Pedagogy of Environmental Studies
What happens when a student or a child grows lettuce or a coriander herb or a mint in their pot, watch them grow green, fresh and organic, and then harvest the share in preparing a salad, or a summer beverage, out of it? This incentive they have brought wholly to themselves will foster their whims to bring them pleasure, bring curiosity and interest, and draw their attention. As a teacher, I strongly believe a role of an environment educationist is to become a conduit in serving the purpose of ‘Environmentalism.’ Moreover, it should cultivate learning at several levels of consciousness. It needs strategies and methodologies that will inculcate confidence in a student. Should they only aim to make them aware of the policies and politics, rather a question to themselves on their role at bringing and being a change for the environment? This needs strategies and methodologies that will foster a child’s and student's confidence, independent of any policy or act to protocol. It is challenging for the teachers to master the pedagogies that will help preserve the student-centric approach to environmental issues.
Environmental education for
undergraduate studies in India is prepared to keep in view the University Grant
Commission (UGC) curriculum requirements under 'choice-based credit system'
(CBCS) for all the universities in 2011-2012. The draft of the curriculum was
prepared to implement a three-year undergraduate degree program in the
environment. However, presently in the absentia of a three-year program,
environmental education is imparted as Ability Enhancement Compulsory Course
(AECC), Environmental Studies under CBCS for one semester (six months). Thus,
Environmental Studies forms a mandatory part of the undergraduates' curriculum
of every department in Delhi University.
In two years of teaching
experience, I realized the importance of dynamism and creativity, which is
necessary to engage teacher and pupil in searching for solutions to
environmental problems. This developed a keen interest in searching for
sensitizing strategies that at once will enable the students to unite them with
the growing desire for action towards a sustainable and safer world. To convey
the ethico-social responsibility of the students towards an environment, it has
become important to embrace the pedagogy that goes beyond traditional and
conventional ways of imparting it. This involves creating strategies that are
simple, innovative, natural, penetrable, relatable, inter-disciplinary, and
inter-cultural. The aim is to transcend responsibility and care
ethics from more personal to social values and further to environmental values
through critical inquiry. I believe there is an urgency to understand the
various dimensions of environmental pedagogies. However, the hectic mainstream
curriculum and the current theoretical structure has impeded the alignment of
environmental studies with the critical inquiry into socio-political-economic
narratives. The curriculum-centric discourses have restricted the essence of
‘environmentalism’ to the superficiality that is limited to providing highly context-specific information.
References:
Comments
Post a Comment