Purpose: Universities of Small Island States (SIS) have the potential to fulfill a crucial role in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but also face barriers to local capacity building. The University of Aruba partly addresses these challenges through the development of The Academic Foundation Year (AFY), a one-year…

This paper presents findings from a research study exploring the effectiveness of three environmental education programs. The first was an interpretive program where visitors learned to safely interact with and 'pet' bees (control group), the second was the same interpretive program with the addition of post-visit action resources (interactive…

This study examines the efficacy of a novel college sustainability course in promoting relevant environmental knowledge and interest in careers related to environmental aspects within the Taiwanese educational context. The core content of the course covers the essential concepts of sustainability and introduces students to environmental issues and…

This mixed methods study investigates student learning outcomes from undergraduate STEM and non-STEM courses, employing farm-situated place-based experiential learning (PBEL) modules at a private liberal arts university in the Midwest. Given that these courses occurred during both COVID-19 and U.S. police brutality protests, this study critically…

Forest School, an experiential, nature-based pedagogy is attracting considerable interest in Ireland presently. This paper presents findings from the first national survey of Forest School pedagogy in Ireland, conducted in 2019-2020 as part of a larger study. The aim of the survey was to find out how Forest School pedagogy is understood by adults…

This article centers on the use of place-based education (PBE), an internationally known and employed pedagogy. This yearlong, mixed-methods study centers on a grant-funded program aimed at supporting secondary teachers' implementation of environmental place-based education (PBE), specifically meaningful watershed education experiences (MWEEs).…

This study examined individual and institutional factors impacting the outcomes of sustainability education in a local university in Hong Kong. Adopting a pre- and post-test design, we found students scored 10.25%, 2.69%, and 0.68% higher on environmental knowledge (p = 0.000), environmental dispositions (p = 0.027), and daily conservation…

Ecological learning is enriched when students can apply course content to their own communities and gain an understanding and experience for deploying sustainable practices. Such merging of content, application, and place requires an interdisciplinary approach to grapple with the ecological and cultural issues more holistically that sustainability…

This article considers human embodied relationships with the more-than-human world, in the Swedish forest context, and through a phenomenological approach. The research focuses on lived experiences of being-in-the-forest, starting in the author's experiences, using walk-and-talk conversations as inquiry process with study participants. Analysis…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate an existing environmental education program involving a partnership between formal and nonformal educators. The outcomes of this study support the use of an outdoor field trip as an effective teaching strategy in positively changing students' beliefs about the environment. This study also proposes Kolb's…

Background: Outdoor learning and computer-based learning are two different alternatives to in-class conventional teacher-centered learning. Purpose: This study compares the outdoor learning setting with computer-based learning in class. It examines the influence of the two different learning settings on academic achievements, the learning…

To address the recent calls for integration between liberal arts education and the business curriculum, we designed the team-taught interdisciplinary course, How to Cell: Marketing Meets Microbiology. The course blended multiple introductory courses, focused on environmental issues involving microbiology, and addressed how they were being…

In this article we describe the development, implementation, and some of the early impacts of Nurture thru Nature (NtN), an American after-school and summer program designed to introduce elementary school students in disadvantaged, urban public schools to natural science and environmental education. The program, which began operations in 2010 as a…

Environmental awareness is evaluated related to cognitive and affective areas so it might be considered one of the important points in order to predict environmental behavioural change. One of the behavioural change models is ecological dynamics model (EDM) and this model's characteristics overlap with ecopedagogy-based outdoor experiential…

There is growing global awareness of the importance of what are often labelled as 'natural environments' for human health, well-being and cognitive development. However, fostering learning in such 'natural environments', as they may be differently experienced and understood, requires a review of theoretical and practical approaches in teacher…