The ecological curriculum : teaching, learning, understanding

David Wright

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

The term ‘ecological understanding’ applies a practical reading of the constructivist notion (Poerksen, 2004) that ‘the ecological’ is a perception that can be explained rather than a fact realised through discovery. In this regard this chapter addresses learning rather than teaching. It addresses insight arrived at through sensing and interpreting personal experience of participation in the ecological (which Somerville, Chap. 2, refers to more pointedly as ‘the Anthropocene’), something which Lloro-Bidart (2015) laments the lack of in Education. By describing the ecological in this way priority is given to individual experience of ecological systems and relationships (Capra, 2014) rather than any strict delineation of that which is an ecological system. It identifies us humans, and our systems of knowledge, as subject to shifting parameters of learning. It acknowledges that as circumstances change and as new evidence becomes available understanding also changes. This occurs not because earlier formulations were incorrect but because constructions change as individual and collective ways of thinking are extended.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationReimagining Sustainability in Precarious Times
EditorsKaren Malone, Son Truong, Tonia Gray
Place of PublicationSingapore
PublisherSpringer
Pages269-279
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)9789811025501
ISBN (Print)9789811025488
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Keywords

  • curriculum
  • environmental education
  • school children
  • teachers

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