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Publications
Griffith University and the Department of the Environment, Sport & Territories, 1997
Zita Unger
Ziman Pty Ltd Program Evaluation
and Training Design
Australia
When teachers select resources for classroom use in development and environmental education there are a range of important issues that need to be considered. These include:
This module attempts to address many of these concerns.
Educationalists have been slow to accommodate issues of ecological sustainability and social justice. Part of the reason may be that education for sustainable living requires a reconceptualisation of environmental education and some of its assumptions. Those involved in development and environmental education need to become familiar with the core concepts of 'sustainable development' and 'education for sustainable living'. The Evaluation of Resources in Development and Environmental Education (ERDEE) assessment tool included in this module is designed to help equip the educator to identify core concepts and their essential elements.
It is often assumed that inclusion of more than one point of view is sufficient to provide diversity. However, even a 'good' text or resource, without glaring bias and stereotypes, can be narrow and undermine principles of environmental education. This makes the identification of 'balanced' materials especially demanding. This issue is raised during one of the workshop exercises, as well as by the critical reading that is included with this workshop. Essential features of educational resources that avoid stereotyping are defined in the ERDEE assessment tool.
Development and environmental issues are often controversial. They reflect diverse viewpoints, vested interests, and a range of ideological and moral positions. Resources used in teaching about such issues are themselves embedded with ideological positions and potential for controversy. Educationalists are better able to deal with these resources when they have a grasp of socially critical traditions in education and an appreciation of developments in environmental education and social theory. The series of activities and group discussions centred around the notion of 'theory', as well as the critical reading included in this workshop, represents an initial step in that appreciation.
Overall, this module attempts to develop strategies for evaluating resources that will assist in the selection and utilisation of materials for classroom use. The workshop is designed to be challenging yet provide practical support and guidelines for decisions about classroom resources.
This workshop aims to:
At the end of this session, participants should be able to:
There are six components to this workshop.
This activity is designed as an icebreaker for participants.
This activity introduces participants to different uses made of theory.
This activity is intended to introduce participants to different uses made of theory. The activity illustrates that education materials are not politically neutral and may become controversial.
This activity introduces participants to the major dimensions and criteria of the Evaluation of Resources in Development and Environmental Education (ERDEE) assessment tool.
This activity gives participants an opportunity to rate a resource using criteria from the ERDEE checklist and to further reflect on teaching for sustainable development.
Remind participants that the effective use of the criteria from the ERDEE assessment tool depends on a continued grasp of developments both in environmental education and in social theory.
Overhead Transparency Masters
OHT 1: Aims and Outcomes
OHT 2: ERDEE Assessment Tool (discussion questions)
Resources
Resource 1: The Role of Theory
Resource 2: Minister Under Fire Over Kit
Resource 3: ERDEE Assessment Tool
Resource 4: ERDEE Checklist
Activity 5: Make a small collection of locally available resources that could be used to educate about sustainable development themes.
Fien, J. (1993) Education for Sustainable Living: A New Agenda For Teacher Education. Background Paper, UNESCO Asia-Pacific Regional Experts' Meeting on Overcoming the Barriers to Environmental Education Through Teacher Education, Griffith University.
North American Association for Environmental Education (1996) Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence, NAAEE, Troy, Ohio.
World Commission on Environment and Development (1989) Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd for permission to reprint materials in this module
This activity is designed as an icebreaker for participants.
This activity introduces participants to different uses made of theory.
This is an important part of the workshop, because there are many ways of thinking about theory apart from the inherent quality of ideas. As educators, we should be aware that meaning is supported by institutional contexts - by the techniques, practices and social relations in the school setting, over and above the ideas themselves. Recent academic literature about the production of knowledge has pointed to power-knowledge relations and other cultural supports that reproduce and maintain knowledge. Thus the critical awareness of social and environmental perspectives in turn depends on being able to question underlying assumptions and to situate knowledge in terms of their ideological selections. The politics of knowledge becomes a significant element in the examination of theory.
Many responses are possible. Some features belong to more than one category. For example, the question 'what is environmental education?' can constitute both a theory about environmental education, and a struggle to define environmental education.
This activity is intended to introduce participants to different uses made of theory. The activity illustrates that education materials are not politically neutral and may become controversial.
One case in point occurred in Australia with respect to the 1992 World Environment Day kit. The kit was commissioned by the Department of the Environment and designed to raise awareness of environmental issues faced by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro that year. It was withdrawn from use in schools a week before the Earth Summit in Rio began. The withdrawal of departmental endorsement was largely due to pressure by the Opposition Parties in parliament that the kit unfairly and inaccurately portrayed farmers. The attack on the kit originated with the National Farmers Federation where it was felt that one section on Land Management failed to give due credit to those Australian farmers who embraced tree-planting and environmental care through such programs as Landcare.
