Transforming Environmental Education: Making the Cultural and Environmental Commons the Focus of Educational Reform
Loading...
Date
2006
Authors
Bowers, C. A.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ecojustice Press
Abstract
Abstract
The primary focus of this book is on the need to integrate environmental education into a
more general curriculum that engages students in terms of their daily experiences in their
community’s cultural and environmental commons, and in providing them the language
necessary for articulating what is being lost as more aspects of their commons are
enclosed by market forces. If effect, this book is focused on the pedagogical and
curricular reforms that are a necessary part of making the renewal of the cultural and
environmental commons a central focus of educational reform. The how-to-do-it
discussion of fostering the student’s communicative competence for articulating the
difference between a commons-based and market-consumer based experiences introduces
examples that would be appropriate in the early grades as well as how courses at the
university level need to be refocused in order to clarify how the development of different
disciplines contributed to the marginalization and silences that now characterize most
North American’s relationships with the commons. The emphasis on pedagogical and
curricular reforms are set against a background discussion of how such terms as the
environment and environmental education are now being politically contested, as well as
against the background of economic globalization, and the rapid rate of global warming
and other changes in natural systems—such as the changes in the chemistry of the
world’s oceans. The book can also be seen as laying out an approach to educational
reform that makes the renewing of the cultural and environmental commons the
responsibility of classroom teachers and university professors across the disciplines.
Content:
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Understanding the Cultural and Environmental Commons
Chapter 3. Integrating Environmental Education into Commons Education
Chapter 4: Teaching Sustainable Cultural Assumptions
Chapter 5: The Classroom Practice of Commons Education
Chapter 6: The Political Context of Commons Education
Chapter 7: Toward Culturally Grounded Approaches to Teaching and Learning
Afterword: A Case of Linguistic Complicity: How the Formulaic Thinking of George Lakoff
Supports the Market Liberal’s Agenda of Enclosing What Remains of the
Commons
Description
176 p.