Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development Through Mobile Learning

Author(s):  
Shachi Shah ◽  
V. Venkat Ramanan

Growing planetary challenges demand environmental consciousness and energetic workforce. The environmental education and education for sustainable development are essential for the knowledge workers so as to intellectually empower them with cognitive skills, analytical abilities and problem solving capabilities leading to the efficient development and implementation of sustainable development policies and programmes. Increasing Access through Mobile Learning for EE and ESD is the need of the hour, especially for developing countries where the use of mobile technology is increasing at a phenomenal rate. Mobile learning will augment the efficacy of participatory teaching and learning methods that motivate and empower learners to change their behaviour and take action for environment and sustainable development. M-Learning enables learners to merge their learning experiences in a shared collaborative environment. This paper shows how mobile learning can transform the delivery of EE and ESD.

Author(s):  
Shachi Shah ◽  
V. Venkat Ramanan

Growing planetary challenges demand environmental consciousness and energetic workforce. The environmental education and education for sustainable development are essential for the knowledge workers so as to intellectually empower them with cognitive skills, analytical abilities and problem solving capabilities leading to the efficient development and implementation of sustainable development policies and programmes. Increasing Access through Mobile Learning for EE and ESD is the need of the hour, especially for developing countries where the use of mobile technology is increasing at a phenomenal rate. Mobile learning will augment the efficacy of participatory teaching and learning methods that motivate and empower learners to change their behaviour and take action for environment and sustainable development. M-Learning enables learners to merge their learning experiences in a shared collaborative environment. This paper shows how mobile learning can transform the delivery of EE and ESD.


Author(s):  
Rachel Bolstad

This article examines the place of environmental education/education for sustainable development (EE/ESD) in the school curriculum. Despite international calls for EE/ESD to form the pillar of a re-oriented approach to school curriculum, teaching, and learning, in most schools the principles of EE/ESD are poorly understood, and it occupies a marginal place in curriculum and teaching practice. This article considers the “place” of EE/ESD in the New Zealand curriculum, and the potential to align EE/ESD with a “place-based” education (PBE) approach in New Zealand schools. Current directions from the New Zealand Curriculum Project may create new possibilities for this to occur.


2021 ◽  
pp. 147821032199565
Author(s):  
Ying-Syuan Huang ◽  
Anila Asghar

This article examines the development of Taiwan’s Environmental Education Act and how Education for Sustainable Development was mainstreamed into the national policy framework within the country. The goal is to understand the policy tools and governing strategies that were used by the Taiwan government to develop and implement a nationwide environmental education policy for integrating environmental sustainability into all areas and levels of teaching and learning. Official documents related to national plans for ESD and environmental education policies were analyzed and examined. In particular, Chinese Legalism was used as a lens to interpret the government’s philosophy, assumptions, unspoken norms, legislative practices, and deliberate strategies. Several principles and techniques proposed by Chinese Legalists were used to examine the negotiation and formulation of Taiwan’s Environmental Education Act. This analysis contributes to our understanding of the ways in which UNESCO’s framework of ESD can be transferred into a national policy. A discussion of the Chinese Legalist philosophy also offers a cultural frame of reference to think about ESD politics and governance in other East Asian contexts.


Author(s):  
Sachi Tomokawa ◽  
Takashi Asakura ◽  
Ngouay Keosada ◽  
Vannasouk Bouasangthong ◽  
Vanthala Souvanhxay ◽  
...  

Summary This paper argues the effectiveness of Ecohealth education for improving the quality of health and environmental education and for achieving sustainable development in developing countries. To illustrate the need for Ecohealth education, we review the transitions in health education, environmental education and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in various developing countries. Moreover, we discuss issues relating to these disciplines and consider the possible roles that Ecohealth education can play. Then, drawing on a case study conducted in Lao PDR, we propose a concrete example of the teaching content of Ecohealth education. We conclude that Ecohealth education can embody the concepts of ESD with respect to health and environmental issues, and thus can contribute to improvements in the quality of health and environmental education, and of ESD. In addition, we propose the following five actions for implementing Ecohealth education in developing countries: (i) promote research based on the approaches of public health and anthropology, and develop teaching materials that use the research results, (ii) empower school-aged children, (iii) encourage the active involvement and sharing of problems among communities, (iv) strengthen participatory teaching and learning methodology and (v) build a training system and train relevant teachers.


