The Ecology of School

The theme for this edited volume: The Ecology of School, highlights the efforts of

a group of educators and academics enquiring into the practices of environmental

learning as it has been enacted in the school curriculum. In particular, it describes a a

case study of the place-based implementation of this curriculum from the perspective

of the unique island community of Bowen Island. Environmental Learning and

Experience, a framework published by the British Columbia Ministry of Education

(2007) aims to assist British Columbia teachers of all subjects and grades to integrate

environmental concepts into teaching and learning. An important part of the

development work for this framework involved a dedicated team of environmental

educators working at the Bowen Island Community School.

This framework: designed to guide teachers in their educational planning,

supports the implementation of provincially-mandated curriculum for environmental

learning in diverse subjects including science, social studies, and language arts. The

development and implementation of the framework also guided a community of

Bowen Island teachers’ in their interdisciplinary practice: using ‘environment’ as an

organizing theme for teaching and learning.’ Environmental Learning’, then, is the

conceptual backbone for the developments and reflections shared in this book. In

this sense, our work references various perspectives that learners and educators take

on their interaction with the natural, social and built environments of Bowen Island.

Our collaborative work also describes and extends visionary Rudolf Moos’ original

conception of a learning environment to include a consideration of psychosocial,

physical and organizational factors as they all may contribute to learning. For many,

this book may serve as an introduction to the study of learning environments. Studies

conducted by educators on classroom learning environments (otherwise known

as classroom climate or classroom ecology) have built on earlier work related to

organizational climate and its application to educational settings. Research on

learning environments can be described as both descriptive of classroom contexts and

predictive of student learning. Today, the study of learning environments has a valuable

role to play: in pre-service teacher training; professional development, evaluation of

new curricula or innovation and generally as an important field of inquiry in its own

right: the description of a valuable psychological and social component of educational

experience. This book describes this conception from various perspectives: a synthesis

of research that examines innovations in environmental learning and employs a

learning environments approach to its development and evaluation. What follows is a

brief road map for the reader as they navigate through “the ecology of school”:

Chapter one outlines a conception for Environmental Learning summarizing the

concepts imbedded in its conceptual framework and defining it as a pedagogy that is

centered on interdisciplinary and experiential forms of learning.

Chapter two further contextualizes this discussion within the practices of Placebased

Education and then describes why this particular conception of curriculum

and instruction is important for a place like Bowen Island.

Chapter three describes the school’s investigation into how ecological literacy

became a core educational standard at the Bowen school – describing place-based

programs, events, and activities that contributed to its unique learning environment.

Chapter four captures the stories of three teachers who stood out as leaders in our

project and, through their innovation, passion, and commitment, provided valuable

insight into the power of place-based education on Bowen Island.

Chapter five borrows from a philosophical tradition: prescribing a master plan of

how place based education should function. The author focuses on Bowen Island as

one place filled with many stories of how it can function.

Chapter six describes the perspectives of three principals of the Bowen Island

Community School. The author examines their beliefs on the moral purposes of

schooling and their role in sustaining the learning environment at the school.

Chapter seven explores how school design mediates students’ relationships with the

natural world, with a view to understand from students’ perspectives how school

architecture influences their ideas about the natural world and their learning.

Chapter eight relates the development of action research with teachers using a

specifically adapted survey that aided teachers in gauging and improving the learning

environment in their classrooms and throughout the school.

The efforts of educators, graduate students and pre-service teachers working on

Bowen Island also involved a critical analysis of various educational frameworks

and resources. Focus groups with Bowen teachers helped to inform a collaborative

process that involved educators, community members and academics. The resulting

volume of research offers both a conceptual view for introducing environmental

learning in all settings, while also providing principles of teaching and learning that

work to guide teachers in designing integrated activities for a variety of learning

contexts. The research also recounts the development and inception of a variety of

unique learning environments and richly describes the dynamic interactions between

people, places and curriculum. This book outlines this set of rich interactions, which

we collectively describe as: the ‘Ecology of School.’