Multidisciplinary Nature of Environmental Problems: Critical Implications for Environmental Education
Abstract
Science courses have traditionally been discipline-centred, with little attention paid to the way in which the natural sciences are influenced by sociology, economics and politics. Understanding these influences is essential for developing and implementing long-term solutions to environmental problems. This paper goes into the question of the roots of the environmental crisis, and thereof advances prospects for environmental education. It is an inquiry into the philosophical background to environmental education. It questions the philosophical framework of modern science that produces the environmental crisis and prospects for a framework for environmental education cultivated from the perspective of multidisciplinarity. The paper explores the implications of multidisciplinary nature of environmental research for teacher training review, curriculum renewal, teaching methods and evaluation in environmental education. The paper concludes that these prospects for environmental education constitute the crucial environmental change of behaviour on which the survival of human civilization as we know it today stands precariously.
