Teacher Inservice/Workshop: Reaching the Student's Affective Domain in Environmental Values Education

Abstract

Increasingly, research in environmental education has shown that in order to guide a student toward more environmently sound decision making, lessons should be designed that not only increase the student's "environmental knowledge" but also instill in them a sense of delight and wonder for the natural environment. Students need to "feel" the reason for protecting the environment - not just know it. The inservice/workshop, which is the focus of this paper, was designed to introduce K-12 teachers, in the Tomah, Wisconsin School District, to the need for an affective teaching approach to environmental values education (EVE). The inservice was held on two consecutive Tuesdays; each session was two hours in length. The first two hour block was focused on discussing the need for affective education and on various EVE teaching strategies. In the second two hour block, affective/EVE resources were reviewed and participants developed an EVE lesson plan utilizing one or several of the value education strategies. As a result of the inservice, three EVE lesson plans were generated. These lesson plans will become part of an interdisciplinary affective/EVE resource guide to be developed as the result of this and future inservice /workshops.