Abstract
This essay adds to the call to maintain diversity within environmental sciences and studies (ESS) curricula. Using two different examples of how ESS curricula get designed for high school students, this essay points to the diverse learning environments out of which college students emerge in the USA as well as the need to maintain epistemological diversity in ESS in the secondary school level. The essay reviews the AP ® Environmental Science curricula as a proxy for how many high school students experience ESS and contrasts this example with a 9th-grade-level curriculum from an independent school to show an alternate way to maintain epistemological diversity with curriculum design and implementation. In drawing attention to the heterodox environments in which ESS curricula can and does live, this essay stresses the role of epistemological diversity in ESS towards the pedagogical and civic goals of ESS itself.
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Notes
Of course, there is wide diversity within the life sciences and physical sciences highlighted by the AP ® curricula. However, that diversity is less wide ranging when considering the epistemological range within ESS overall, as Clark et al (2011) have shown. Therefore, these courses’ diversities are in many ways different ways to achieve the same narrow collection of theories, knowledge, and methods.
The entire Upper School calendar at CFS is designed to accommodate end-of-year experiences in the final weeks of the school year; approximately two thirds of the students on any given year go on teacher-generated trips, while the other create their own internships in an area of interest
This is the term commonly used by Spanish-speaking migrant workers to describe NC.
Not just as consumers of food; because of the location of CFS vis-à-vis central NC’s famed Research Triangle Park and the related businesses, universities, and NGOs, several students’ parents are able to afford the tuition because of well-salaried positions in scientific research, including research into food science and genetically modified organisms. Their role as consumers is also leveraged in ways that parallel what Robbins and Moore suggest as teaching ESS through things (2015); a common project for students to complete is to design what they would consider to be an ethical commodity chain for an agricultural product.
References
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College Board (2013a) AP environmental science student score distributions: global distributions May 2013. http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/ap/apcentral/ap13_enviro_sci_ScoringDist.pdf. Last accessed March 24 2015.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Rich Wallace, Jennifer Bernstein, and especially Jim Proctor, for their care, generosity of spirit, and insights as editors. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their time and thoughtful critiques of the initial manuscript. I would also like to thank the staff and students at Carolina Friends School for their support in using the CFS curriculum as an example within this essay and their inspiration in developing ESS curriculum.
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Lepofsky, J.D. Heterodox environments: pre-undergraduate ESS experiences beyond the AP ®. J Environ Stud Sci 5, 207–212 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-015-0244-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-015-0244-x