The embarrassment to the government was enormous. The Minister had provided a glowing endorsement of the kit and the objectives of World Environment Day on its cover. She was then put in the impossible position of telling Parliament that she had endorsed the cover, not the contents. In addition, the Department, which originally intended the kit to be widely and freely disseminated, withdrew all official permission to use or reproduce its parts once it came under public scrutiny.
Note: Farmers would probably find certain language offensive, such as 'animals that can hardly move, packed into pens'. However, they would likely acknowledge problems they must deal with, such as algae growth, soil salinity, soil acidity, erosion, and absence of natural enemies to pests.
This activity should lead to the notions that (1) theory is political, and (2) that theory has a context of use that shapes meaning.
This activity introduces participants to the major dimensions and criteria of the Evaluation of Resources in Development and Environmental Education (ERDEE) assessment tool.
A. Mini-lecture Present a 10-15 minute mini-lecture to the group to explain the rationale for the ERDEE assessment tool.
The term 'sustainable development' was originally used by the World Commission on Environmental and Development (WCED) in a report entitled Our Common Future. This report, also known as the Brundtland Report, established a renewed agenda for environmental education and development education and the linkages between them. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) described this new agenda as a program of education for sustainable living.
Many aspects of traditional approaches to environmental education contribute to education for sustainable living.
However education for sustainable living also requires a reconceptualisation of environmental education and some of its assumptions. For instance, much of the dominant discourse in environmental education has been based upon a technocentric approach to environmentalism which favours concepts and skills needed for finding scientific and technological solutions to environmental problems. Education for sustainable living attempts to address root social, political and economic causes as well (Module 2, Reading 1).
Distribute a copy of Resource 3 (the ERDEE assessment tool) and Resource 4 (the ERDEE checklist) The ERDEE assessment tool attempts to bridge some of these conceptual gaps and help practitioners take account of new understandings when considering educational resources.
The ERDEE tool incorporates a 'knowledge' approach to education about sustainable development together with a 'skills and attitudes' approach to education for sustainable development. This strategy extends and promotes critical skills, values and actions to make education for sustainable development feasible.
The selection and assessment of environmental resources are based on four dimensions - knowledge, critical skills, attitudes and values. Each dimension contains core issues or concepts that are then defined according to criteria drawn largely from environmental and global interests as outlined in the Brundtland Report. The criteria acts as both a reference for environmental principles and as a model for action.
That is, the criteria represents a standard by which resources can be judged. Ideally, a 'good' resource that avoids stereotyping, for example, will: (i) present a range of roles and human characteristics for any social group, (ii) include in-depth portrayals of sub-groups by accurate presentations of the group culture from the point of that group, and (iii) portray sub-groups as active participants in their community in a variety of decision-making situations. Equally, the criteria also imply that as practitioners or curriculum specialists, one should present a range of roles, include in-depth portrayals and portray sub-groups as active participants.
All four dimensions are needed to promote principles of sustainability. The area of human rights, for example, is as much a 'value', 'attitude' and 'critical' dimension as it is a 'knowledge' dimension. The indivisibility of these principles means that the criteria should be seen as interrelated. Given the interdependence of the dimensions, it is unlikely, in practice, that resources would meet criteria in isolation.
Effective use of criteria, however, also depends on a continued grasp of developments both in environmental education and in social theory. The critical reading included in this workshop represents an initial strategy in that appreciation.
B. Group Work
Distribute a copy of Resource 3 and Resource 4 (the ERDEE assessment tool and checklist) to all participants. Ask them to prepare a brief group report on the questions in OHT 2.
This activity gives participants an opportunity to rate a resource using criteria from the ERDEE checklist and to further reflect on teaching for sustainable development.
Remind participants that the effective use of the criteria from the ERDEE assessment tool depends on a continued grasp of developments both in environmental education and in social theory.
The aim of this workshop is to:
At the end of this session, you will be able to:
Prepare a brief group report on these questions:
1. Highlight one criterion that is most relevant to your teaching area from each of the following dimensions:
Justify and explain your choice to other group members.
2. Highlight one criterion that has least relevance to your teaching area. Justify and explain your choice to other group members. Does the group agree?
3. Are there other dimensions or criteria that you feel should be included in this assessment tool?
Source: Australian Financial Review, May 14, 1992.
Prepare a brief group report on these questions:
1. What are the components of this cartoon? Note people, objects, events and ideas.
2. On the cartoon page, write down at least two questions for each of these components. Direct your question with an arrow to the relevant component.
