The most important discoveries of the 20th century exist not in the realm of science, medicine, or technology, but rather in the dawning awareness of the earth's limits and how those limits will affect human evolution. Humanity has reached a crossroad where various ecological catastrophes meet what some call sustainable development. While a great deal of attention has been given to what governments, corporations, utilities, international agencies, and private citizens can do to help in the transition to sustainability, little thought has been given to what schools, colleges, and universities can do. Ecological Literacy asks how the discovery of finiteness affects the content and substance of education. Given the limits of the earth, what should people know and how should they learn it?

This open access volume is a call for ecological awareness and action through communication. It offers perspectives on how we, as humans, posit ourselves in relation to, and as part of, the environment in both verbal and non-verbal discourse. The contributions investigate a variety of situated communicative practices and how they instantiate and potentially influence our actions. Through the frameworks of ecolinguistics, multimodal studies and ecoliteracy, the book discusses how the environmental crisis is communicated as an urgent global and local issue in a variety of media, texts and events. The contributions present a wide range of case studies (including news articles, institutional websites, artwork installations, promotional texts, signposting, social campaigns and other), and they explore how communicative actions can help meet the challenges of ecologically-oriented change. The focus is on the impact that linguistic and multimodal communication can have on acting in, with and towards the environment seen as living ecosystems, or 'lifescapes'. The chapters offer a reflection on the way we experience, endorse, reframe and resist value systems in ecological communication, and propose alternative and healthier perspectives to respect and preserve the common and nurturing lifescapes through awareness and action. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

In the aftermath of global environmental challenges, the urgent need for comprehensive environmental education has never been more evident. As our planet grapples with the ramifications of climate change, there is a critical gap in empowering educators and students to actively engage with these issues on a global scale. The lack of effective classroom strategies, national policies, and collaborative initiatives hinders the development of the next generation to address environmental issues and contribute to sustainable solutions. Cases on Collaborative Experiential Ecological Literacy for K-12 Education is a groundbreaking book, a beacon of hope, and a comprehensive solution to the pressing environmental education gap. It uniquely reports on experiential projects that have successfully empowered teachers and students across all academic levels worldwide. The book's compelling narratives, reflections, and empirical research serve as a roadmap, illustrating how direct experiences can profoundly influence environmental literacy. By providing insights into effective classroom strategies, national policies, and global collaborative initiatives, this book provides educators and students with the tools to not only understand environmental issues but actively contribute to solutions.

This text presents the key concepts of environmental science for those who are not natural scientists. It offers a way to improve environmental literacy - the capacity to understand the connections between humans and their environment. There are reading lists for each topic covered.

To prepare today's students to meet growing global environmental challenges, colleges and universities must make environmental literacy a core learning goal for all students, in all disciplines. But what should an environmentally literate citizen know? What teaching and learning strategies are most effective in helping students think critically about human-environment interactions and sustainability, and integrate what they have learned in diverse settings? Educators from the natural and social sciences and the humanities discuss the critical content, skills, and affective qualities essential to environmental literacy. This volume is an invaluable resource for developing integrated, campus-wide programs to prepare students to think critically about, and to work to create, a sustainable society.

Environmental education has often blurred the distinction between ecological science and environmental advocacy. Growing public awareness of environmental problems and desire for action may be contributing to this blurring. There is a need to clarify the distinction between the role of ecological science and the role of social and political values for the environment within environmental education. This book addresses this need by examining the changing perspectives of ecology in education and the changing perspectives of education in environmental education. Guidelines are provided for assessing the science and education perspectives within environmental education, along with suggested frameworks for development of programs and resources that integrate current science, education and action. This book will be of interest to environmental educators, ecologists interested in environmental education, and curriculum and resource developers.

Design, Ecology, Politics links social and ecological theory to design theory and practice, critiquing the ways in which the design industry perpetuates unsustainable development. Boehnert argues that when design does engage with issues of sustainability, this engagement remains shallow, due to the narrow basis of analysis in design education and theory. The situation is made more severe by design cultures which claim to be apolitical. Where design education fails to recognise the historical roots of unsustainable practice, it reproduces old errors. New ecologically informed design methods and tools hold promise only when incorporated into a larger project of political change. Design, Ecology, Politics describes how ecological literacy challenges many central assumptions in design theory and practice. By bringing design, ecology and socio-political theory together, Boehnert describes how power is constructed, reproduced and obfuscated by design in ways which often cause environmental harms. She uses case studies to illustrate how communication design functions to either conceal or reveal the ecological and social impacts of current modes of production. The transformative potential of design is dependent on deep-reaching analysis of the problems design attempts to address. Ecologically literate and critically engaged design is a practice primed to facilitate the creation of viable, sustainable and just futures. With this approach, designers can make sustainability not only possible, but attractive.

Ecocomposition examines current trends in universities toward more environmentally sound work, explores the intersections between composition research—that is, discourse studies—and ecostudies, and offers possible pedagogies for the composition classroom. Never before have the intersections between ecotheory and composition studies in theory and pedagogy been addressed in this much depth or detail. As universities become increasingly concerned with issues of the environment within academic disciplines across the spectrum, this book brings together a diverse group of prominent voices to discuss the development of ecocomposition and its possibilities, and to argue for a greening of composition studies through which to engage the world in which we live.

Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Environments? What is enacted when we engage with these ideas? This book provides a variety of international perspectives from the traditional fields of science and technology education as teachers (primary through tertiary), teacher educators, and academic researchers engage with this topic.