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In this research, we investigate the implementation of a non-mandatory learning-unit on renewable energy in elementary schools in Israel. The research focuses on the effect of teachers' attitudes toward energy conservation and the efficient use of energy, as well as on the effects of contextual factors on teaching the programme. Mixed methods were used for data collection and analysis. Questionnaires were responded to by 77 teachers, and 13 teachers were interviewed. Attitudes regarding energy consumption are positively associated with teaching the programme, whereas teacher-perceived overload is negatively associated with it. Time devoted to teaching the programme in class was limited due to both the non-mandatory status of the curriculum and to accountability stressors. The findings suggest that while teachers' attitudes to the environment have some influence on their decision to teach the programme, most of their decisions are related to contextual factors such as work overload, and lack of training, and support. Education plays a significant role in general, as well as regarding energy conservation and renewable energy. The research findings suggest that developing teaching materials is not a sufficient condition for motivating teachers to use them, and that considering contextual factors is essential for a successful implementation.

Despite growing interest in promoting environmental education (EE), as in other countries, its status within the formal education system in Israel is still ambiguous and its effectiveness questionable. Proceeding from the view of structure-agent interdependency, the present study focuses on teachers' identity as key to understanding the situation in their professional field. Analysis is based on in-depth interviews with ten EE teachers in ten public elementary-schools in Israel, to investigate their occupational self-perception as part of the system in which they operate. Findings reveal an ambivalent professional identity and a weak sense of agency as EE teachers. Teachers' impaired occupational self-image have implications for their potential role in advancing EE in particular and for the educational field in Israel in general.

In this study on long-term educational programs (LTP) in nature, facilitated by an environmental agency we followed two distinct programs enacted in schools and in nature parks as case studies. Data were collected through observations of activities in schools and in the outdoors and through interviews with students, teachers and facilitators. In one program there were more student-centered and hands on activities and substantial environmental action. In the other program it was the students' first experience with outdoor and environmental education, and the teachers were more active in the outdoors as "story tellers" and role models. In this program, the students brought up their own concern of littering rather than following the environmental agency's concern of illegal herb harvesting. In general, in both programs the participant students expressed high satisfaction, and indicated learning about the environment. We found as well limited collaboration between the operating environmental organization and the schools and no connection to the school curriculum. Post priori, teachers as well as the environmental educators acknowledged the need to address the school curriculum and to better involve the teachers.

This study employs a single framework for investigating both environmental journalistic texts published on news websites, and science teachers' choices of such texts for their teaching. We analyzed 188 environmental items published during 2 months in seven news websites to determine popularity of topics. Then, 64 science junior high school teachers responded to a closed questionnaire to identify their preferred topics for using in the classroom and patterns of using environmental news items. In a second, open-ended questionnaire, responded by 50 teachers, we investigated the teachers' media literacy in terms of identifying text types and writers of environmental news items. Good alignment was found between the published topics on the websites and teachers' choices, with somewhat different distribution of topics, which could be explained by curriculum requirements. Teachers' identification of text types and writer types was inaccurate, which implied that their media literacy is inadequate. We argue that media literacy is required for effective use of journalistic texts in science teaching.

This research investigates the ways in which undergraduate courses dealing with the environment address sustainable development (SD), and contribute to the development of sustainability learning outcomes (SLO). The participants in the study were 13 instructors, and 360 students who were enrolled in 13 courses that addressed the environment in a technical university. Mixed methods were used for data collection and analysis. We found that courses that address the environment are varied in the way that they address sustainable development, and in the pedagogy they use. We also found links between teaching methods and the pattern of reported SLOs: skills development was promoted mainly in courses with a high degree of participatory learning; changes in awareness and attitudes were reported mainly in courses that addressed sustainable development, and motivation to promote sustainable development was reported mainly in courses that addressed sustainable development and also provided opportunities for active and participatory learning. The implications of our research are discussed.

In this study, our aim was to understand how environmental education has been implemented in Israeli elementary schools. We selected ten schools that had implemented Education for Sustainability programs and analyzed their mission statements and curriculum documents. We observed each school's activities and interviewed teachers. Our analysis shows ambiguity with respect to the rationales and the theoretical foundations of the programs. It also shows much didactic teaching of content, a strong focus on behavioral outcomes, especially with respect to reducing resource consumption and to increasing the levels of recycling, as well as some degree of working with the community. The unclear status of environmental education in Israel, in terms of its structure within the education system, prevents it from having sufficient resources for teacher education and curriculum development. It is suggested that this lack of clarity is the main cause of the ambiguity and for the use of the traditional pedagogies we found in our analysis.

