What is Environmental Education and What Are Its Components?

Posted on the 04 December 2014 by Rinkesh @ThinkDevGrow

What is Environmental Education?

Environmental Education (EE) is a methodology in which people pick up familiarity with their surroundings and secure learning, abilities, values, experiences, and passion, all of which will empower them to act – separately and aggregately – to take care of present and future environmental issues. It is the study of relationship and interactions between natural and human systems. In short, environmental education is provided so that people can have a better understanding of the world around them and know how to take care of it properly so that the world can be a better place.

According to Wikipedia,

“Environmental education (EE) refers to organized efforts to teach about how natural environments function and, particularly, how human beings can manage their behavior and ecosystems in order to live sustainably. It is a multi-disciplinary field integrating disciplines such as biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, earth science, atmospheric science, mathematics, and geography. The term is often used to imply education within the school system, from primary to post-secondary.”

Environmental education is a complex field, and it covers a variety of different topics that are related to the environment. It even has some aspects of engineering in it, which means that a person can even start to understand how they can play a role in environmental engineering.

Environmental education furnishes individuals with the mindfulness required to build up organizations, comprehend NGO exercises, create participatory methodologies to urban planning, and guarantee future markets for eco-business. All of these are not only good for the environment, but they will also end up being very good for the economy as well, so everyone gets to benefit from the efforts of those who are going through environmental education. EE is taught in schools, communities and in centers like parks, zoos and museums.

Features of Environmental Education (EE)

Environmental Education:

1. Is a learning process that expands individuals’ information and mindfulness about nature’s domain and related difficulties, creates the vital abilities and mastery to address the difficulties, instilled confidence and stewardship and cultivates demeanor, inspirations, and responsibilities to settle on educated choices and make dependable moves in the field that they are working with.

2. Is a inter-disciplinary field that integrates fields such as biology, ecology, earth science, geography, atmospheric science and mathematics because understanding how environment works and keeping it healthy require knowledge and skills from many disciplines.

3. Includes all efforts to make general public aware of the knowledge of the environment and environmental challenges through print materials, media, brochures, bulletins, videos, or other media techniques.

4. Leads to responsible individual and group actions.

5. Provides information about specific environmental concerns or problems to the general public instead of specific group, religion or community.

6. Works to help you think critically, so that you aren’t sitting there trying to fit everything into a neat little box.

7. Involves students in different data-gathering techniques that help them to discuss, analyze, predict and interpret data about environmental issues.

8. Is study centered, promotes higher level thinking skills and relevant to student’s everyday lives.

9. Allows people to discuss about complex environment problems that has no simple answers.

10. Is a process in which individuals gain information environmental awareness and acquire knowledge, skills, values, experiences, and  determination which can help them to solve different environmental problems.

By being passionate about keeping the world around them safe, people will be more likely to apply their particular education to what they are doing, and they will work to take care of the world around them while they are building their company or organization up.

Environmental instruction upgrades basic analyzation, critical thinking, and compelling choice making abilities, and instructs people to weigh different sides of an environmental issue on order to settle on educated and capable choices. Environmental education does not advocate a specific perspective or game plan; instead, it allows you to make your own choices.

In short, it will help you look at any situation that you may be in and it will assist you in being able to make a decision that is beneficial for the environment. With a background in environmental education, you will have the environment at the forefront of your mind, so whatever plan you end up making, you will be able to adapt it so that it is more environmentally friendly and savvy.

Components of Environmental Education

There are a number of different parts to environmental education. The most common segments of environmental education that you will come across during your studies can include the following:

  • Awareness and Mindfulness: Mindfulness and affectability to nature’s turf and environmental difficulties that you may encounter as a result of being in the corporate sector today.
  • Knowledge and Learning: Learning and understanding of nature and environmental difficulties that are holding people back and/or causing the world to change in negative ways.
  • Attitudes: Disposition of sympathy toward nature’s domain and inspiration to enhance or keep up environmental quality, which will spill over into any plans that you make or anything else that you do that is related to the organization that you currently are working in or developing.
  • Skills: Aptitudes to recognize and help resolve environmental difficulties in a practical manner that matches up with the current trends and technologies that are out there today.
  • Participation: Investment in programs and projects that help reduce the effect of environmental difficulties, this making sure that the money you’re investing is going to help the environment instead of harming it.

So, environmental education is actually an incredibly important part of running a business, company, or organization. Without this vital component, companies would be a lot more reckless with natural resources and/or the land that they are using in order to move their company forward.

It empowers an individual, community, organization to enhance their decision making skill by weighing various sides of an issue and not advocating a particular viewpoint or action. With environmental education, you can be sure that your staff will be more mindful of the environment around them and that they will be more savvy when it comes to making plans that are more environmentally friendly and beneficial.

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kasberry14 , hopefoote