Term

Summer 2022

Capstone

Capstone Project

Degree Name

MALED

Facilitator(s)

Patty Born

Content Expert

Anne Sabby

Abstract

For there to be solutions to environmental issues people of diverse perspectives need to be able to critically think and collaborate together to work through possible solutions. Historically, environmental education has been missing many voices from the BIPOC communities in finding creative solutions to environmental issues. This Capstone Project had the driving question of, Can increasing diversity in environmental education improve students' environmental literacy? The literature reviewed showed that environmental education cannot be a stand alone curriculum. Instead, it needs to be a multidisciplinary approach to the curriculum that allows students to critically think about real world issues that society is facing. Besides making environmental education a multidisciplinary curriculum there needs to be a connection to multicultural education at the same time. If students see professionals like them participating in environmental education activities they are more likely to participate. Before students can participate in multicultural, multidisciplinary environmental education teachers need to be able to design effective, meaningful and constructive curriculum to support the needs of their students. This Capstone Project created three professional development opportunities for teachers to reflect on their own social justice understanding, time to create meaningful curriculum that connects environmental concepts to their daily lessons, and a time for educators to share their findings and reflect on the environmental education focus lesson being taught. Everyone has a connection with nature, but in order for environmental issues to be solved diverse perspectives need to be applied and communities need an opportunity to have a strong environmentally literate society.

Project Type

Professional Development

Keywords

Curriculum, Environmental Studies, Science, Staff Development

dc_type

text

dc_publisher

DigitalCommons@Hamline

dc_format

application/pdf

dc_source

School of Education Student Capstone Projects

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Education Commons

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