Environmental education in a rural setting: the role of teachers in dissemination

Extract

For many schools, environmental education constitutes a curriculum innovation in that it represents a challenge to existing teaching and curriculum practice. An innovation issue frequently neglected in environmental education is the spread of messages about the innovation within and between schools. This neglect is often apparent in the case of environmental education materials developed at sites away from the school. In such cases, great care is taken to develop a useful curriculum resource, and to distribute it from central development site to school classrooms. For example, when the Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) produced its recent environmental education materials, the Environmental Education Project, it sought to disseminate the innovation by fostering sales through such strategies as the mailing of promotional leaflets to all schools, conducting state and national launchings, providing cost-free review copies to subject associations and the like, and advertisements. However, the exchange of ideas about the innovation from practising teacher to practising teacher is more difficult to organise from outside the school.