Eco-Literacy

Dr Cutter-Mackenzie’s PhD study was aimed squarely at examining the scope and range of Australian primary school teachers’ eco-literacy (their knowledge and beliefs). It was a benchmarking study revealing the connections between what researchers, syllabus writers and key stakeholders expect teachers to know and to teach, and what teachers actually know and teach. The study employed a rigorous qualitative and quantitative research methodology, identifying that teachers are likely to be functioning at a ‘knowledge’ level of eco-illiteracy and/or nominal eco-literacy. Such primary school teachers tended to dismiss the importance of knowledge, preferring to focus upon attitudes/values in the teaching of environmental education. The findings identify eco-literacy as the “missing paradigm” in environmental education and education more broadly. Such findings can be placed in wider theoretical arguments to do with knowledge and its apparent lack of focus in education over the past thirty years. In any case, such levels of eco-literacy are inadequate if eco-literate students and thus an eco-literate citizenry are to be achieved within schools.