This interpretive study identifies challenges of working with Bedouin and Jewish Israeli youth in two multicultural projects: education for sustainability and place-conscious education. It also describes the ways the adult project leaders addressed these challenges and their views on the effectiveness of their decisions. Participants comprised 16 Bedouin and Jewish educators. Data collection included interviews and observations of project meetings and staff meetings. Project leaders reported challenges related to (1) intergroup differences in environmental viewpoints, knowledge, and learning styles, (2) embedding issues of environmental justice in the multicultural discourse, and (3) Bedouin-Jewish interactions. To address these challenges, the leaders separated groups for some learning activities, directed discourses, adopted bilingual teaching strategies, and emphasized unique socio-cultural characteristics. Their level of satisfaction with most of their decisions is high. They avoided discussing the broader socio-political Arab-Jewish conflict. The findings highlight dilemmas that multicultural environmental projects pose and suggest the need to adopt critical pedagogy of place to address such dilemmas and challenges. The findings also emphasize the need to better prepare educators for environmental education in multicultural settings.

In this study, we used the classification and regression trees (CART) method to draw relationships between student self-reported learning outcomes in 26 field trips to natural environments and various characteristics of the field trip that include variables associated with preparation and pedagogy. We wished to examine the extent to which the preparation for the field trip, its connection to the school curriculum, and the pedagogies used, affect students' self-reported outcomes in three domains: cognitive, affective, and behavioral; and the extent the students' socioeconomic group and the guide's affiliation affect students' reported learning outcomes. Given that most of the field trips were guide-centered, the most important variable that affected the three domains of outcomes was the guide's storytelling. Other variables that showed relationships with self-reported outcomes were physical activity and making connections to everyday life--all of which we defined as pedagogical variables. We found no significant differences in student self-reported outcomes with respect to their socioeconomic group and the guide's organizational affiliation.

Implementing inquiry in the outdoors introduces many challenges for teachers, some of which can be dealt with using mobile technologies. For productive use of these technologies, teachers should be provided with the opportunity to develop relevant knowledge and practices. In a professional development (PD) program in this design-based research, 24 teachers were involved in adaptation of a learning environment supporting inquiry in the outdoors that included the use of mobile technologies. They first experienced the learning environment as learners, then adapted it for their own use, and finally, enacted the adapted environment with peers. We examined the scope and character of teacher involvement in adaptation, and the consequent professional growth, by analyzing observations, questionnaires, interviews and the adapted learning-environments. Findings indicate that all teachers demonstrated change processes, including changes in knowledge and practice, but the coherence of the learning environments decreased when substantial adaptations were made. Some teachers demonstrated professional growth, as reflected by their implementation of ideas learned in the PD program in their daily practice, long after the PD program had ended. This study demonstrates how the Teachers as Designers approach can support teacher learning and illustrates productive use of scaffolds for teacher growth and professional development.

This study is part of a first study of collaborative socio-environmental projects that engage Jewish and Arab students in Israel in learning about their local environment and about each other through outdoor learning and environmental action. We used ideas of social learning and environmental citizenship to frame our research. We investigated students' knowledge regarding their local environment and their knowledge of each other's community. We also studied the participants' views regarding their project-partners'environmental knowledge, awareness and behaviour in comparison to their own. Initially, differences were found regarding various aspects of the students' socio-environmental knowledge and in students' views of their counterparts' environmentalism. At the end of the projects, students showed better understanding of local socio-environmental issues and demonstrated changes in their original views towards the environmental awareness and behaviour of their counterparts. These findings suggest that projects which involve students from segregated communities not only promote environmental awareness but contribute to a reduction in mutual prejudices. We suggest that the differences we found are not related to ethnicity, but rather to students' socioeconomic status and experience in environmental education programmes.

In this case-study, we present a longitudinal study of one elementary (grades 1-6) school's environmental education (EE) in order to understand the ways in which the school culture supports outdoor EE as a critical component of their science education program. The school, which was known for its school-based EE curriculum that encompasses an intensive outdoor-education component, has gone through changes in the staff, and the student population. Our study is aimed at understanding the current challenges of the school outdoor education, in light of its two decade tradition of environmental and outdoor education school-based curriculum. We observed three field trips and interviewed the principal and teachers. Our critical analysis indicated key tensions regarding outdoor EE: (1) the place of the school's tradition in light of current staff's challenges and agenda; (2) power struggle between the EE teacher and the newer teachers in school; and (3) the separation between the EE program that was an integrative holistic program in the past, and the other fields taught in school. In conclusion, we argue that the main issue is the change in the school culture that reflects the changes the community went through. We suggest that the school should examine old assumptions and revise its EE curriculum in light of changes in the school social and physical environment and in accordance to development in the field of EE.

The main goal of this study was to examine the Environmental Workshop unit taught to Environmental Sciences majors in the high schools in Israel and learn if, and in what ways, this unit could become a model for environmental education throughout the high school curriculum. We studied the special characteristics of the Environmental Workshop (EW) unit, which is based on inquiry-based learning that takes place in and out of school, and includes an environmental action component as well. We describe three approaches to the EW we identified. After identifying teachers' challenges in assessing their students, in addition to the phenomenographic study, we suggest and demonstrate assessing the EW students by relevant socio-scientific issues. Finally, we argue that the EW could be incorporated in the junior as well as the high school curriculum as a coherent unit that is in line with environmental education in its broader sense.

