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Preparing Pre-Service Environmental Educators
Academy for Educational Development
Washington, DC
June 4, 2009
The Challenge
We live in an era of unprecedented environmental challenges. Addressing these challenges will require a populace that understands environmental science and has the civic skills to be effective participants in their communities. Expanding the skills and knowledge of young people to serve in this capacity should be a high priority for our educational system. Unfortunately, precious few new teachers graduate prepared to teach young people how to be civically engaged environmental citizens. To address this challenge, we need to develop programs that prepare tomorrow’s teachers to lead their students in real world problem solving projects today.
Integrating Service Learning into Teaching Methods and Environmental Education Courses
While there has been considerable progress in integrating environmental education into pre-service preparation of educators, training pre-service educators to use environmental action strategies in their classrooms requires a new approach to teacher preparation. Since January 2009, Earth Force has been working with three universities to explore models for this integration. As a result of this collaborative effort, each university is developing a unique model for incorporating service learning into its teaching methods and environmental education programs.
Crecer Strategies reached out to a small group of leaders in the environmental education and service learning fields to convene a conversation on June 4 in Washington, DC, to discuss this exciting initiative, think about next steps and define future directions for similar work.
Panelists
Alyssa Hawkins, Earth Force
Dr. Terry Wilson, Western Kentucky University
Dr. Joe Baust, Murray State University
Alan Melchior, Brandeis University
Pat Marinac, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
Vince Meldrum, Crecer Strategies
Findings
Early results are encouraging, yet also raise a number of questions. Read more...
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