Factors Associated With K-12 Teachers' Use of Environment-Based Education

Abstract

The term environment-based education describes a form of school-based environmental education in which an instructor uses the local environment as a context for integrating subjects and a source of real world learning experiences. Despite the growing body of evidence that supports the educational efficacy of this instructional approach and its foundation of high-quality environmental education, relatively few teachers seem to practice environment-based education (University of Maryland Survey Research Center, 2000). In the context of encouraging more widespread adoption of this formal instructional approach, the author used exploratory survey research with a convenience sample of 287 teachers to investigate influences on teachers' decisions to use and their abilities to implement environment-based education. The author used analysis of variance and discriminant function analyses, and results suggest that environmental literacy knowledge and skills and environmental sensitivity are important in teachers' decisions to use and their abilities to implement environment-based education.

Keywords:

• environment-based education
• formal education
• professional development
• teachers