Educating Teachers and Increasing Environmental Literacy
Earth Partnership for Schools (EPS) emerges from the University of Wisconsin– Madison Arboretum’s long involvement with ecological restoration and from Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which sees human beings as “plain members and citizens” of the ecological co
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Educating Teachers and Increasing Environmental Literacy Rick Hall and Cheryl Bauer-Armstrong
Earth Partnership for Schools (EPS) emerges from the University of Wisconsin– Madison Arboretum’s long involvement with ecological restoration and from Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which sees human beings as “plain members and citizens” of the ecological community. Along with its national outreach program, Restoration Education Science Training and Outreach for Regional Educators (RESTORE), EPS creates partnerships with teachers, schools, natural resource agencies, environmental organizations, nature centers, master gardeners, volunteers—in short, with anyone willing to collaborate in restoring the natural ecology of school grounds and nearby natural areas. In the process, respectful relationships are restored with other human beings and “the land.” In this new education paradigm, children and adults are not only learners but citizen-scientists actively investigating and restoring ecological functions. They are caring for nature and becoming stewards of their own communities. From a young person’s perspective, this kind of experience is essential, as an EPS teacher from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, noted: “Kids need to feel important, to care about something, to feel that they make a difference in this world. . . . Earth Partnership provides ways to give kids a sense of purpose and build competency.” Earth Partnership Institutes are experience-based and use ecological restoration as a context for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning across discipline, age, learning style, culture, and place. Participants directly engage in the multidisciplinary activities. Our research shows that teachers are more likely to use activities they have experienced. Since 1991, EPS and RESTORE have helped 1,600 teachers in twenty states to incorporate ecological restoration into their curricula, directly reaching more than 600 schools, 1,200 community partners, and 160,000 students.
Earth Partnership for Schools and Environmental Literacy As children spend more time plugged into electronic media (Rideout, Foehr, and Roberts 2010), concerns about their ecological literacy have increased, especially as
D. Egan (eds.), Human Dimensions of Ecological Restoration: Integrating Science, Nature, and Culture, 363 The Science and Practice of Ecological Restoration, DOI 10.5822/978-1-61091-039-2_25, © Island Press 2011
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the scientific complexity of issues, such as climate change and habitat loss, have magnified (Magntorn and Helldén 2007; McBeth et al. 2008; Balgopal and Wallace 2009). Schoolyard outdoor experiences can help avoid what Pyle (1993) described as “extinction of experience,” and Nabhan and Trimble (1994) call the “the loss of wildness where children play.” Similarly, Louv (2005) describes the effects of depriving children regular contact with nature as “nature deficit disorder.” Many environmental education researchers fear the trend toward less f
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