Module 10:

ECOLITERACY
 Learning Outcomes
1. Explain ecoliteracy in developing a sustainable environment
2. Discuss the seven environmental principles of nature
3. Describe a green school
4. Articulate how ecoliteracy can be integrated in the curriculum, practiced in the
school, and demonstrated in the classroom
5. Draw relevant life lessons and significant values from a personal experience on
initiating or participating in an environmental activity
6. Analyze a research abstract on ecoliteracy and its implication to teaching-
learning process
7. Make a community service action plan on environmental care and protection.
Ecoliteracy and Sustainable Development
Ecoliteracy and Sustainable Development

• Ecoliteracy emphasizes understanding ecological systems and the interaction

of society with nature as a crucial aspect of education.
• Principles of ecoliteracy serve as a foundation for learning from nature to
reform society (Wahl, 2017).
• David Orr highlighted the importance of integrating ecological perspectives in
education to emphasize the interdependence between natural processes and
human life.
• Ecoliteracy involves comprehending natural system organization and
processes that sustain life on Earth.
• It is the first step towards sustainability, followed by ecodesign, which involves
redesigning technologies and institutions based on ecological knowledge (Capra,
2003).
• Sustainability is both qualitative and quantitative, indicating the human ability to
survive over time within the ecosystem's carrying capacity.
• Ecological literacy fosters integrated thinking about sustainability, guiding ethical
practices and prioritizing ecological imperatives.
• Addressing ecological illiteracy and challenging cultural assumptions are essential
to combat unsustainable practices that harm the ecosystem's ability to support life.
• Ecoliteracy aims to replace fragmented thinking with new cognitive and social
capacities for designing sustainable lifestyles.
Ecologically Literate Person and Society
Ecologically Literate Person and Society

• An ecologically literate person can apply their understanding to design sustainable

communities and foster a regenerative culture.
• Being ecoliterate involves comprehending the organization of ecological
communities and using this knowledge to create sustainable human communities.
• An ecologically literate individual recognizes the balance between independence
and interconnectedness within living systems.
• Ecoliterate individuals take conscious actions to minimize negative impacts on
life-sustaining systems and enhance collective well-being for present and future
generations.
• An ecologically literate society is sustainable, preserving the natural
environment crucial for its existence.
• Ecological literacy forms the basis for an integrated approach to environmental
issues, promoting sustainability and holistic thinking.
• Advocates view eco-literacy as a key component of educational reform,
emphasizing holism, systems thinking, sustainability, and complexity.
• Nurturing ecological literacy in students of all ages is a central objective of
sustainability education programs globally.
Ways to Develop Ecoliteracy in Schools
Ways to Develop Ecoliteracy in Schools

• Educators aim to cultivate socially and emotionally engaged ecoliteracy in students to

address ecological challenges and combat feelings of fear, anger, and hopelessness.
• Socially and emotionally engaged ecoliteracy integrates emotional, social, and
ecological intelligence to enhance students' understanding of natural systems and
empathy for all life forms.
• Ecoliteracy promotes reduced behavioral problems and increased academic
achievement by fostering social and emotional learning.
Practices to develop ecoliteracy in schools include:
1. Developing empathy for all forms of life by recognizing common needs and showing genuine concern for
the well-being of other organisms.
2. Embracing sustainability as a community practice to understand interdependence and strengthen
relationships through cooperative thinking and actions.
3. Making the invisible visible by utilizing web-based tools to highlight aspects that may seem invisible,
promoting life-affirming ways of living.
4. Anticipating unintended consequences by teaching strategies such as the precautionary principle and
adopting a systems thinking perspective to analyze interconnected components of problems.
5. Understanding how nature sustains life by learning from nature's complexity, interconnectedness, and the
importance of fulfilling present needs while supporting nature's ability to sustain life in the future.
Seven Environmental Principles of Nature
 Seven Environmental Principles of Nature

• Understanding environmental problems requires learning about ecosystems, best appreciated in schools
through practical and relatable perspectives.
• Basic environmental principles of ecosystems include

1. Nature knows best: Understanding and abiding by natural processes.

2. All forms of life are important: Recognizing the value of every organism in maintaining balance.
3. Everything is connected: Interactions within ecosystems ensure sustainability.
4. Everything changes: Rethinking relationships with the environment for positive changes.
5. Everything must go somewhere: Managing waste to avoid negative impacts.
6. Ours is a finite earth: Acknowledging limited resources and promoting recycling.
7. Nature is beautiful: Humans are stewards of the environment, responsible for its care.
Towards a Green School and Education
for Sustainable Development
 Towards a Green School and Education
for Sustainable Development

