Riordan and Klein’s “Environmental Education in Action: How Expeditionary Learning Schools Support Classroom Teachers in Tackling Issues of Sustainability” study published in Teacher Education Quarterly was a perfect fit for what my group is attempting to do with the Maury River Middle School Eco Council. What the study aimed to look for was to look at the work of an organization that works to support teacher’s efforts in the ever growing and more important movement of Environmental Education. Their goal was to “promote the development of responsive and active citizens who are invested in environmental issues and situations, and who are empowered by their ownership of knowledge and skills”. What the essay describes is what the 10 design principles of Expeditionary Learning in schools are. The research promotes and explores sustainable school practices through specific case studies of how expeditionary learning promoted environmental based education and impact student experience and work. This essay provides the necessary theoretical framework needed for our project at Maury River Middle School as it creates the basis for the learning experiences for teachers and for students. It integrates environment education for sustainable development into our proposal and how we seek to see it through. The model provided will let us build an assignment grounded in peer reviewed research that will better enable us to produce quality work. The best way to show these frameworks is to integrate them into our own project. What this will look like is creating an assignment that fulfills the core requirements that expeditionary learning in environmental education tries to instill. The essay shows the importance of teachers engaging in field research in environmental education. In our project what that could mean is that instead of having teachers simply guide discussions, they too should participate as a model for what quality work looks like in environmental education.
Works Cited
Riordan, Meg Klein, J. Emily ““Environmental Education in Action: How Expeditionary Learning Schools Support Classroom Teachers in Tackling Issues of Sustainability”. Teacher Education Quarterly. 2010
Sam,
You’ve chosen a relevant article, and offered a helpful summary that engages interest in reading this article concerning quality teacher practices. Still, after reading I’m not quite sure how you will evaluate or connect its findings with your partner classroom. Which specific practices will you highlight from the study? How will you use their qualitative evidence to engage or ask questions of your partner teacher when you send it to her? Your final sentence seems significant for that purpose, but she should be your immediate audience here-how might you redirect towards Ms. Sheffield or Ms. Staton as primary reader?
For your revision due this Thursday,April 9, I’d recommend returning to specific claims/ evidence in the article, and the guiding steps I gave you in the prompt for structure. I’d also recommend reviewing for word choice, repetition in sentence flow and spelling (field). If you have any questions, I’ll be available in virtual office hours on discussion board Tues, or you can make an appt. to zoom conference with me sometime Tues am.
MAJ Hodde