3. What does the cartoon say about theory?
4. Do you agree? Could that person in the cartoon be you?
5. Give three examples of how theory applies to your area of teaching.
Source: Adapted from Sydney Morning Herald, May 29 1992.
By Amanda Meade
CANBERRA: The minister for the Environment has refused to accept responsibility for a bungle in her department involving an information kit which portrays farmers as destructive polluters of the environment.
The Minister yesterday withdrew her support for the kit commissioned by her department - the department of the Arts, Sport, the Environment and Tourism - to teach school children about World Environment Day.
Earlier she had endorsed the kit in a radio interview.
In it she had defended the section on land management against the allegations of imbalance levelled by the Leader of the Opposition.
'All I'm doing in this document is highlighting that an international environmental problem is land degradation,' the Minister said.
The Leader of the Opposition had said that the kit was 'a deplorable attack on Australia's farming community'.
'In my 20 years in Parliament, I have never seen such an unbalanced, misleading and divisive document as that sanctioned by the minister,' he said.
The kit failed to mention farmers' efforts in recent years to improve the environment and to take part in the Government's soil conservation programs.
The Minister also came under heavy fire from the Opposition during Question Time as she failed to explain to Parliament why she endorsed a kit that she later said was unbalanced an inaccurate.
Her explanation, that she had endorsed the Kit's cover but not its contents, caused uproar in the House.
The kits - 5,000 of which have already been distributed to 12,000 school across the country at a cost of $50,000 - carries the Minister's smiling face on the cover.
It has a letter signed by the Minister which reads in part: 'I am confident that this kit will provide an excellent environmental resource, particularly in the lead-up to the Earth Summit and World Environment Day 1992.'
After the radio interview on Wednesday, the Minister was telephoned by the Minister for Primary Industry who told her the National Farmers' Federation was angry over what they saw as insulting material in the land management section.
Only then did the Minister withdraw her endorsement and inform the Opposition she had done so.
The Minister attended a function in Parliament House yesterday where she was suppose to have endorsed the kit; instead, she gave certificates to school students.
She told reporters there: 'I do not accept responsibility for a document that I didn't even see, let alone approve.
'The fact of the matter is, the department made a mistake. The department did not check it even at senior levels.'
She said she was not to blame for the offensive material contained in the kit, because at no time had she approved it.
Prepare a brief group report on these questions:
1. Give an example of how the newspaper article, Minister Under Fire Over Kit, makes use of :
2. What does this controversy tell you about the politics of knowledge?
3. In your country, what is the accepted practice with respect to school textbook selection and distribution? Do persons or committees need to approve textbooks or curriculum resources? Provide any similar experience of a 'politics of knowledge'.
Adapted from:
Association for Curriculum Development and Supervision (ASCD) Developing Instructional Materials for a Pluralist Society, mimeo. Calder, M. and Smith, R. (1991) A Better World For All: Development Education for the Classroom, Australian Development Assistance Bureau, Canberra.
UNESCO (1991) The Development of Criteria for Textbooks and Curricula on the Major Problems Facing Mankind, Unpublished report from UNESCO International Experts Meeting, Griffith University, Brisbane.
World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Rate As:
'1' MEETS criterion
'2' SOME attention to criterion
'3' NO attention to criterion
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Development Issues
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Overall
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Balance Issues
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Empathy
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Respect
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Participation
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Overall
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Social Justice
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Equality of Peoples
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Ecological Sustainability
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Overall
Resource:
Publishing Date: ____________________
Publisher: _________________________
Cost: _____________________________
Course: ___________________________
Course Level: ______________________
Focus:
Entire Resource / Chapter or Section / Activity or Item (s)
Format:
Text / Video / Audio / Software / Other _________________________________
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Rating On Dimensions |
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Knowledge |
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1.1 Sustainable Development |
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1.2 Environment and Development |
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1.3 Rights and Development |
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1.4 Green Aid |
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1.5 Global Perspective |
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Critical Skills |
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2.1 Comprehensiveness |
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2.2 Stereotyping |
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2.3 Validity |
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2.4 Technology |
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2.5 Interdependence |
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2.6 Decision-Making |
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2.7 Problem-Solving |
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Attitudes |
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3.1 Empathy |
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3.2 Respect |
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3.3 Participation |
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Values |
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4.1 Social Justice |
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4.2 Equality of People |
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4.2 Ecological Sustainability |
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Recommended Action:
Reviewer: ____________________
Position: ____________________
Date: ____________________
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Module 11 | Module 12 | Module 13 | Module 14 | Module 15
Module 16 | Module 17 | Module 18 | Module 19 | Module 20
Module 21 | Module 22 | Module 23 | Module 24 | Module 25 | Module 26