• Schools play a crucial role in fostering academic development and instilling environmental ethics and
care for nature among students.
• The school environment should actively promote and support students' understanding of green practices
integrated into the curriculum and instruction.
• Encouraging students to connect with their surroundings, prioritize health and safety, and develop a sense
of belongingness and sensitivity towards the environment, society, and the planet.
• Addressing environmental issues effectively requires collective efforts from staff and students to adopt
environmentally sustainable principles at all levels of school operations, from planning to execution,
leading to the establishment of a Green School.
Green School: The concept and
background
 Green School: The concept and
background
• The concept of Green School emerged in Europe in the 1990s, with a focus on sustainability and
environmental education.
• The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 highlighted the importance of addressing human impacts on the
environment, leading to a shift towards educating for sustainability.
• The World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 emphasized the need to meet present needs
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
• The United Nations launched the 'Decade of Education for Sustainable Development' in 2005 to integrate
sustainable development principles into education and promote behavior for a more sustainable future.
• The objective is to enhance teaching and learning for Education for Sustainable Development by
reorienting formal education practices and approaches.
 Green Schools and ESD
• Green Schools are institutions guided by environmental sustainability principles, aiming to utilize
resources efficiently and educate teachers and students on environmental issues through community
involvement.
• These schools involve continuous efforts from all stakeholders to enhance the school environment
and surroundings.
• Students benefit from hands-on learning experiences outside the classroom, gaining practical
knowledge, life skills, and developing attitudes and values towards environmental concerns.
• Green Schools promote environmental sensitivity, sustainability, and resource conservation while
providing a safe, secure, and supportive environment for students' physical, mental, and emotional
well-being.
 Essential aspects of Green School
Environment
• A Green School environment features clean, healthy, and green surroundings that promote physical
and psycho-social health.
• It ensures a safe, hygienic, and healthy learning environment with practices such as providing health
services, safe drinking water, and maintaining cleanliness.
• A Green School brings students closer to nature, involves them in environmental care, and fosters a
school community that engages in critical thinking and collaborative efforts for a sustainable future.
A Green School follows three key precepts:
1. Learning about the environment: Emphasizes acquiring knowledge and understanding of the
surroundings and related issues.
2. Learning through the environment: Involves learning processes while engaging with the
environment both inside and outside the classroom.
3. Learning for the environment: Focuses on developing an informed response and
responsibility towards the environment beyond just acquiring skills and knowledge.
 Understanding Green Curriculum

The aspects of Green Curriculum include:

1. Embracing the multidisciplinary and dynamic nature of the environment with scientific, social,
economic, political, and technological dimensions.
2. Viewing the environment holistically to understand its operations, alterations due to human actions,
and consequences.
3. Addressing sustainability concerns comprehensively, including protection of natural resources, cultural
heritage, safety, health, equity, and justice.
4. Involving a teaching-learning approach that allows students to explore various environmental facets
and their interconnections.
5. Being a shared concern of both teachers and students in promoting environmental education and
awareness.
 Creating a Green School

A Green School is a school that creates a healthy environment conducive to learning while saving energy,
environmental resources, and money.

Creating a Green School involves:

1. Reducing environmental impacts and costs.
2. Improving occupants' health and performance.
3. Increasing environmental and sustainability literacy.
 Characteristics of a Green School

1. Protecting health through features like better ventilation and green building materials.
2. Increasing student performance by up to 20% in green classrooms.
3. Saving energy and money with reduced operating costs by 20% to 40%.
4. Reducing carbon emissions significantly.
5. Decreasing water usage by 32% on average.
6. Improving teacher retention and reducing turnover by up to 5%.
7. Enhancing daily attendance and reducing absenteeism by 15%.
8. Providing unique educational opportunities through green features and technology.
9. Creating green jobs in areas like construction and architecture.
10.Improving equity by enhancing health and educational settings for all students.
Dark Green School Program: Philippine
Environmental Perspective
 Dark Green School Program: Philippine
Environmental Perspective

• The Dark Green School (DGS) program in the Philippines focuses on delivering Environmental
Education through incorporating environmental philosophy into formal lessons and extracurricular
activities.
• Schools under the DGS program must:
a. be clean and neat as evidence of good management and housekeeping.
b. call for green spaces, appropriate land use, planning, conservation of materials and energy, proper waste
management, segregation, use of appropriate materials and avoidance of harmful ones and respect to
others' right to a smoke-free air.
c. have management policies and guidelines that would create a healthful and ecological campus.
d. have a well-planned environmental curriculum for all levels, adequately oriented and trained faculty, and
administrative, library and financial support.
e. have faculty and students who are aware of and appreciate the environmental program of the school.
f. reach out to an outside community to spread concern for Mother Earth and facilitate projects and
programs that improve the environment.
g. engage in research that adds knowledge in the ways of nature and the impact of human activities.
Ecological Living Practices
 Ecological Living Practices

• Sustainable ecological living principles involve understanding basic life facts such as matter cycling,
energy flow from the sun, diversity, waste as food, and networking for life's success.
• Sustainable development encompasses environmental, economic, and social dimensions, addressing the
impacts of human activities on the environment.
• Ecological living enhances understanding of interconnections and interdependence, empowering
individuals to take concrete actions for a better world.
• Ecological living involves respecting the planet's capacity, acknowledging interconnectedness,
improving relationships, and utilizing human capacities for a sustainable and caring world.
• Practical suggestions for sustainability through ecological living include integrating inner personal
development with outer actions for ecological living.
 Inner ecology (Smitsman, 2014)

