Yesterday, I wrote about this minute from a strategic research group meeting:
"Group agreed that there was no meaningful way to delineate between outdoor learning, environmental education and learning in natural environments, and that all were relevant and useful ways of teaching and learning to support wider Education for Sustainable Development."
... and I persuaded myself that it could be meaningful to delineate between outdoor learning / learning in natural environments (on the one hand) and environmental education (on the other). This was because environmental education had, one way or another, a purpose relating to the environment and / or nature. In other words, it's inherently teleological whereas the other two are not.
So far, so good (I think), but what about the rest of the statement which I'm summarising as:
" ... outdoor learning, environmental education and learning in natural environments ... [are all] relevant and useful ways of teaching and learning to support wider Education for Sustainable Development."
Well, I suppose my first objection is that there's no need to introduce a piece of contested jargon into this debate. Secondly, and much more significantly, it's not Education for Sustainable Development that is being supported by all this; rather it's learners and their learning. Thus we might write"
" ... outdoor learning, environmental education and learning in natural environments ... [are all] relevant and useful ways of helping people learn about the natural world and people's relationships with it and with each other."
Although I think I'd rewrite this as:
"In their different ways, environmental education, outdoor learning, learning in natural environments, global learning, etc are all relevant and useful ways of helping people learn about the natural world, people's dependency on it, their troubled relationships with it, and with each other."
Not everyone would include the last of these – but I would as it seems to me that human disputes have grave social and environmental consequences.
There's more on all this next week as my thoughts turn to GEEP.
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