Earth Education: Magical Learning Adventures for Living More Lightly

Earth Education aims to help people live more harmoniously and joyously with the natural world. Beginning with Steve Van Matre’s ground-breaking Acclimatization work in the 1970s, earth education focuses on creating holistic programs that include helping learners construct ecological understandings, develop positive feelings, and take personal action. In contrast with approaches that infuse environmental ideas and messages into other programs or experiences, earth education takes uses a programmatic approach in which programs are framed as magical learning adventures that start where the learners are, engage them in active learning in contact with the natural world, and extend outdoor experiences to their lives back at school and home. Research on earth education programs have found consistent positive effects on participants’ ecological knowledge, environmental attitudes and values, and behaviors and actions. This chapter describes the development of earth education, examines the learning framework and structure of the programs, including a vignette of one program in action, and reviews the research literature. In the last part, the chapter critically reflects on the affordances, challenges, and opportunities of earth education.