Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemEnvironmental education in Australia: phenomenon of the seventies: a case study in national curriculum development( 1980)This study examined the evolving conceptions of environmental education during the period 1970-1979. The development of environmental education in Australia during this decade is explored in the social and educational context against a theoretical form of an environmental education curriculum. Through a case study approach, the study focused on the 1975 Australian National Commission for Unesco Seminar on 'Education and the Human Environment'. This permitted a detailed examination of the impact of the Seminar on the actions of the new national Curriculum Development Centre. The origins and development of environmental education in Australia at the Curriculum Development Centre are explored at different levels: as a sequence of events in time and space; as a response to social, economic and educational pressures and as a product of individual initiative and action. During the period under study, environmental education in the school curriculum came to be seen as concerned with critical social analysis much more than with just increasing the environmental content or facts in courses. Action and social concern became more important. Proponents of environmental education were out to change the legitimate knowledge or common sense of the schools. However they failed to analyse the way that school knowledge is socially constructed and validated. What they were implying was 'counter-hegemonic' to the action of Australian schools. Environmental education is examined as a phenomenon and its future in Australian schools is discussed.