ESSENTIAL
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Here you'll find primary
recommendations grouped according to typical educator challenges.
If you want to use BEPs but aren't sure where to begin, try the
BEP Decision Tree. BEP
Research provides more information, including key recommendations
from each discipline, available by Knowledge
Areas .
View
the Essential BEPs as 54
KB
For
every education or learning situation
The learning experience:
- Is specifically designed to maximize the type of outreach or
education effort selected:
- Contributes to meeting learning goals
- Knowledge - the development of intellectual skills, such as
recall of data, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis
and evaluation
- Attitudes - the manner in which we deal with things emotionally,
such as feelings, values, appreciation, enthusiasms, motivations,
and ways of thinking
- Skills - physical movement, coordination, and use of motor-skill
areas
For the individual
The learning experience:
- Has a clear purpose with tightly focused outcomes and objectives.
- Is learner centered, and consequently:
- Assesses the learner in order to set appropriately high and
challenging standards.
- Relates to the individual's level of physical, intellectual,
emotional, and social development.
- Can be adapted to individual differences in learning strategies
and approaches.
- Relates to personal interests and provides for personal choice
and control.
- Encourages the learner to set meaningful learning goals and
to take personal responsibility for their own learning.
- Promotes active engagement and real world problem solving.
- Enables the learner to link new knowledge to their existing
knowledge in meaningful ways.
- Builds thinking and reasoning skills - analysis, synthesis,
evaluation, and problem solving - that learners can use to construct
and apply their knowledge.
- Presents a new behavior or skill by:
- Demonstrating its similarity to a current behavior or skill.
- Relating the new behavior to current social practices.
- Demonstrating ease of adoption in terms of time, effort and
money.
- Provides a nurturing context for learning, with attention
to: cultural or group background and influences, the physical
environment, and the use of tools or practices appropriate to
learner skills and abilities.
- Provides opportunities for extended effort and practice.
- Builds on positive emotions, curiosity, enjoyment, and interest.
- Allows a learner to interact and collaborate with others on
instructional tasks.
Photo by
Jeff Miller @ UW-Madison Communications
For
the class or group
The learning
experience:
- Is based on and shaped by some form of needs assessment and
use of a planning model (such as the logic model).
- Is designed to focus on a targeted audience and is built on
an understanding of audience skills and interests .
- Content and delivery is determined in cooperation with the target
audience and stakeholders .
- Is relevant to and accessible by people with diverse backgrounds
and influences.
- Presents accurate and balanced information, incorporating many
different perspectives .
- Incorporates methods for assessing the value of the experience,
especially as it relates to desired outcomes.
- Is facilitated by quality instructors who have been trained
in effective teaching methods and are supported by the program
sponsor.
- Uses creative approaches.
- Values lifelong learning.
- Builds environmental literacy:
- Questioning and analysis skills
- Knowledge of environmental processes and systems
- Skills for understanding and addressing environmental issues
- Personal and civic responsibility
- Builds from key principles underlying environmental education:
- Systems and interdependence are characteristics of the biological
and natural order
- Natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities disciplines
contribute to understanding of the environment and environmental
issues
- Learner connections to immediate surroundings provide a base
for understanding larger systems, broader issues, causes and
consequences
For
Web-based learning
The learning module:
- Addresses a specific topic that is narrow in scope.
- Follows a logical hierarchy of skill and knowledge development.
- Moves from knowledge transmission to learner-controlled systems.
- Is self-directed and self-contained (students can progress through
the material on their own and all materials are readily accessible
as part of the course).
- Has clear and concise directions on how to complete the module.
- Chunks the content into manageable "bites".
- Provides a complete demonstration of the concept.
- Provides detailed and consistent feedback for practice opportunities.
- Makes appropriate use of a variety of media.
For
the community
The learning experience:
- Evolves from work with a coalition or group.
- Supports a person who takes responsibility for managing or leading
the process, and relies on quality group planning and facilitation
techniques.
- Relates to long-term community vision and goals.
- Takes into consideration the community as a whole, including:
socio-political, economic, historical, and cultural influences.
- Builds on locally existing skills and resources.
- Is flexible in response to both process and conditions.
- Generates and makes use of data about the local condition.
- Provides training to increase skills needed to accomplish goals
identified by the group.
- Takes place close to the location where people practice a behavior
of concern.
- Builds effectiveness through linkages to other communities,
partners, and resources.
- Reaches people in multiple ways.
- Provides participants with feedback about the results of their
actions.
Beyond
the community
The learning experience:
- Builds value for education as part of policy development and
implementation.
- Builds skills for flexibility and responsiveness to environmental
issues and for facilitating community engagement.
- Concerning a particular topic - consolidates the learning
goals for all levels of responsibility, but not the teaching
methods, which are adapted for the target audience.
- Matches the target audience to the scale of the problem.
- For example, related to a particular problem, watershed council
staff receive training about a locally significant topic, while
agency staff receive training about how information about several
related topics informs policy development.
- Offers avenues for participation which are competent, fair,
and enhance involvement for all levels of responsibility.
References
Essential Best
Education Practices were derived primarily from the following resources.
Many of these references summarize major ideas from many authors
in the field they describe.
- American Distance Education Consortium. ADEC Principles for
Distance Teaching and Learning. Available at http://www.adec.edu/admin/papers/distance-teaching_principles.html
- American Psychological Association Board of Educational Affairs.
Learner-Centered Psychological Principles, as described at www.apa.org/ed/lcp.html
- E. Andrews, M. Smith, and G. Wise. 2002. The Community Based
Environmental Education model (CBEE) documented in "A
Model of Community-Based Environmental Education."
Chapter 10 in New Tools for Environmental Protection: Education,
Information, and Voluntary Measures . National Research Council
Division of Behavior and Social Sciences and Education: Committee
on the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, Thomas
Dietz and Paul C. Stern, editors. National Academy Press. This
chapter describes an education model that builds on findings of
a national study and the work of over 90 authors. It incorporates
community development; environmental education; adult and youth
education; public participation and empowerment; social marketing;
and technology transfer theory.
- A. Fedler. 2001. Defining Best Practices in Boating, Fishing,
and Stewardship Education . Report to the Recreational Boating
and Fishing Foundation, Alexandria , VA. Available at www.rbff.org/educational/
- R. Holsman. 2001. What Works . . . Documenting standard
practices for aquatic resource education . A report to the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Region 5, Federal Aid. Summarizes
environmental education, outdoor education and fisheries education
studies from over 130 authors.
- R. L. Horton and S. Hutchinson . 1997. The Learning Cycle (student-centered
inquiry education developed from Piaget's learning theory and
an extension of John Dewey's philosophy of education), as described
in Nurturing Scientific Literacy among Youth through Experientially
Based Curriculum Materials . Center for 4-H Youth Development,
College of Food , Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Columbus
: The Ohio State University .
- W. Scott and J. Fien. 1999. An evaluation of the contributions
of educational programmes to conservation within the WWW network
: Final Report. Unpublished report to the Worldwide fund
for Nature, Gland , Switzerland .
- B. Simmons et al. 2000. Environmental education principles as
described in Guidelines for the Initial Preparation of Environmental
Educators . The North American Association for Environmental
Education. Washington , D.C.
- University of Tennessee , Office of Information Technology,
Educational Technology Collaborative. Instructional Module components
and evaluation. See example at http://edtech.tennessee.edu/%7Eset4/default.html
- Planning models, such as the Logic Model, available from a variety
of sources. This advice is based on a version used by the University
of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension .
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