Learner-centered teaching is a
pedagogical approach that emphasizes the roles of students as participants in
and drivers of their own learning. Learner-centered teaching activities go
beyond traditional lecturing by helping students construct their own
understanding of information, develop skills via hands-on engagement, and
encourage personal reflection through metacognitive tasks. In addition,
learner-centered classroom approaches may challenge students’ preconceived
notions and expand their thinking by confronting them with thought-provoking
statements, tasks or scenarios that cause them to pay closer attention and
cognitively “see” a topic from new perspectives. Many types of pedagogy fall
under the umbrella of learner-centered teaching including laboratory work,
group discussions, service and project-based learning, and student-led
research, among others. Unfortunately, it is often not possible to use some of
these valuable methods in all course situations given constraints of money,
space, instructor expertise, class-meeting and instructor preparation time, and
the availability of prepared lesson plans and material. Thus, a major challenge
for many instructors is how to integrate learner-centered activities widely
into their courses.
The broad goal of this volume is to help
advance environmental education practices that help increase students’
environmental literacy. Having a diverse collection of learner-centered
teaching activities is especially useful for helping students develop their
environmental literacy because such approaches can help them connect more
personally with the material thus increasing the chances for altering the
affective and behavioral dimensions of their environmental literacy. This
volume differentiates itself from others by providing a unique and diverse
collection of classroom activities that can help students develop their
knowledge, skills and personal views about many contemporary environmental and
sustainability issues.
