The North Shore Curriculum Assessment Final Report

Abstract

This document describes the results of a project to assess the needs of teachers and schools regarding coastal resources and environmental education in the Minnesota coastal zone. A survey was carried out on K-12 teachers at 55 schools in the coastal zone, and a series of community meetings was held. Key findings are extracted and reproduced below. “The majority of surveyed teachers stated that they are quite comfortable teaching environmental education lessons in their classroom, resulting in one of the higher rankings (4.20) given in any area of the survey. This is supported by the fact that 77% of the teachers from this survey stated that they teach outdoors and 68% of them are currently using an outdoor school site. These numbers seem to indicate that many schools have an outdoor setting in which to teach. This is supported by the lowest ranking (2.83) for environmental education resource needs of obtaining an outdoor school site. The teachers seemed to indicate that they were knowledgeable in the content areas of environmental education with the positive rankings in every area (all above 3.0). The teachers in this survey rated that their greatest level of knowledge was among the area of outdoor recreation. This area is an integral part of our region and many may have gained experiential knowledge that would support this finding. Teachers indicated that they were more knowledgeable (3.70) about general environmental issues (climate change, acid rain, etc.) rather than specific issues relating to the coastal zone, (fisheries, forestry and development). Specific coastal zone issues was rated the lowest (3.02) in this category. The data showed that a moderate number of teachers were unaware of many of the existing environmental education curricula. The data also showed that many teachers were aware of the listed curricula, but did not use them presently in their teaching. Overall, of the teachers that did indicate they used these curricular resources, there was a relatively low rate of usage of these resources, all with rankings below 2.50. Specific coastal resource management issues were ranked as the highest level of need in terms of a specific content area, which seems to correlate with the prior result that showed this area to be ranked as the lowest item in the teachers’ level of knowledge. Other needed content areas that were ranked highest in this category were aquatic ecosystems, birds, current interaction of humans upon natural resources (an area similar to coastal resource management issues), historical interactions of human cultures upon natural resources, earth sciences and wildlife. 93% of surveyed teachers responding that they teach about the environment, it was surprising to note that only 38% of them use the identified published EE curriculum. Instead, many teachers (46%) have developed their own curriculum to teach about the environment. In addition to teaching about the environment, a majority (64%) of the teachers are taking their students on field trips to Environmental Learning Centers or Nature Centers. However, most of these field trip opportunities are happening only once or twice during the school year. The data also revealed that 19.6% of the surveyed teachers are teaching about the environment every week, which seemed to be a high percentage given the number of respondents. The outcomes and knowledge gained from this project are to be used to assess the needs of environmental education curriculum in the coastal zone and subsequently make recommendations for future funding and efforts that best meet the needs of coastal area schools and educators.”