Environmental Educators’ Expressions of Personal Environmental Values

• In Event: Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: Values and Identity in Environmental Education

Abstract

The field of environmental education needs research studies that critically examine how Environmental Studies programs at the tertiary level address the value-laden aspects of ecological literacy. This critical ethnography explored the choices faculty made to share or not share their personal environmental values, and the outcomes of those choices in classroom interactions. Faculty views varied on how explicit they wished to be with students about their personal environmental values. These differences produced different outcomes in class. If we are to authentically pose the challenge of examining one’s personal environmental values, beliefs, and identities to students, I argue that as faculty, we must consider how we communicate our own values, beliefs, and identities to students.

Authors

• Nicole Beeman-Cadwallader, Project Lead the Way (PLTW)

• Gayle A. Buck, Indiana University