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A ready reference to facts, charts, lists, definitions, resources, and quotations pertinent to ecology. ... Read more

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This marvelous mix of singing, dancing and learning will help children better understand simple ecology and environmental issues. Section I of the Teacher's Guide is The Musical, including songs, script, choreography with sign language and instruction for costumes, props, set design and staging. Section II of the Teacher's Guide expands the educational possibilities with Classroom Connections, a collection of lessons, ideas and tools which includes word sheets for each song, teacher notes and tips, integrated learning activities and extensions for building awareness, enhancing musical abilities and just having fun! This broad-based instructional package teaches so many elements of the arts that it's bound to be the showpiece of any class. Titles include: The Clean-Up Kids
* Pollution
* The R's of Ecology
* R-E-C-Y-C-L-E
* Saving Planet Earth
* Clean Up Your Part of the World. Kindergarten - Grade 5. ... Read more

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This is a comprehensive reference work, textbook, and sourcebook on the environmental education policies implemented in industrialized and developing nations since initiation of the benchmark UNEP-UNESCO International Environmental Education Programme at the Belgrade Workshop in 1975. The contributing authors cover both historical and international perspectives with particular reference to the 1992 debates in Rio. The book presents new information on areas for future action in teacher training, university-level environmental education for developing countries, and environmental education projects and networks for students and adults. ... Read more

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This volume offers many entry points for environmental teaching.Its scope and range provide a stimulating overview of the state of the art in the environmental curriculum in the humanities, the social sciences, business, and journalism as well as perspectives on creating a green academic environment through teaching, administration, and media relations. ... Read more

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This book documents a high school ecology class that employs currere, William Pinar’s idea for curriculum as autobiographical text, and analyzes the course’s success from the author’s point of view as both the practitioner and the curriculum developer. Discussing individual students’ responses to currere in a project termed the Environmental Autobiography (EA)—a twist on currere that emphasizes environmental experience—this book examines how ecology is taught in high schools; how ecologists are produced, along with the importance of ecology in school curriculum today; the necessary preparation of the classroom and the students for the currere process; and the five themes that recur frequently in the EA project: caring, insecurity and gender issues, egocentrism, politicization, and definitions of success. Currere and the Environmental Autobiography illustrates how the currere project brought an unprecedented richness and intensity to the ecology class, moving the students from "I know," to "I care," to "I want to do something about this." ... Read more

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This book explores the distribution, fate and ecology of phage in the environment and points up the important applications of this information. The text begins with an historical overview, followed by a discussion of the current state of phage taxonomy. Next is covered the distribution patterns and fate of phage in diverse environments, eg soil, fresh water, marine water and water and wastewater treatment plants. Factors that can influence the numbers and activity of phage populations, eg host and phage density, association of a phage with solids, presence of organic matter, temperature, pH, ultraviolet and visible light, concentration and types of ions present, and the metabolic activities of bacteria other than the phage host are examined. One chapter is devoted to the occurrence and implications of phage in various industries, eg dairy, wine, sausage and antibiotic industries. ... Read more

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This book tells the story of building a campus Learning Garden over a series of cohorts of student teachers and environmental education students. The garden began with high ideals, no funding, and a strong desire to do something about the environment. The result was a transformation in attitude toward nature, community and toward the learning process itself.Described through three metaphors (garden as environment, garden as community, garden as transformation) this book provides a bridge of theory and practice for ecology-centred teaching and learning. As new teachers and teacher educators decide how to include the environment and principles of sustainability into their lessons, this groundbreaking text provides a bridge between theory and practice and guides the reader into the ways that teaching in the natural world changes how people learn, and, how they teach. ... Read more

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This volume on Ecology of Language presentschapters on ecologies of language , literacy and learning.The subject of language ecology is diversity within socio-political settings where the processes of language use create, reflect and challenge hierarchies and hegemonies. The volume covers the following topics: Historical and theoretical perspectives, language ecologies of selected countries and regions, focus on Asia, Australia, Africa, language ecologies of dispersed and diasporic communities, esp. Chinese, Malay, Moroccan, classroom language ecologies in multilingual contexts, language ecology of literacies, oracies and discourses. This is one of ten volumes of the Encyclopedia of Language and Education published by Springer. The Encyclopedia bears testimony to the dynamism and evolution of the language and education field, as it confronts the ever-burgeoning and irrepressible linguistic diversity and ongoing pressures and expectations placed on education around the world. ... Read more

