Engaging Imagination in Ecological Education: Practical Strategies for Teaching

Engaging Imagination in Ecological Education illustrates how to connect students to the natural world and encourage them to care about a more sustainable, ecologically secure planet. Cultivating ecological understanding can be more challenging for teachers than simply imparting knowledge of ecological issues; it requires reimagining the human world as part of, not apart from, nature.

Describing the key principles of an approach to teaching called Imaginative Ecological Education (IEE), this book offers a practical guide for all teachers (K–12). It is designed for use with any curriculum to give students opportunities to engage their bodies, emotions, and imaginations in the world around them, thereby making learning meaningful.

Engaging Imagination in Ecological Education includes:

• tried-and-tested unit plans created in an outdoor, place-based, and Imaginative Ecological Education school;
• two step-by-step examples—using units on weather and literacy—of how curricula can be shaped with tools of the imagination to cultivate ecological understanding; and
• guidelines for implementing IEE in any school setting—urban, suburban, or rural—and resources that educators can use to transform their teaching.

“I know of no other ecologically oriented books that have the immediacy that this one has. Its enormous virtue is that it speaks directly to the students and teachers who will use it.” —Clyde Coreil, Director of the Center for the Imagination in Language Learning, New Jersey City University