Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T04:19:15.768Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Developments & Challenges in Australian Environmental Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Peter J. Fensham
Peter J. Fensham*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This year of 1990 is an appropriate time to review the place of environmental education in the Australian school curriculum. After a period in the mid 1980s when environmental issues and political attention to the environment were on the back burner in comparison with economic issues, the environment is again a top international political priority. With Green victories in a number of European elections, even the hitherto unmindful Thatcher government in Britain is claiming an environmental concern and announcing several conservation measures, albeit with rather distant targets compared with a number of their prospective partners in Europe.

The Hawke government in its third term sensed a growing environmental disenchantment among its supporters, and appointed one of its heavy-weights to the Environment portfolio. This move, and the strong action he took over several sensitive issues, were enough to keep the Green preferences in line and ensure in 1990 a fourth, unprecedented Labor term of office.

The first Australian government involving official Green support appeared in Tasmania and in most of the other states the governments have upgraded Conservation and the Environment among their ministries.

Most Australians, according to a poll conducted late in May (The Age, 15 June, 1990), feel that the threat to the environment is real, and that its protection should be put ahead of economic growth. Such strong public support for the environment would have been unthinkable a decade ago, even though the evidence for much of the now widely recognised damage to the Australian and global environment was available.

Type
Research Article
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 6 , 1990 , pp. 15 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

References

CERI “Environment and School Initiatives”. A report of a project on the teaching and learning of environmental issues in primary and secondary schools, Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, O.E.C.D., Paris, 1988.Google Scholar
Holman, J. (ed.), “Science-Technology-Society Special Issue”, International Journal of Science Education, 10(4), 1988.Google Scholar
Hunt, G. “From Ideas to Reality: Establishing Environmental Education in Victorian Government Schools”, Curriculum Perspectives, 10(2), 1990, pp. 56–60.Google Scholar
Lucas, A. “Disciplinarity and Environmental Education”, Chap. 11, pp. 179–192 in Linke, R. (ed.), Education and the Human Environment, Curriculum Development Centre, Canberra, 1977.Google Scholar
Robottom, I. “Contestation and Consensus in Environmental Education”, Curriculum Perspectives, 7(1), 1987, pp. 23–28.Google Scholar