Environmental Education and Preservice Teacher Preparation: A National Study

Abstract

A national study of colleges and universities offering teacher-preparation programs was undertaken to ascertain how environmental education (EE) might be better incorporated into their curricula. Six questions guided the descriptive, explorative mail survery relating to satisfaction and fit into EE with current program offerings, what environmental issues are included in curricula, barriers to EE in the curricula, awareness and use of EE resources, perceived resource needs, and relationship between barriers and EE course concepts. Although 30.3% of the respondents were private institutions, 74.8% were public and .08% were private/public. Findings support and extend prior research in the area and lead to several conclusions.

Keywords:

• formal EE
• preservice education
• teacher preparation