Malte Schmidthals

Page 1. Hartmut Oswald, Meike Rathgeber, Malte Schmidthals, Jörg Eschner, Marcello Farabegoli Unterrichtsvorschläge und -materialien zum Thema „Energiesparen und Nutzung erneuerbarer Energiequellen an Schulen“ Inhaltsverzeichnis Seite Vorwort 2 ...

I was looking for new tendencies in EE from the view of a German having been involved in projects on school, local, national and European level for 15 years, mainly regarding energy and climate change. Of course, I found many projects that were new for me, especially in nature ...

Energy and renewables are not really an important subject in primary or secondary school. The most likely reason is the lack of renewable energy in the obligatory curricula. Consequently there are only a few educational materials for teachers. Our “powerado materials for the primary school” should close this gap. The materials have been developed within the R&D project “powerado: The world of renewable energy”. In several modules we have done applied research on new ways of communicating renewable energies to children and young people (c.f. www.powerado.de). Examples are an online game “powerado”, a knowledge quiz, “renewables in box” for play schools (Kindergarten), for primary school and for youth clubs, a poster exhibition of good school projects, experiments for renewable energies, curricula for advanced training of craftsmen and a seminar for student teachers at the university. The project has been funded by the BMU, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation...

Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment Das diesem Bericht zugrunde liegende Vorhaben wurde mit Mitteln des Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit unter den Förderkennzeichen FKZ 903 41 113 gefördert. Die Verantwortung für den Inhalt dieser Veröffentlichung liegt bei den Autoren.

Energy and renewables are not really an important subject in primary or secondary school. The most likely reason is the lack of renewable energy in the obligatory curricula. Consequently there are only a few educational materials for teachers. Our “powerado materials for the primary school” should close this gap. The materials have been developed within the R&D project “powerado: The world of renewable energy”. In several modules we have done applied research on new ways of communicating renewable energies to children and young people (c.f. www.powerado.de). Examples are an online game “powerado”, a knowledge quiz, “renewables in box” for play schools (Kindergarten), for primary school and for youth clubs, a poster exhibition of good school projects, experiments for renewable energies, curricula for advanced training of craftsmen and a seminar for student teachers at the university. The project has been funded by the BMU, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation...

The tendencies in environmental education (EE) I want to discuss, are an outcome of my participation at the Fifth World Environmental Education Congress (5th WEEC) in May 2009 and of a following six week research journey through the United States on EE. I concentrate on new developments that may be useful to adopt in Europe, these are i.e.: Becoming Political, Dealing with Climate Change, Supporting environmental justice and Improving the cooperation between school and community.

Becoming political
The aspiration to become political was my main observation at the 5th WEEC as well as in the attitude of lots of environmental educators in the USA. In the USA, it was strongly connected with the “Time of Change” and “Yes, we can!” impetus of the Obama Administration. That is why it cannot be transferred one to one to Europe. Nevertheless, we Europeans should learn, too, not to restrict our aims and our demands too early and too much. We are in a race against time as far as the change of our energy systems and our dealing with natural resources in general are concerned. To win this race, a broad rerouting is necessary to stop the pursuit of permanent growths, until now defining our economic system. To achieve these goals consistently and peacefully, education has to play an important role. We as educators have to become aware of this task and face this challenge.
To become politically involved is a general demand not on every single project but a criterion for all of them and an appeal to environmental educators to include political aspects into their work.


Environmental Justice
In North America I found four approaches under the umbrella of Environmental Justice:
1. Dealing with environmental problems that have more impact on poorer people than on middle or upper class people
2. Integrating indigenous peoples and their knowledge, actions and teaching approaches into EE
3. Cooperating internationally with people from different backgrounds, taking up their struggle for human and environmental rights, nature conservation and against dangerous climate impacts 
4. Supporting „Environmental Literacy” of socially disadvantaged groups and minorities
These approaches are of different relevance when transferred to Europe.

School and Community
A closer cooperation between school and their surrounding community provides opportunities that I consider very valuable. During my stay, I came across different projects in schools, universities, local communities and NGOs aiming for the reformation of the cooperation of different actors in communities. These projects have positive results for both the students and the community. Many of them are effectively improving “real life”.
Thematically the projects can work on different issues like water conservation, waste reduction and recycling, energy saving and use of renewable resources, impacts of climate change, as well as nature conservation and biodiversity. Working on these subjects, the educators and students often include the other forward-looking tendencies in environmental education mentioned above as getting involved politically and taking into account environmental justice, which is easier done when projects start in the immediate neighbourhood of the students and not in large anonymous structures.
By getting out of the school building into the community, doing projects in cooperation with groups and individual people from outside, the students get the opportunity to adopt life skills in the real world. In this way, they also develop a positive relationship to their community and to their school that might never have been achieved otherwise. And they have the chance to find out, that school is not an end in itself.
General View
Finally and based on my experiences in Germany, Europe and my research in North America, I want to stress that the general ideas in environment education are not very different.
However, Structures and terminology differ quite a lot.
The contents are quite similar, even though some aspects are emphasized stronger on one or the other side.
I like to thank all the interesting and very helpful people I met during my visit. They facilitated the exciting experience of getting to know developments in environmental education in the US and Canada, hopefully at the eve of a new ecological era.