Integration of art and environmental education : the Centro de Educación Creativa in Monteverde, Costa Rica

Population growth and deforestation are negatively affecting biodiversity in the Tropics, necessitating environmental education for local populations. Arts education increases the ability to comprehend complex information, enhance creativity and provide problem solving skills (Longley 1999, Siegesmund 1998). Together, environmental education and Arts education can enhance ecological processes and conservation themes in students’ minds so they are retained well into their adulthood. This increases the likelihood that these individuals will make environmentally informed decisions throughout their lives (Gurevitz 2000). In this project, I incorporate current Arts curriculum guidelines from the United States into the Costa Rican environmental curriculum used at the Centro de Educatión Creativa in Monteverde, Costa Rica. I create sample activities incorporating visual arts, music and theater into each of 12 curriculum themes. Evaluations by Amy Cherwin, the Curriculum Director at the CEC, and the first and second grade teachers there suggested the updated curriculum guidelines I extended were both useful and relevant to their classroom activities. According to evaluations, the sample activities I created were generally easy to understand and useful. El crecimiento demográfico y la deforestación afectan negativamente a la biodiversidad en los trópicos, por lo que se necesitan programas de educación ambiental para las poblaciones locales. La educación de las artes aumenta la habilidad de comprender la información compleja, aumenta la creatividad y proporciona habilidades en la resolución de problemas (Longley 1999, Siegesmund 1998). La educación ambiental en conjunto con la de las Artes puede aumentar los temas ecológicos y los temas de conservación en la mente de los estudiantes para que sea retenido a lo largo de su edad adulta. Esto aumenta la probabilidad de que estas personas estén informadas para que tomen decisiones ambientales durante toda su vida (Gurevitz 2000). En este proyecto, yo he incorporado las pautas actuales del plan de Artes de los Estados Unidos al plan de estudios ambientales de Costa Rica utilizándolos en el Centro de Educacion Creativa en Monteverde, Costa Rica.https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/tropical_ecology/1304/thumbnail.jp