Abstract
In 2003 China’s Ministry of Education mandated the infusion of environmental education in all classes at all levels of China’s elementary and secondary public schooling. However, this mandate has collided with deeply entrenched structural obstacles in China’s school system and remains largely unfulfilled. In particular, a widespread preoccupation with test scores and student safety discourages teachers from devoting class time to environmental education content, and severely inhibits attempts to engage students in the type of hands-on learning specifically recommended in the Ministry of Education’s guidelines for environmental education practice. This chapter draws upon interviews with elementary school teachers and fieldwork with an environmental NGO in the city of Kunming in China’s Yunnan Province to analyze this enduring gap between policy and practice.
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The research for this article was conducted under the auspices of a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar grant (2011–2012), for which the author is deeply grateful.
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Efird, R. (2014). Closing the Green Gap: Policy and Practice in Chinese Environmental Education. In: Lee, JK., Efird, R. (eds) Schooling for Sustainable Development Across the Pacific. Schooling for Sustainable Development, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8866-3_15
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