Debates about teaching reading have long been a part of educational vernacular, frequently reduced to polarised views about phonics. This attention can unnecessarily divert from the cumulative skills required for learning to read and comprehensive research, which indicates the positive influence of systematic phonics instruction on students’ reading outcomes. Australian education has recently moved beyond these reading wars to include explicit phonics instruction in a reformed national English Curriculum. This provides an opportune time to engage preservice teachers entering the workforce with strategies that explicitly teach these skills while nurturing young people’s ecological consciousness through positive nature connections. With this focus in mind, a participatory action research project involving preservice teachers was undertaken, from which an Eco-Conceptual Framework ensued. The project put immersive activities in place, promoting transdisciplinary ways to develop learners’ connections with nature using images collected from participants’ real world when learning to read. Results indicate that action research energised preservice teachers’ perceived knowledge, self-efficacy about teaching early reading utilising place and skills in designing visual resources. It brings attention to the critical influence of preservice teachers’ dispositions and preferred natural spaces on what images are collected and offered when designing early reading activities utilising the natural world.

Biodiversity loss is a complex issue and a risk that education cannot overlook. Teachers play a crucial role in how biodiversity, and in particular local biodiversity, is understood. To provide insight into how to improve communication on the subject, we investigate teachers’ perspectives and social representations regarding biodiversity, their fluency in terms of Internet use, their familiarity with biodiversity web portals and perceived pedagogical usefulness of technology. A sample of 243 K–12 schoolteachers of multiple scientific domains from eight Azorean islands answered an online survey, including three free-word association tests using inductive terms such as ‘Internet’, ‘biodiversity’ and ‘familiar biodiversity portals’. Overall, the schoolteachers failed to incorporate the multidimensionality of the biodiversity concept (including natural science teachers) or to show technological fluency, and they tended not to use biodiversity web portals as tools to engage students in teaching activities. Our results indicate that teachers’ perspectives about biodiversity need to be broadened and improved and that it is worth exploring whether information and communication technology represents a window of opportunity to do so. As an example, biodiversity web portals, which are widely recognized as trustworthy information repositories, may be used to engage teachers in this endeavour.

This article appreciatively reviews environmental education practice on islands through the lens of four key strands of environmental education discourse: biodiversity, conservation and science-framed education; place-based, indigenized and bioregional education; climate change and disaster risk reduction education; and education for sustainable development. Arising from these strands and their interface, six questions are asked of the examples of island practice reviewed. A final section asks what is distinctive about environmental education on islands and comes up with five principal findings. First, it is observed that environmental education initiatives on islands are markedly eclectic in their rich blending of practice from within the different strands. Second, it is noted that environmental education practice on different islands, especially in the Pacific, is marked by a return to indigenous, community-based learning. Third, the emergence of a distinctive pedagogy is remarked upon, especially the greater weighting given to relational, socio-affective and action-orientated learning. Fourth, the paucity of inter-island cosmopolitan dialogue is noted and questions are asked about how to ensure island learners steeped in learning about place can be brought to connect with the global environmental problematic. Fifth, the frequency of cross-curricular, interdisciplinary, even trans-disciplinary framing of environmental education initiatives is identified as bringing distinctiveness to island practice.

In this paper we suggest that learning about natural history experientially can be thought of as a type of reading, where understanding is developed by using particular skills, processes and content. In our experience, teaching and learning natural history involves the generation of knowledge and understanding through relating direct personal observations of aspects of the natural world to broader cultural and conservation issues. We therefore argue that teaching Australian natural history that reflects the particular social, cultural and environmental circumstances of the place in which it is undertaken requires pedagogical research and informed debate. In this paper we highlight this neglected aspect of pedagogical research within Australian outdoor and environmental education and discuss our experiences of teaching natural history to undergraduate students to stimulate discussion and challenge researchers-educators to develop practices that are informed by the natural history of this continent.

This paper discusses the emerging field of place-based education or place-based pedagogy - an approach that seeks to enhance childrens perspective of ‘place’ via school and community related environmental projects. Place-based education is proposed as an approach that enables students to establish a connection to a place, its people, and to the world beyond the school gate. Through initiating teaching and learning experiences that respond to the unique and local places where children live, play and go to school, place-based education is notable as a significant educational tool. Gregory Smith's place-based framework (2002) and a Tasmanian case study are put forward to highlight the significance of place-based pedagogy for environmental education.

Discourse in the Australian Journal of Environmental Education of the last ten years has not addressed a pedagogy that draws on and reflects the natural history of the continent. Australia is an ecological and species diverse country that has experienced substantial environmental change as a consequence of European settlement. Australians have historically been, and increasingly are, urban people. With high rates of urban residency in a substantially modified landscape, what role might environmental education play in assisting Australians to develop understandings of the natural history of specific Australian places? While Australia has a rich history of people observing, comparing and recording the natural history of the continent, environmental education discourse in this journal has not addressed how pedagogy might be informed by a focus on natural history. This paper draws attention to this gap in Australian environmental education discourse and offers some thoughts and ideas for a pedagogy based on the natural history of specific places.

This article describes an intervention strategy, initiated under the New Zealand Government's tribal partnership scheme, which promotes a culture-based/place-based approach to education in mainstream schools and early childhood centres in one tribal region. Through place-based education children are immersed in local heritage, including language and culture, landscapes, opportunities and experiences. The strategy is a tribal response to the overwhelming evidence of Māori underachievement in education in the tribal catchment. A case study is presented of a place-based/culture-based initiative called the Ngāti Kahungunu Cultural Standards Project (NKCSP). It is argued that the development of cultural standards offers an opportunity by which teachers and others within the education sector can develop and incorporate practice that reflects, promotes and values the student's culture. The core assumption underpinning the project is that cultural knowledge contributes to Māori student success in education.