Learner-centered teaching activities for environmental and sustainability studies / edited by Loren B. Byrne.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Byrne, Loren B., Editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Student-centered learning.

Active learning.

Effective teaching.

Classroom environment.

Sustainability.

Sustainable Development.

Learning & Instruction.

Science Education.

Literacy.

Local Subjects:

Sustainable Development.

Learning & Instruction.

Science Education.

Literacy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xx, 322 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Cham : Springer, 2016.

Summary:

Learner-centered teaching is a pedagogical approach that emphasizes the roles of students as participants in and drivers of their own learning. Learner-centered teaching activities go beyond traditional lecturing by helping students construct their own understanding of information, develop skills via hands-on engagement, and encourage personal reflection through metacognitive tasks. In addition, learner-centered classroom approaches may challenge students’ preconceived notions and expand their thinking by confronting them with thought-provoking statements, tasks or scenarios that cause them to pay closer attention and cognitively “see” a topic from new perspectives. Many types of pedagogy fall under the umbrella of learner-centered teaching including laboratory work, group discussions, service and project-based learning, and student-led research, among others. Unfortunately, it is often not possible to use some of these valuable methods in all course situations given constraints of money, space, instructor expertise, class-meeting and instructor preparation time, and the availability of prepared lesson plans and material. Thus, a major challenge for many instructors is how to integrate learner-centered activities widely into their courses. The broad goal of this volume is to help advance environmental education practices that help increase students’ environmental literacy. Having a diverse collection of learner-centered teaching activities is especially useful for helping students develop their environmental literacy because such approaches can help them connect more personally with the material thus increasing the chances for altering the affective and behavioral dimensions of their environmental literacy. This volume differentiates itself from others by providing a unique and diverse collection of classroom activities that can help students develop their knowledge, skills and personal views about many contemporary environmental and sustainability issues. .

Contents:

Introduction

Which is Most Sustainable? Using Everyday Objects to Examine Trade-offs among the “Three Pillars” of Sustainability

An Introduction to Systems Thinking using Plastic Dinosaurs

An Introductory Examination of Worldviews and Why They Matter For Environmental and Sustainability Studies

Building Resilience: Modeling Resilience Concepts Using Legos

Eco-Crimes and Eco-Redemptions: Discussing the Challenges and Opportunities of Personal Sustainability

Engaging with Complexity: Exploring the Terrain of Leadership for Sustainability

Discovering Authentic Hope: Helping Students Reflect on Learning and Living with Purpose

Teaching How Scientific Consensus is Developed through Simplified Meta-analysis of Peer-reviewed Literature

Understanding Ecosystems and Their Services through Apollo 13 and Bottle Models

Using Soil Organisms to Explore Ecosystem Functioning, Services, and Sustainability

Fire, Pollution and Grazing, Oh My! A Game in which Native and Invasive Plants Compete under Multiple Disturbance Regimes

Exploring Trophic Cascades in Lake Food Webs with a Spreadsheet Model

Ants, Elephants, and Experimental Design: Understanding Science and Examining Connections between Species Interactions and Ecosystem Processes

Teaching Lyme Disease Ecology Through a Primary-Literature Jigsaw Activity

A Fisheries Activity to Examine the Tragedy of the Common Goldfish Cracker

Making Biodiversity Stewardship Tangible using a Place-based Approach

Conservation Triage: Debating Which Species to Save and Why

Everything Cannot Be Equal: Ranking Priorities and Revealing Worldviews to Guide Watershed Management

Location, Location, Location! Analyzing Residential Development in Environmentally-Fragile Areas

Tasting Sustainability: Using Multi-sensory Activities to Retune Food Preferences

Relationships between Consumption and Sustainability: Assessing the Effect of Life Cycle Costs on Market Price

Business Sustainability and the Triple Bottom Line: Considering the Interrelationships of People, Profit, and Planet

A Triple-Bottom-Line Analysis of Energy Efficient Lighting

Go with the Flow: Analyzing Energy Use and Efficiency in the U.S

Exploring Complexities of Energy Options through a Jigsaw Activity

Introducing the Conflicting Meanings of “Justice” Using a Candy-distribution Exercise

Beyond Band-Aids: Using Systems Thinking to Assess Environmental Justice

Engaging the Empathic Imagination to Explore Environmental Justice

Helping Students Envision Justice in the Sustainable City

Social-ecological Systems Mapping to Enhance Students’ Understanding of Community-Scale Conflicts Related to Industrial Pollution

The Skies, the Limits: Assessing the Benefits and Drawbacks of Tighter U.S. Soot Emission Standards

Don’t Blame the Trees: Using Data to Examine how Trees Contribute to Air Pollution

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Green Roofs: A Case Study for Literature Research and Critical Thinking

The Story of Source Reliability: Practicing Research and Evaluation Skills Using “The Story of Stuff” Video

Critically Evaluating Non-scholarly Sources through Team-Based Learning

Using the Insights, Questions and Challenges (IQC) Framework to Improve Students’ Environmental Communication Skills

Building Students’ Communication Skills and Understanding of Environmental and Sustainability Issues Interactively and Cumulatively with Pecha Kucha Presentations

Engaging in Climate Change Conversations: A Role-Playing Exercise to Cultivate Effective Communication

Writing Letters to the Editor to Promote Environmental Citizenship and Improve Student Writing

Captioning Political Cartoons from Different Perspectives as a Tool for Student Reflection

Analyzing Nature as a Persuasive Tool in Advertisements

Making and Assessing Art in the Sustainability Classroom.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

3-319-28543-2