Studying Nature <i>In Situ</i>: Immersive Education for Better Integrated Water Management

Dennison, William C.; Oliver, Peter

doi:10.1111/j.1936-704x.2013.03139.x

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Although theoretical knowledge is essential to develop ocean literate students, it is not always easy to immediately relate it to the real world. In this sense, excursions to the field are an alternative and exciting way of promoting connection and understanding of the local marine environment (Dennison and Oliver, 2013;Fiennes et al, 2015). Although most teachers in this study agreed that this is a very effective method in engaging children to learn about the ocean, qualitative data indicated the difficulty in organising excursions, due to lack of funding and safety concerns.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a 2025 National Ocean Literacy Strategy: Current Status and Future Needs in Primary Education

et al. 2022

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Globally, ocean health has become critically compromised due to compounding negative human impacts. Marine science education can play a key role in raising collective understanding of the vulnerability of marine environments and the importance of their protection, and this may best begin with integration of ocean literacy in schools. Previous research shows that K-12 students worldwide have a limited understanding of the ocean. This lack of familiarity with the ocean has been linked to the absence of topics related to marine science in most national school curricula. Teachers are the ultimate arbiters deciding whether and how to include these topics in their classes. However, the extent to which marine science may be currently being taught in formal education is still unknown. We used the Australian public school system as a case study to investigate the marine science teaching practices of primary school teachers (Foundation – Grade 6), through an online survey. Our results indicate that while teachers value the importance of ocean education from a young age, most of them rarely or only occasionally cover marine science topics in their lessons. Teachers cited increased levels of marine science knowledge and a greater availability of ocean-related educational resources linked to the school curriculum as key areas for improvement in ocean education practices. This study highlights the importance of formal marine science education in primary education, along with the need for professional development opportunities for teachers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a 2025 National Ocean Literacy Strategy: Current Status and Future Needs in Primary Education

et al. 2022

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“…Providing (water) engineering students with a T-shaped competency profile is seen as critical to addressing future global challenges and promoting sustainability. Yet such a task challenges engineering education to re-think its ways of learning and teaching: more weight ought to be given to flexible learning paths, group work and diverse learning environments, including experience-based learning methods such as immersive education where the learning takes place in situ in actual management contexts, and service learning, which combines learning with community service [30][31][32][33].…”

Section: Context: Hard and Soft Skills For Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Building a More Sustainable Society? A Case Study on the Role of Sustainable Development in the Education and Early Career of Water and Environmental Engineers

2018

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Engineering education is critical for sustainability, given the key role that engineers have in shaping the development of our society. Yet, engineering studies have traditionally not been driven by sustainability-related knowledge and skills, but focused more on general computational skills and technical problem-solving. This has also been the case in our case study, which focuses on recent water and environmental engineering graduates in Finland. We studied the role that sustainable development has had in their education and early career through an extensive questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The analysis was done in two ways: indirectly by comparing how well the key working life knowledge and skills recognized by the respondents correspond with sustainability-related skills, and directly by studying the graduates’ views towards the sustainable development and their possibilities to advance it in their work. The results show that although sustainability was not at the core of respondents’ studies, their key competencies correspond well with sustainability-related working life skills. The respondents also see that sustainable development has a central role in water and environmental engineering, although it is typically more visible at a strategic rather than a practical level. However, the results also indicate that several early-career engineers have deficient knowledge of sustainable development, and are therefore lacking the ability to fully connect the principles of sustainable development into their own expertise. Overall, the findings suggest that water and environmental engineers with their wide set of competencies have the potential to take on a larger role in building a more sustainable society. To ensure this, engineering education should emphasize the connection between the field and sustainable development and clearly link engineers’ core competencies with the skills required to promote sustainability.

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“…Experiential learning activities are commonly advocated for and implemented in graduate level water resources programs (McIntosh and Taylor ; Kulcsar et al ), as well as in upper division undergraduate coursework (Campana ; Dennison and Oliver ; Missingham and McIntosh ). For instance, a field methods undergraduate capstone course took students to Honduras to design a sanitary water delivery system for a community (Campana ).…”

Section: Misconceptions Alternative Conceptions Preconceptions?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing Student Conceptions of Arid, Urban Watershed Management

Thomas¹,

Svihla

2017

Contemporary Water Research

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Despite the central importance of water, few students have the opportunity to study water resources management in secondary education. Even in tertiary education—unless they major in water resources or a closely related field—they are likely to receive only a week or two of instruction about water resources in introductory science courses. Typical instruction in such courses is textbook‐based, with the course instructor lecturing on a broad range of topics. Complicating this, little is known about student preconceptions, which may interfere with—or be used to support—learning. We sought to identify preconceptions in an introductory environmental science course at an urban, research (R1) university in the arid Southwest of the United States. We used a pre/post design to assess student preconceptions about their urban campus watershed and designed a brief, experiential learning exercise. While experiential learning is common in water resources management programs, it is less common in introductory courses. We developed a coding scheme to analyze the pre‐ and post‐test responses; results showed students held normative and non‐normative preconceptions. There was significant growth in students’ conceptual understanding between the pre‐test and post‐test, (t(33) = −2.25, p < .05), with a small to medium effect size, d = −0.393. This finding supports the use of experiential learning as a means to teach students about water resources, even in an introductory course. Understanding students’ preconceptions of arid, urban watersheds can assist in how to better design curriculum. Such improvements in curricular design can empower students to make better decisions about urban watersheds.

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Studying Nature In Situ: Immersive Education for Better Integrated Water Management

Cited by 11 publications

References 8 publications

Towards a 2025 National Ocean Literacy Strategy: Current Status and Future Needs in Primary Education

Towards a 2025 National Ocean Literacy Strategy: Current Status and Future Needs in Primary Education

Building a More Sustainable Society? A Case Study on the Role of Sustainable Development in the Education and Early Career of Water and Environmental Engineers

Changing Student Conceptions of Arid, Urban Watershed Management

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