As schools provide students with choice, support the development of critical thinking skills and promote project-based learning, incorporating a focus on sustainability is a natural progression of the learning process. In 2012, the US Department of Education (DoE) developed a federal outreach initiative entitled Green Ribbon Schools (GRS) that promotes sustainability, healthy living, and collaborative efforts. This research focuses on case studies of K-6 schools that have been awarded the Green Ribbon School designation and how these schools build a foundation for adopting and continuing sustainable principles. Nine thematic categories were found to be the driving factors that supported the GRS success in their sustainable policies. The themes from this research help to articulate the conditions needed to create and advance sustainability initiatives.

Gardens have a growing importance in urban areas nowadays. They serve as spaces for recreation, education, and reconnection with nature. It is important to examine the educational and environmental roles of these spaces considering their colonial history and potential to serve as conducive spaces for inclusion and transpersonal more-than-human relationships.

Calling all Urban Engineers: You are the director of this Anthropo(s)cene! Our citizens need your help designing their future. Your objective is to take ancient wisdom and combine it with cutting-edge ideas to create resilient and adaptable cities! Using tools like systems thinking, causal maps, story chips and hands-on models, your team will define the big ideas, design for a specific geography & climate, test the resiliency of your design and ultimately tell your city story. Our future depends on how we decide to shape it!

This mixed methods study evaluated the validity, and reliability of a scoring guide designed to assess a middle school student’s proficiency in systems thinking as described in the 2010 Oregon Environmental Literacy Plan. The commonalities between formal and non-formal educators revealed a high level of validity for the construct of proficiency with systems thinking, and a moderate level of reliability between the scores assigned by two groups of educators. In the words of the middle school students, formal, and non-formal educators, who volunteered to create the scoring guide, the ability to make responsible decisions with natural systems, community, and the future in mind involves: 1) creating solutions for systems that are not in balance; 2) presenting the complex inner workings of a system in a simple and succinct way; 3) collaborating; 4) exploring multiple solutions; and 5) sharing ideas in a way that people will understand you.

I will present an analysis of the unspoken role of environmental violence in EE practice, and offer suggestions as to how EE practitioners can deal with environmental violence in their classrooms and/or programming. The term ‘’violence’ has never appeared in the titles or abstracts of NAAEEC conferences over the past seven years, and virtually never appears in our published literature. My theoretical lens is based on the work of Norwegian peace scholar Johan Galtung, who contrasts direct (the outcome of an actor with intent to commit violence), structural (the result of human systems that cause violence either through intent or unintentionally) and cultural violence (the result of social legitimization and justification of direct or structural violence). Environmental educators can address all of these forms of violence through appropriate acts of environmental non-violence, anti-violence, and contra-violence (working to undo violence we all are complicit in).

Imagine a future in which land and place increasingly serve as co-researchers or principal investigators in environmental and sustainability education research. Land-based pedagogy, critical place inquiry, indigenous knowledge systems and indigenous ways of knowing, feminist materialisms, bioculturally responsive curriculum development, nature as teacher, terrapsychology, living systems ethical research considerations, and Gaian methods converge. These slides and briefing paper help explore questions of consent, data-gathering, authorship, and ethics through experiential, collaborative dialogue with examples, paradigms, and methods. Participants walk away with knowledge of effective practice and a resource bibliography to continue to innovate away from anthropocentric assumptions in environmental and sustainability education and towards more inclusive paradigms, methodologies, lenses, and frames for higher quality research.

Guangzhou set up its first EE Center at a Waste-to-Energy incineration plant in 2012. Using the results of a questionnaire completed by center visitors, this research constructed a suitable Environmental Interpretation System and put forward an applicable Environment Perception Model for the EE center.