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The ecological consequences of agricultural development in the tropics are described in this book, emphasizing the effects upon tropical climate, soils and vegetation, and proposing schemes for resource management. The results of deforestation, intensive land use and the use of agrochemicals and farm machinery are considered in terms of the alteration to the physical and hydrological prospects of soil, microclimate and productivity. The important role of soil biota and macrofauna in maintaining favourable levels of soil physical properties is also examined. The quality of the management of tropical resources affects the level of agricultural production obtained so proposals are made for suitable farming systems and soil management strategies which will both preserve the resource and sustain economic production. ... Read more

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In Earth in Mind, noted environmental educator David W. Orr focuses not on problems in education, but on the problem of education.

Much of what has gone wrong with the world, he argues, is the result of inadequate and misdirected education that: alienates us from life in the name of human domination; causes students to worry about how to make a living before they know who they are; overemphasizes success and careers; separates feeling from intellect and the practical from the theoretical; deadens the sense of wonder for the created world.

The crisis we face, Orr explains, is one of mind, perception, and values. It is, first and foremost, an educational challenge.

The author begins by establishing the grounds for a debate about education and knowledge. He describes the problems of education from an ecological perspective, and challenges the "terrible simplifiers" who wish to substitute numbers for values. He follows with a presentation of principles for re-creating education in the broadest way possible, discussing topics such as biophilia, the disciplinary structure of knowledge, the architecture of educational buildings, and the idea of ecological intelligence. Orr concludes by presenting concrete proposals for reorganizing the curriculum to draw out our affinity for life.

Customer Reviews (14)

Earthy Wisdom!
David Orr, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College and James Marsh Professor at large at the University of Vermont, writes with down to earth wisdom regarding our way of life on this planet, for better and for worse. His essay "architecture as pedagogy" revolutionized my way of thinking about buildings, especially public school buildings. How odd and how wise it would be if the very buildings in which we sleep, love, eat, study and work, teach us how to better live! Orr's latest work is on this very subject, "high performance buildings": Design on the Edge: The Making of a High Performance Building (MIT Press, 2006). Orr is a well-rooted idealist, pushing the edges of how we think about life on this planet, including education, economics, architecture, family and the environment. Be prepared to be disturbed, stirred up, and challenged in your thinking, with the very strong possibility that Orr's book will shift you from merely using the earth to stewarding this planet for future generations. For another book on spiritual care of the earth within the home and family, see The Busy Family's Guide to Spirituality: Practical Lessons for Modern Living From the Monastic Tradition

Please read this book, President Obama
Rather than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, as most educational administrators are doing, David Orr actually thinks, and thinks deeply, and gives readers, families and educators the most insightful perspective on using education to remedy and heal our ailing world. David Orr is as brilliant as they come - a man with the highest commitment to understanding the roots of our society's self-destructive behavior - and places ethical and environmental concerns front and center where they belong. If you are concerned about education, about the environment, about your children's future, read this book, and then tell others to as well.

Truth to power--WHere Obama is coming from
David W. Orrs work ties education and ecological social justice together.The new Obama ecological initiative has been influenced directly as well as indirectly by writers such as Orr, Aldo Leopold and Wendell Berry.It is compelling work and Earth in Mind is as good a place to start as any.It is a good inspiring read.

Good primer for environmental advocates
Reading this book gave me a great peace of mind. I'm an environmental scientist, but I wanted to inspire people to reconnect with the world around them before focusing on objective science (which Orr claims, and I agree, is not really objective, but an objective method to verify and support subjective perspectives and passions).

He lists everything that is wrong and what needs to be corrected. A good follow-up book or study would be if someone took his advice to a school or set of schools and set up a curriculuum after his suggestions and measured how students responded.

Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect
David Orr exquisitely puts into words a need for an environmental ethos in the classroom.As a high school teacher, I have long-intuited his insights about how to bring daily connections to students about the natural world that we inhabit.He is deeply passionate, articulate and practical.I'd love to see school boards, administrations, faculty and students alike be exposed to his clear thinking and real suggestions.He brings urgency without bringing despair. ... Read more

