Program

Overview

Environmental education aims to incorporate ecological awareness and literacy into people’s daily lives. We help people understand that the everyday decisions made in the home, school, and workplace are reflected in the health of the planet. We encourage people to relate to the place where they live in a caring and responsible way. It is difficult work to ask people to examine their lifestyle and to evaluate the ecological impact of behaviors, values, beliefs, and habits. It challenges deeply set knowledge about how the world works, cultural and spiritual beliefs, and historical patterns.

This work takes clear thinking, conviction, creativity, resolute goals, and clearly stated purpose. Students of environmental education are expected to:

develop a working knowledge of natural history, earth systems science, and environmental change.
understand the social-political-economic dynamics of environmental change.
develop competency in learning theory and educational design.
develop a portfolio of effective educational methodologies and communication strategies.

As environmental educators, we are inventors and pioneers of a new educational approach. We are creating a type of education that challenges people to rethink the way they relate to the world and the way they live within the world, rather than maintaining the status quo. How do we cultivate an educated citizenry who are guided by a sense of duty, obligation, and responsibility for the health and welfare of the planet?

We are challenged to consider the routes of knowledge about the environment, the origins of emotional involvement with it and the conditions under which environmental concern becomes expressed through action in order to understand how to cultivate environmental values and ethics. It is our job as educators to learn methods that allow and encourage this examination of values without threatening or alienating people from the learning process.

It is our job to plant questions. It is our work to reorient beliefs and establish new concepts about earth processes. We shake the ground people have comfortably walked on for years. We raise dissonance over the way people have habitually related to and responded to the environment. It is our job to motivate people to become involved in the processes of sustainable growth and governance of the planet. We invite and enable citizens to participate in the political, economic and social transformation that will determine the quality of their own lives and the long-term health of the planet.

You will find environmental educators in nature centers, zoos, public and private schools, radio and TV stations, museums, corporations, aquariums, summer camps — wherever the need for environmental expertise interfaces with education and communication.

Last Updated: 6/18/07