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UNDERSTANDING
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
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Supplemental Information for the Environmental Educator -
Purpose
- Provide
a course introduction.
- Facilitate
critical thinking about environmental issues.
- Provide
awareness of the difficulty in defining the environment, environmental
problems, and criteria for evaluating and ranking environmental problems.
- Provide
the educator with information about the students' general understanding
of environmental issues.
Grading
There are
no right answers and the students responses will vary based on their experience
and educational background. Answers should be graded based on a demonstration
of critical thinking and the establishment of well-reasoned arguments
for each question.
Comments
Class
Discussion
The
following is a list of ideas you may want to keep in mind when discussing
the assignment.
1. Many
students define "environmental problem" as "imbalances
in the environment caused by humans." It may be helpful to point
out that environmental problems can be natural or human caused and that
they are typically defined as causing adverse effects.
2. Many
students list environmental problems that overlap. For example, a student
may list "Increased UV Exposure" and "Ozone Depletion"
as two environmental problems.
3. There
are no right answers. Experts in environmental ranking do not agree on
which criteria should be used to prioritize environmental problems. Furthermore,
priorities will vary among any group of people. For example:
- Those
working in different fields within EPA (air, water, land) will tend
to place higher priority on their area of expertise.
- Someone
living in Los Angeles will have different priorities than someone living
in Alaska.
4. There
is often confusion about deriving the 100-point scale in question 8. It
might be useful to illustrate an example of a student's answer or an example
from the literature.
- http://janus.state.me.us/dep/mepc/rankrept.htm
- http://www.lcrep.org/compriskrank.htm
5. Ask some
of the students with well-reasoned answers for each question to read their
answers in class.
6. Histograms
outlining the students answers for the following:
- Criteria
listed in question 7.
- Highest
ranked criterion for question 7.
- Environmental
problems listed in question 8.
- Highest
ranked environmental problem for question 8. See Figure One.
Figure 1: Highest ranked environmental problem
7. Discuss how definitions of certain criteria varied on the assignment.
- For example,
many students may list "Scale" as one of the criteria in question
7. A wide variety of definitions have been seen for this criterion:
Number of people affected, geographical area, global vs. local, number
of living organisms affected, etc.
8. A comparison
of perceptions of environmental risk.
9. Point
out that the mayor of your city will most likely focus on more local issues
than the President of the United States.
Summary
of Student Answers:
Go to Understanding Environmental Issues Assignment
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