K-12 Environmental Education in the United States

K-12 Environmental Education
in the United States

In the late 1990s, the North American Association for Environmental
Education and the Environmental Literacy Council commissioned a survey of kindergarten through high school (K-12) teachers concerning environmental education in the United States. The report, entitled “Environmental Studies in the K-12 Classroom: A Teacher’s View,” appeared in 2000. From this survey, we learn that 61.2 percent of the 1,505 teachers who responded to the mailed survey included environmental topics in their curricula. Some two-thirds of the respondents (62.9 percent) taught about the environment fewer than 50 hours per year, a fifth taught 50 to 100 hours, and less than one in five respondents (17 percent) taught more than 101 hours.

Overall, over 60 percent of teachers of environmental topics were trained in environmental studies and/or ecology, either before or after they became teachers. The most commonly used teaching materials were textbooks (79.1 percent), the library (75.9 percent), and newspapers (74 percent). The specific topics taught by these teachers are tabulated in Table 1.

The survey also explored what methods teachers used to teach about the environment. Their answers are tabulated in Table 2. When asked to indicate the major reason they taught about the environment, 51.1 percent of teachers responding indicated that they hoped to encourage students to be active about the environment, while 22.4 percent wished to demonstrate that what students are learning in class is relevant to everyday life.