Towards Critical Environmental Education (eBook)

The first axis concerns the missing theoretical and practical pieces at this point in time. The volume considers the issues that are not included in contemporary Environmental Education, and thus, deprive it from critical orientations. This implies that in Environmental Education, very little discussion exists about the political, economic, racial, gender and class issues that in most cases govern the actions of leaders and stake-holders. The second axis concerns what has been done so far and in what directions. This involves descriptions of theoretical approaches or actual applied methodologies in the classroom, such as curricula or syllabus used or the kind of actions certain educators have taken to infuse the issues of justice and critical reflection within the Environmental Education teaching agenda. The third axis examines proposals. It looks at ways to enrich domains of Environmental Education with the argumentations of Critical Pedagogy. The fourth axis concerns the way in which proposals can be effectuated. This part contains specific methodologies and teaching sequences, depicting ways of including major aspects of Critical Pedagogy and Critical Education in Environmental Education. Examples are: Non-anthropocentric ecological approaches in the classroom, political activism in the Curricula, mixture of field activities and political activities.

Aristotelis S. Gkiolmas is a member of the Teaching Staff at the Department of Primary Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He obtained a Bachelor (B.Sc.) in Physics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, and he worked many years as a Science teacher, in all levels of the Greek Secondary Education. His research interests include Environmental Education, critical pedagogies, teaching about social and environmental Justice and understanding complexity in societies, in education and in Nature.