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We live in a time of unprecedented planetary ecocrisis, one that poses the serious and ongoing threat of mass extinction. What role can critical pedagogy play in the face of such burgeoning catastrophe? Drawing upon a range of theoretical influences--including Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Herbert Marcuse, traditional ecological knowledge, and the cognitive praxis produced by today's grassroots activists in the alter-globalization, animal and earth liberation, and other radical social movements--this book offers the foundations of a philosophy of ecopedagogy for the global north. In so doing, it poses challenges to today's dominant ecoliteracy paradigms and programs, such as education for sustainable development, while theorizing the needed reconstruction of critical pedagogy itself in light of our presently disastrous ecological conditions. Students and teachers of critical pedagogy at all levels, as well as those involved in environmental studies and various forms of sustainability education, will find this book a powerful provocation to adjust their thinking and practice to better align with those who seek to abolish forms of culture predicated upon planetary extermination and the domination of nature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

A rare book
I have perhaps read ten books in my life that have fundamentally changed my perspective.This new book by Richard Kahn is now one of them.Through the force of its reasoning and the passion of its author this book has convinced me that the way we in this country and in much of the developed world simply cannot be sustained.Without a radical shift in fundamental ways of thinking--ways that the force of this book were finally able to alter in me--we are on a collision course with disaster; had such apocalyptic claims been explained less ably than Kahn's book was able to do,I would have regarded them with a dismissive dose of skepticism. What the book has made me understand is that we have reached a tipping point; his critique of even the best of our environmental messages is critical to positioning our future generation of leaders to address the urgent situation we now find ourselves in.This is a very important book.

A Courageous & Necessary Extension of Critical Pedagogy
In "Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, & Planetary Crisis" Kahn's representation of ecopedagogy calls upon educators to acknowledge a kind of tripartite challenge in front of them - they must, at once, teach in the world, about the world, but also for the world.Representing a sort of Hegelian triad, teaching in the world means being honest in the assessment of the ecological catastrophe currently underway and humanity's role in the domination and evisceration of nature.Teaching about the world entails the careful outline of differing epistemologies, alternate cosmologies, and ways of being.And finally, teaching for the world means working with a radical love for all earthlings currently alive, and those to come in a time we will not see.In this sense, the book reflects the spirit of a kind of Arendtian love for the world- where ecopedagogy prompts people to be responsible for and accountable to all of the `other others', both human and non-human, where teachers are more than technicians, families far from consumers, and students never a deficit.All those interested in the emancipatory potential of education and hopeful for a day when we can be released from the bondage of this historical moment - make room on your bookshelf.

A Must Read for Environmentalists
This work strikes the balance between precise and thoughtful theoretical contributions and relevance for political practice.In a lively and informative synthesis of critical pedagogy, Western Marxism, environmentalism, media studies, and education theory Kahn clearly describes the current environmental crisis and one major factor out of it--ecopedagogy.Kahn is clear in his opposition to greenwashing and the co-option of the ecological movement into the demands and interests of capitalism and imperialism, pointing to an truly oppositional ecopedagogical movement that will make good of the opportunity inherent in crises.

Crucial!
As the movements for ecological justice, climate justice, social justice, educational justice and economic justice grow and collide in North America - we need a framework to weave them together and re-imagine what actions are necessary and possible for the world we all want. Kahn offers the English speaking world a brilliant synopsis of the ecopedagogy movement born in Latin America which seeks to do just that, and more. Not only does he share the wisdom from the founders of this movement, like Paulo Freire, Francisco Gutierrez and Maocir Gadotti, but he relates it to North American writers and adapts/ recreates the theories to make ecopedagogy relevant here. He also takes a great stab at uncritical environmental education. If you are even slightly interested in environmental education, education for sustainable development or are an environmental educator, this book is crucial for you.

furthering the dialectic
Thank you Richard for further developing the philosophy of environmental education and melding it deeper to critical pedagogy and social theory. You've done a great job at bringing the ecopedagogical discussion to the public and private spheres much in the manner that many of the great philosophers, past and present (Aristotle to Kellner), have taken emergent issues to forum. I too often wonder "if we have handed over the Garden of Eden to nullity" (p.57); although I also have confidence in good educative praxis revolving around transformation and liberation as alternative steps to destruction.
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Now available in paper, The Excluded Past is a groundbreaking exploration of the uneasy relationship between archaeology and education. The concept of the excluded past rests on two basic arguments: that the prehistoric past is almost universally excluded from school curricula and that the version of the past presented to many indigenous and minority groups is not their own but rather that of dominant social groups. Contributors from a variety of different perspectives and countries show how the exclusion of aspects of the past impoverishes and distorts social and educational experience. They show how bridges can and must be built between archaeology, education and indigenous and minority groups. ... Read more