Integrating Environmental Education into Pre-Service Teacher Preparation.

Overview & Synopsis

The focus of this monograph is to review several ways to incorporate environmental education into pre-service education without greatly modifying the content and structure of teacher preparation courses. Sections concern: (1) environmental education: a brain compatible approach to learning (supporting environmental education as a model for effective information processing); (2) strategies for teaching environmental education (identifying sources and models of teaching methods; (3) using children's literature to promote environmental awareness (containing a bibliography of children's books and suggestions for encouraging an environmental perspective); (4) wildlife education and social studies (presenting a list of 13 social study objectives and indicating their correlation to 50 activities which are primarily from Project WILD); (5) evaluation of knowledge and attitudes toward environmental education (consisting of the 40-item instrument and the test results of the participating pre-service teachers (N=30); (6) outdoor school (describing the components and programs of the outdoor school of California State University, San Bernardino and including charts for interactive concepts for levels 1 through 6 and for four categories of energy and environmental objectives and activities for grades K through 12); and (7) lesson plans (containing the plans developed and taught by pre-service teachers). (ML)