Environmental Literacy: Towards a shared understanding for science teachers

This article describes an enquiry into education for environmental literacy by a group of secondary school science teachers in the UK as part of a professional development programme. Using participatory action research approaches, the teachers explored ways of maintaining and enhancing the integrity of their subject discipline yet contributing to education for sustainable development. A knowledge- and skills-based model, with a hierarchical structure, was postulated to explain how science education could provide important elements to an overall environmental literacy for their students. Other educational qualities were identified as being essential and the pedagogical implications were explored giving examples of how these might be developed as specific methodologies. The final evaluation of the learning experience by the teachers showed that they found that the approach used here helped them to address their needs, particularly with regard to analysis of pedagogy.