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Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

Mary Breunig

Abstract

What ought and can be done about environmental degradation is contested and relates to opinions regarding fundamental cause(s). One of the solutions commonly suggested is education. One particular educational initiative in Ontario is the integrated Environmental Studies Programs (ESPs), wherein environmental topics are integrated into a holistic and interdisciplinary curriculum model taught at the secondary school level to students who register for a “package” of courses and spend the full semester with one to two teachers and a single student cohort (Russell & Burton, 2000; Sharpe & Breunig, 2009). The full-day cohort structure of ESPs provides for environmentally related experiential learning opportunities such as extended outdoor field trips or field study camps, volunteering, co-op placements and service learning with environmental organizations, and investigations of local environmental issues and processes. The intent of integrated ESPs–that learning be grounded in authentic “real world” experiences and provide students with opportunities for critical and holistic thinking–is a good example of a socially critical approach to environmental education and one that provides the foundation for this study.

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