Education for sustainability (EfS) in higher education is an emerging specialisation within the general field of EfS. EfS encompasses cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects, and aims at enhancing a variety of learning outcomes in these domains and reaching students from all programmes. One of the main challenges for higher education educators is to design courses in a way that will effectively promote the various learning outcomes of EfS. A central question is how sustainability should be integrated into the curriculum; which topics should be taught and which pedagogies ought to be applied to improve students' knowledge, skills and motivation to promote sustainable living. The present study aimed to contribute to the knowledge about students' learning outcomes yielded by different designs of EfS courses. This multiple-case study of three courses used a mixed-methods design. For each course, we identified its characteristics and analysed students' self-reported learning outcomes. We found that: (1) a course with a higher degree of participatory learning, employing a system approach, promoted the highest and most varied learning outcomes; (2) the lecture-based course yielded the fewest learning outcomes; and (3) field trips promoted learning outcomes only when accompanied by more advanced pedagogies.

Socio-environmental projects involving Arab and Jewish youth in Israel are uncommon. In this study, we interviewed 16 adult leaders of two projects that were carried out in the Galilee in northern Israel, to better understand the views of the leaders and their motives. The two projects focused on mutual environmental issues and dealt with social, cultural, and political aspects with respect to the environmental context. The participants were teachers and principals of the students who participated in the projects and facilitators of two environmental organizations. We found diverse views with respect to environmental education, local environmental issues, and possible solutions. The Arab adults expressed stronger attachment to the local environment than the Jewish ones. The major projects' goals according to the leaders included: (improving) knowledge, awareness, and environmental behavior of the students and their communities; an opportunity for taking part in community collaboration and action; an opportunity for multicultural interaction; and meaningful long-term learning in the outdoors. Our findings highlight the importance of identifying the views of educators of diverse cultures in order to carry out future successful multicultural environmental projects. Our findings also suggest adopting critical pedagogy of place while designing and implementing such projects in sensitive regions such as Israel. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)

This study focuses on the pre-service teachers' reflection on an environmental knowledge questionnaire administered in an introductory environmental education course. Reflection sheets that addressed pre-/post-course knowledge questionnaires were collected from 75 students who took the course in three consecutive years. The students represented diverse ethnic and professional background, which is typical in teacher training programs in Israel. The students' initial environmental knowledge was poor but increased substantially after the course. Their reflections addressed their knowledge acquisition, as well as their growing awareness. They reflected upon the variety of teaching methods and especially on the online debate forum and on the field trips, claiming that these methods contributed a great deal to their learning. However, fewer statements addressed behavioral changes with respect to the environment. In spite of the improvement in the students' awareness and knowledge, it is suggested that further environmental education is required to continue the transformation process. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

The last two decades have seen increased threats to agricultural landscapes in Israel. Key factors include population growth, strong pressure from construction entrepreneurs and possible profit to land owners who benefit from a legal conversion of farmland into lands allocated for construction. While each Israeli elementary school student used to participate in agriculture classes, most students no longer experience this and their overall exposure to farming in schools is limited. The main objective of this study was to explore the ways farming is presented and addressed in the national curriculum and in learning materials. Additionally, it examines the actual status of teaching about agriculture and explores how farming is addressed in teachers' pre-service programs. The main finding is that very little teaching about agriculture and land management is carried out at most school levels. Only one college prepares agriculture teachers and science education programs rarely address agriculture as a course topic. The paper also outlines an education for sustainability framework for integrating science, agriculture and environmental education. (Contains 3 tables.)

Environmental education promotes the use of higher-order thinking skills, encourages informal experiences in school as well as outdoors and brings together children and adults in order to make a contribution to the environment. Its holistic nature, that encompasses various subject matters, learning environments and teaching methods and encourages cognitive, affective and behavioural outcomes, requires the implementation of an appropriate assessment framework. In this study the author introduced a complex assessment method that encompasses pre, in- and after-course assessments and incorporates instruments that assess knowledge, reasoning, decision-making and the active involvement of 27 senior pre-service science and technology teachers who participated in an environmental education course. Findings indicate that the multiple assessment modes employed expressed a wide range of learning in the course. The team investigation project was found to be most suitable for developing environmental awareness, as well as inquiry skills. Self and peer assessment enhanced critical thinking and continuous discussion. The students acknowledged the complex assessment method as a possible model for an assessment framework which corresponds to the unique nature of learning in environmental education. The assessment framework introduced included aspects of environmental knowledge as well as awareness, skills, attitudes, values and practical involvement and addressed most of the courses basic ideas and components.

Highlights: [•] We suggested a theoretical framework for assessing learning outcomes that are considered to promote sustainability. [•] We examined this model on 13 undergraduate courses that deal with environment. [•] Theoretical knowledge was the most common reported learning outcome in the courses. [•] Learning focused on the professional life sphere. [•] Courses differed in the number and the variety of reported learning outcomes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]