Responding to Teachers' Needs: The Development of a Conceptual Model for the Central Wisconsin Environmental Station and Other Environmental Education Centers

The goal of this Study is to develop a conceptual model to guide the Central Wisconsin Environmental Station in emphasizing teachers' needs related to EE, strengthening the teacher's role in the CWES program, and building a stronger partnership between teachers and CWES. Put more simply, the project seeks to place an even greater emphasis on the teacher in the CWES program. EE has, and continues to gain increasing importance in the classroom. This is especially true in Wisconsin, where several legislative initiatives have mandated EE instruction for preservice teachers and in public school classrooms. As teachers become better prepared in EE and emphasis on EE in the classroom increases, teachers' needs related to EE are changing. A need was identified to determine how EE center programs can best meet these changing needs of teachers. Through a literature review, the development of EE from three preceding movements related to education about the environment was traced. These three preceding movements, as well as EE, developed along two parallel paths: one focused on outdoor settings (non-formal education), the other focused on the classroom (formal education). With increased emphasis on EE in the classroom a need exists to build a bridge to unite EE's two parallel paths. In addition, several authors have identified factors which limit teacher participation in EE instruction, in the classroom as well as in outdoor settings. As teachers become increasingly interested in, and responsible for EE instruction, these "barriers" must be overcome. Information related to participating teachers' needs related to EE and the barriers they face was gathered through personal interviews and a mail survey of teachers who participate in the CWES program. In addition, school program coordinators of three other Wisconsin EE centers were interviewed to identify barriers experienced by teachers at those centers, and strategies employed to overcome those barriers. This information was used to develop a Conceptual Model of EE center programming for CWES which addresses the need to link formal and non-formal EE. This report describes the Conceptual Model, titled A New Role for Environmental Education Centers (CWES): Responsiveness to Teachers' Needs in Environmental Education and other results of this study in great detail. In addition, recommendations for implementing the Model at CWES are proposed. The Model was developed based on information specific to CWES and its participating teachers. As such, the results of this study cannot be directly generalized beyond CWES. Recognizing, however, that the overall CWES program is typical of programs at similar EE centers, a set of Self-Test Questions based on the Model were developed. These Self-Test Questions may be used by other centers to examine the level of focus on teachers at the center