In 2005, the Environmental Educators Provincial Specialists' Association (EEPSA) and a core group of partners, including Simon Fraser University, Royal Roads University, Metro Vancouver, and the BC Working Group for Sustainability Education, launched a review of BC's foundational EE curriculum document, Environmental Concepts in the Classroom, developed in 1995. With permission from the Ministry of Education, we embarked on a 17-month public consultation about environmental education with educators around the province.

In 2007, we completed a draft document, Environmental Learning and Experience (ELE), which will serve as a cross-curricular framework for EE in BC. The Ministry of Education has fully approved this curriculum framework, and is now hosting it on their website and supporting the ongoing linkage of it with other BC curricula.

What is E.L.E.?

The ELE guide represents an integrated approach to environmental learning because so many school subject areas and learning outcomes touch on environmental topics in some way. By emphasizing the study of environment across the curriculum, it is hoped that students will come to understand how their actions affect both local and global environments.

This revised curriculum resource offers a conceptual framework for introducing environmental learning in all classrooms, while providing several general principles of teaching and learning to guide teachers in designing integrated activities for their learners. The framework provides a number of perspectives around which environmentally-focused lessons may be developed and can assist teachers of all subjects and grades to integrate environmental concepts into teaching and learning.

Designed as a support framework to guide teachers in their education planning, the guide also aims to support the implementation of many of the provincial Integrated Resource Packages (IRPs) and will be complemented by web resources to support environmental learning in diverse subjects like science, social studies and language arts. It is a guide to interdisciplinary practice — using the environment as an organizing theme.

Making It Work for Teachers

To bring the ELE framework alive for teachers, we are now moving into the implementation phase of the process. Priority goals here are to develop an extensive curriculum map/matrix so that teachers are able to implement the framework across subject areas and grade levels, and to develop web portals that will link teachers to learning resources and programs in the community to support their practice. We now have funding, graciously provided by BC Hydro and the Ministry of Education, to support this key phase of the project.

We also know that teachers need high quality professional development around new curricula and approaches to teaching and learning. EEPSA and partners are deeply involved in this continuing work to support teachers through professional development, multimedia resources and community resource linkages.

Please contact EEPSA (www.bctf.ca/eepsa or at pabrobo@shaw.ca) for more information on the ELE, professional development opportunities and support for your efforts to nurture environmental learning.

Download the ELE curriculum framework here ( 625 Kb)

More information can be found at: www.bced.gov.bc.ca/environment_ed/.