Emotions and Environmental Education



I adore my 'Google alerts' that greet me every morning in my inbox. It's a simple stream of collected items on a specific topic, the standing tags include everything from environmental education and ecological education, to experiential education and maker education.

I know, I know, email updates? How archaic, with the fact that it is twitter leading the improvement of the profession of teaching with its quick and easy exchange of content and collaboration. However, the 'Google alerts' extend farther than the twittersphere with a diverse hodgepodge of studies, news releases and international lens to many resources that do not appear on twitter immediately, if ever. News in the alerts features programs mostly centering on ecology, concerned with connections to the curriculum and local natural areas, as well as grant programs and studies. Great food for thought, highly recommended for any of you wanting a finger on the pulse.

Enter an alert on the theme of this years call for papers from the Canadian Journal of Outdoor Education [CJEE]: Emotions and Environmental Education. The theme editors highlight: 
"We have long known that knowledge alone is insufficient to cultivate flourishing natural and human communities; many folks seem well aware of environmental problems yet continue to engage in destructive practices" 
-2016 CJEE call for papers
Now if you have made it through this much of my post consider yourself a candidate to work together on a submission. I have a terrible amount of half-completed 'practitioner reflections' on models illustrating the variables that are associated with both emotions and citizenship behaviour in Environmental Education.

Here is the thought:

"Working with a common thread of a few guiding questions [to be determined], environmental, outdoor and experiential practitioners will articulate techniques valuing 'emotional dimensions of environmental education' and the theoretical foundations driving them.
 
For example: I would love to articulate unorthodox school-based methods a teacher can instill deep and abiding emotional attachments to the earth and its life. (Creating an outdoor space that you can walk to during a class period to conduct a lesson, unbeknownst to the students that it is the walk to and from the space promoting an increase in emotional connection to the natural world...)

The CJEE topic ideas for this theme are below, tweet @PaulKelba if you interested in submitting a practitioner reflection together. The idea once again is to develop a few questions that would enable us to report on a technique valuing emotions and environmental education. The questions posed would reflect on underlying theoretical foundations and/or instructional objectives achieved by the 'adventure' no matter how tiny.


• Learners’ emotional responses to environmental education initiatives
• Emotional dimensions of climate change pedagogy
• Crisis and apocalyptic discourse in environmental education
• Gendered discourse around emotions in environmental education
• Ableism and discourses of healing in environmental education
• Educational implications of attachment to and/or loss of natural environments
• Empathy and compassion in humane and environmental education
• Humour in environmental education 
• Sustainable happiness and education
• Burn-out and emotional health of environmental educators
• Caring education and environmental education
• Death education and environmental education
• Ecopsychology and education

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