Author(s):  
Yuto Kitamura

A new approach to education has been proposed, called Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), with the goal of developing education in order to foster individuals who will contribute to the realization of a socially, economically, and environmentally more sustainable society. From the beginning of the 21st century, this has given rise to discussions and practices on related themes all over the world, including in Asia. While the environment surrounding education is markedly changing in Asian societies, with educational reforms actively pursued in many Asian countries and regions, their situations greatly differ depending on the context in which they find themselves. Today, departing from the conventional modes of teaching and learning that focus on the acquisition of an already systematized body of knowledge and skills, the field of education the world over is now shifting its focus to what is called key competencies, adopting and experimenting with new teaching and learning styles to develop abilities referred to as 21st-century skills. Based on these theoretical and conceptual discussions, a number of initiatives have been adopted as policies, school curricula, and educational practices in order to promote ESD in Asian countries. It is possible to divide Asian countries into three groups based on the place of ESD in their countries, as well as their degree of socioeconomic development and the popularization of school education: (a) countries that have accumulated experience in the practice of environmental education or development education; (b) countries that have been witnessing growing environmental consciousness and its rapid institutionalization in recent years, with varying degrees of implementation of environmental education; and (c) countries in which the elimination of poverty and inequality remains the most pressing issue and ESD is promoted in connection with development issues. Although the introduction of ESD is greatly affected by each country’s socioeconomic situation, it is important for all countries in Asia to promote equitable and sustainable education in order to realize a sustainable society. Thus, Asian countries need to form a social consensus to promote ESD, which requires the participation and responsibility of the whole of society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 9757
Author(s):  
María Sebastián-López ◽  
Rafael de Miguel González

Outdoor learning has, for a long time, been an important instructional resource in school education, usually embedded in the natural sciences and social sciences curricula. Teaching geography, geology, or biology beyond the traditional classroom allows students to interact with physical and social environments for meaningful learning. Mobile devices that are based on geospatial technologies have provided more accurate data, but also a combined instructional design with other WebGIS, map viewers, or geographic information system (GIS) layers, which are useful to foster education for sustainable development. This paper analyzes the applications of mobile learning based on citizen science and volunteer geographic information, but also on the growing awareness that citizens and educators need a set of digital competencies to enhance and innovate lifelong learning and active citizenship. The empirical research aims to measure teacher–training experience, highlighting the potential of mobile devices and their applications in environmental education. Data collected from the research and results prove the positive impact of mobile learning in environmental education. Finally, a discussion about mobile learning and education for sustainable development is provided.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Mauricio Acosta Castellanos ◽  
Araceli Queiruga-Dios

Purpose In education concerning environmental issues, there are two predominant currents in the world, environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD). ESD is the formal commitment and therefore promoted by the United Nations, to ensure that countries achieve sustainable development. In contrast, EE was the first educational trend with an environmental protection approach. The purpose of this systematic review that seeks to show whether the migration from EE to ESD is being effective and welcomed by researchers and especially by universities is presented. With the above, a global panorama can be provided, where the regions that choose each model can be identified. In the same sense, it was sought to determine which of the two currents is more accepted within engineering education. Design/methodology/approach The review followed the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyzes parameters for systematic reviews. In total, 198 papers indexed in Scopus, Science Direct, ERIC and Scielo were analyzed. With the results, the advancement of ESD and the state of the EE by regions in the world were identified. Findings It was possible to categorize the geographical regions that host either of the two EE or ESD currents. It is important to note that ESD has gained more strength from the decade of ESD proposed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. For its part, EE has greater historical roots in some regions of the planet. In turn, there is evidence of a limited number of publications on the design and revision of study plans in engineering. Originality/value Through this systematic literature review, the regions of the world that are clinging to EE and those that have taken the path of ESD could be distinguished. Moreover, specific cases in engineering where ESD has been involved were noted.


2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Gough ◽  
Noel Gough

AbstractThis article explores the changing ways ‘environment’ has been represented in the discourses of environmental education and education for sustainable development (ESD) in United Nations (and related) publications since the 1970s. It draws on the writings of Jean-Luc Nancy and discusses the increasingly dominant view of the environment as a ‘natural resource base for economic and social development’ (United Nations, 2002, p. 2) and how this instrumentalisation of nature is produced by discourses and ‘ecotechnologies’ that ‘identify and define the natural realm in our relationship with it’ (Boetzkes, 2010, p. 29). This denaturation of nature is reflected in the priorities for sustainable development discussed at Rio+20 and proposed successor UNESCO projects. The article argues for the need to reassert the intrinsic value of ‘environment’ in education discourses and discusses strategies for so doing. The article is intended as a wake-up call to the changing context of the ‘environment’ in ESD discourses. In particular, we need to respond to the recent UNESCO (2013a, 2013b) direction of global citizenship education as the successor to the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005–2014 that continues to reinforce an instrumentalist view of the environment as part of contributing to ‘a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive, secure and sustainable world’ (UNESCO, 2013a, p. 3).


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