1. Become a catalyst of change to help co-create a better world and future.

2. Care for and relate with non-human beings while spending time with nature.
3. Make the most of sustainability crisis that forces us to learn, dream, think, design, act and relate in new
ways.
4. Join the rest around the world in becoming agents of sustainability.
5. Nurture nature by taking care of our body and become aware of our natural body rhythms.
6. Become more energy efficient and learn to recycle our own energy.
7. Learn to compost our own waste and no need to dump this unto others.
8. Become aware of rights, needs and well-being of future generations and explore how we can support
this in our actions.
 Outer ecology (Smitsman, 2014).

1. Educate ourselves about the resources that we, our family and/or organizations utilize to
fulfill and sustain our needs.
2. Reduce, reuse, repurpose and recycle.
3. Be aware of the real price of goods and services that we use. Cheap products often have
hidden costs (e.g. the cost of child- labor, animal cruelty, or degradation of ecosystems).
4. Find out any child labor practices or natural resources that were sacrificed in the process
of producing products and services.
5. Recycle grey-water.
6. Collect and use rainwater.
6. Create an organic vegetable garden.
7. Compost organic waste and use the compost in the garden.
8. Create a garden (with a balance of endemic/indigenous plants) to support local wildlife
(animals, insects, trees and plants).
9. Create a roof garden (green roof) as a natural air-conditioning alternative to increase
garden space.
10. Buy organic and local products as much as possible.
11. Support local businesses and organizations that care for our planet.
Integrating Ecological Literacy into the
Curriculum
 Integrating Ecological Literacy into the
Curriculum

• Integrating ecological literacy into the curriculum involves various teaching strategies to
foster knowledge, skills, and values essential for sustainable living.
• Key strategies include:
1. Place-based Learning
2. Project-based Learning
3. Socratic Inquiry
4. Experiential Learning
5. Interdisciplinary Learning
 1.Place-based Learning
• Engages students in local environments, integrating projects back into classroom lessons and involving
collaboration with the community.
• It adheres to the following principles:
1.1 Place-based projects are integrated back into classroom lessons.
1.2 Students want to learn to apply their knowledge to solving real problems.
1.3 Students play an active role in redefining and recreating projects.
1.4 Students collaborate with local citizens, organizations, agencies, businesses and government.
1.5 Students help make plans that shape the future of their social, physical and economic
environments.
1.6 Students are encouraged to view their community as an ecosystem and to understand the
relationships and processes necessary to support healthy living.
 2. Project-based Learning
• Involves students in projects utilizing various resources like the community, technology, experts,
written materials, and the Web, with the teacher as a facilitator.
• Research indicates its impact on learners, including increased critical thinking skills, positive attitudes
towards subjects, improved study habits, problem-solving abilities, and self-esteem.
• Has environmental impacts like habitat restoration, agricultural evolution modeling, and promoting
changes in school food practices.
 3. Socratic Inquiry
• Named after Socrates, this strategy emphasizes questioning to stimulate learning rather than providing
answers.
• Teachers encourage students to question assumptions, values, and preconceptions, shifting the role
from direct instruction to facilitating discussions.
• Through skilled questioning, students clarify beliefs, enhance critical thinking, improve listening
skills, articulate thoughts effectively, and become more tolerant of diverse opinions.
 4. Experiential Learning
• Promotes real-world involvement and active learning, essential for sustainability education.
• Principles of learning associated with environmental literacy:
4.1 Experiential learning is vital to schooling for sustainability.
4.2 Only through direct contact with the natural world will students develop an in-depth
understanding of fundamental ecological principles.
4.3 By working with others to solve real-world problems, they also develop skills at the heart of
sustainable living.
4.4 When students participate in experiential learning, they frequently follow the learning cycle.
4.5 This is a process that starts with unstructured exploration, followed by concept formation and
application.
 5. Interdisciplinary Learning
• Emphasizes connections between disciplines, fostering a deeper understanding of topics and enhancing
student engagement and motivation.
• The following are the advantages of interdisciplinary learning:
5.1 When teaching and learning are organized around themes, problems, or issues, students
seek knowledge and skills from a variety of disciplines to provide an expanded and more
complex understanding of the topics.
5.2 When done well, the interdisciplinary approach eliminates fragmentation and the learning
of isolated skills.
5.3 It allows students to access a particular theme from different entry points as they work with
a range of sources of information and perspectives.
5.4 It also allows teachers to better differentiate instruction and create more interesting and
rich methods of assessment.
 5. Interdisciplinary Learning

5.5 It increases students' motivation for learning, as well as their level of active engagement.
5.6 Students recognize the value of their learning and become more involved in it.
5.7 Students learn more when they apply a variety of skills to what they are studying and
when they interact with their classmates, teachers, and members of the community.
5.8 Interdisciplinary teaching and learning adheres to the principles that help define
sustainable living.
Thank
You