How We Teach Eco-literacy

By Clare Caro

While putting together the Authentic Learning Environment education model, it was essential to address the environmental crisis. The planet is struggling with a decline of nature, increasing pollution and ecocide, all happening at local and global levels. This is everyone's crisis, especially for our children!

We need to educate now, people who can address this growing crisis. The future - their future - will depend on making some big changes to how our culture operates. Currently, the culture is steering toward ecocide. We need to change the trajectory toward a more sustainable way of living.

Education is a cultural game-changer. We can make that trajectory change through education, especially education in childhood. Because in childhood, views, beliefs, ways of thinking and habits are all formed.

So how do we educate children, the future citizens, for a sustainable culture? How will we educate them to be the problem-solvers, decision-makers and change agents?

This article identifies four learned behaviours that contribute to ecocide and how we can educate for change, they are; nature disconnection, normalised pollutants, isolated thinking, and the lemming effect.

It is worth pointing out here, that this is not a case of creating a 'subject', working from books or rote learning. The 'teaching' will be in the 'hidden curriculum' where learning is gained through total immersion and modelled behaviours, and the education structure where children learn from daily activities and the culture in the learning environment. 

One, Nature Disconnection
Problem: Nature-disconnection and the severe lack of experiential knowledge of the flora and fauna species in the immediate local ecosystem. The lack of understanding that we are part of nature and play a role in the interconnection of everything.

For the last century, there has been a trend that ties education to the inside of a building. Children spend around 12 years of childhood in education, which is 12 years of childhood inside a classroom.

We cannot bond with the Earth from inside a room.

Solution: Connection Time
We want children to spend their childhood education years outdoors and in nature, forming a first-hand relationship with their natural surroundings. The foundations of eco-literacy are built on time spent in nature and mapping in a strong nature connection.

To achieve this, we will be spending the majority of our time outdoors in all weathers, seasons, and various habitats. 

A side effect of creating and maintaining the nature-connection is that we start to value time spent in nature and nature itself. Values centred around a bond and care for nature guide us.

Two, Normalised Pollutants
Problem: Plastic and many other pollutants have become normalised to the point where they are 'invisible'. We do not see the toxic materials we surround ourselves with. 

Plastic is a top example, we live in a culture where there is plastic everywhere, a lot of it disposable and only a small percentage recyclable. Plastic is a real threat to the environment and a growing problem with daily consumption.

If we wonder how plastic has been normalised and become invisible, here is our answer. Children build first-hand relationships with their surroundings, so a childhood surrounded by plastic normalises plastic. And many childhoods are furnished with plastic and synthetic fibres - plastic crockery, plastic cutlery, plastic toys, plastic furniture, plastic bottles... Even the first cute little bunny or teddy bear they snuggle with for comfort is made from synthetic fibres.

Understanding this is the first step to seeing the vicious cycle of one generation normalising plastic for the next.

Solution: Normalise Sustainability
We want to give young people a lens for identifying plastics and other pollutants normalised in our culture. With this lens, we can start to make choices away from environmentally harmful materials, out of the vicious cycle and towards the best collective outcome.

We want to normalise non-toxic options and alternatives to plastic and other pollutants.

To achieve this, we evaluate all materials brought into the learning environment and how they will impact the environment in the short and long term. The materials we choose, use and dispose of are carefully considered.

Three, Isolated Thinking
Problem: Lack of circular thinking, the inability to see the whole picture and join the dots.

Now days, it is relatively common practice to buy food in single-use plastic packaging, more pairs of shoes than we need, throw-way items like 'festival tents' for example, and cheap electronics not built to last, all without thinking it through.

The 'thinking' is isolated, when a consumer is not thinking about the entire cycle of the products they are purchasing.

Instead the thinking is isolated to personal needs-and-wants associated with consumerism. The other 'dots' on the circular-economy cycle, such as origin, resources, sustainability, social conditions of manufactory, longevity, purpose, and waste disposal, are not even on the isolated thinker's radar, let alone there as dots to be connected. 

Solution: Circular Thinking
We want to embed circular and holistic thinking into the learning environment, our practice and the children's work. Circular thinking is a tool for change and actively considers the entire ecosystem and our impact in and on it.

To achieve this, we will be using a project-based model that combines and links multiple disciplines. This is a conscious move away from the practice that trains the brain for compartmentalising (dividing into discrete sections or categories), located in years of subject-based teaching-learning. We will base as much learning as possible in real-life, in context, using real-life tools, objects, experiences and purpose, so that learning is not 'once removed' from reality.

Four, The Lemming Effect
Problem: The road to ecocide is paved by the Lemming Effect. A phenomenon where crowds of people from all walks of life, exhibit a certain kind of behaviour for no reason other than the fact that a majority is doing so.

What if following the one-size-fits-all status quo, with the underpinning fear of not fitting in or meeting the standard has been learned. There is a school-of-thought that this is a learned behaviour, learned by spending years shaped by the (mainstream) one-size-fits-all curriculum that comes with ramifications if we rebel or don't meet the standard.

Solution: Empowerment, Communication and Leadership
We want to empower our children with communication and leadership skills, for them to be confident in making changes and walk the path less trodden to align with environmental values and morals.

To achieve this, we provide the platform for children to develop their voices and get messages across clearly. Coupled with listen reflectively and being open to hearing and seeing other points of view without shutting down. They will learn how to manage their individual needs, wants, time and interests while sharing time, space and resources with others. We do this by implementing Personal Curriculums and a cooperative leadership power model, steering away from the authoritarian-submissive model.

These four education design features are a great start to teaching our way toward eco-literacy and educating a generation of problem-solvers, decision-makers and change agents. By consciously building the solutions into the model structure, we can deliver a new set of learned behaviours.