(Download) "Enhancing Environmental Literacy and Global Learning Among Honors Students (Curricular Designs)" by Honors in Practice # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Enhancing Environmental Literacy and Global Learning Among Honors Students (Curricular Designs)
- Author : Honors in Practice
- Release Date : January 01, 2009
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 197 KB
Description
In 2005, the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation (NEETF) released a summary of a decade's worth of research into environmental literacy among Americans, collected in collaboration with Roper Reports. The report included some disturbing statistics: 45 million Americans think the ocean is a fresh-water source, for example, and only 12% of those surveyed were able to pass a basic quiz on energy awareness. As the report's author laments, "Our years of data from Roper surveys show a persistent pattern of environmental ignorance even among the most educated and influential members of society" (Coyle v). Like most Americans, honors students are often only superficially aware of environmental concerns. Those who have developed some degree of environmental awareness may be praised or derided for "thinking outside the box," but as Amory Lovins, an energy analyst, argues, "There is no box" (qtd. in Brown xi). We are at a tipping point in our human interactions with nature, a crisis that demands we be more attentive than ever to interconnections and systems-thinking and move beyond the compartmentalization of knowledge that is characteristic of many university curricula. For this reason, among others, our recent favorable accreditation review at Kennesaw State University was based in part on our success in promoting global learning and appreciation for diversity across campus. While the institution passed that review with no difficulty, the assessment of programs across campus continues to focus on whether global learning and diversity are being adequately addressed. As an honors director who is also co-directing the new Interdisciplinary Studies Program on our campus, chairing the university-wide Environmental Concerns Committee, and sitting on the President's Climate Commitment Board, I feel an especially urgent need to combine global learning with environmental learning, so two years ago I set out to design a course that would encourage honors students to analyze environmental issues more closely through the lens of world religions and cultures.