Choice

imposes another obvious limitation. Every ideology and religion will want its views re ected in educational material. No particular ideologyno matter how noblewill be permitted to triumph merely by indoctrinating the students.

Cultural differences
subjects.

will have to be re ected in many

Environmental Education and Service-Learning

Patti H. Clayton
Division of Multidisciplinary Studies, NC State University
phclayton@mindspring.co m

Governments will always view education as a means of

maintaining control. Civics education will be different for each nation, even among the democracies.

Divergent educational interests Rapid change.

and needs begin immediately outside basic core academic requirements. Many subjects change rapidly, requiring frequent changes in software. Explosive change is the norm in the sciences and technology. Modern history keeps advancing, and modern literature has to remain modern. Even the history of ancient Egypt changes over time, as we continue to dig into the matter. This fragmentation of the market for educational software will complicate the nancing of software development and maintenance, and limit development to segmented and therefore simpler and cheaper approa ches. Fortu nately, marvelo us t hings are possibleand are currently being achievedeven with this segmented approach. Basic subject-oriented tutorial approaches should be no problem, but more elaborate and broadly comprehensive highly interactive student development tutorial programs will take much longer to develop, and cannot at present be predicted. Adult guidancefrom both teachers and advisors will remain invaluable.

n recent years, On the Horizon has seen discussion of several convergent developments in environmental education:

the participatory learning to dodoing to learn trend (Graham, 1996); the emergence of eco-literacy as a vehicle for helping students to make connections between their academic disciplines and the real world (Graham, 1997a); the development of such interdisciplinary elds as eco-geography with its emphasis on exploring the role of individuals in shaping larger systems, on offering students tools for enhanced participation in decision-making processes, and on heightening their awareness of b ot h personal and professional responsibility (Graham, 1998); and t he effo rts of North Ca rolina to implement comprehensive environmental education that includes inquiry-based instruction, interdisciplinary content, and efforts to reach beyond the traditional classroom setting (Graham, 1997b).

The practical limits of the virtual world

Perhaps the most important limiting factor is the v irtu al world itself. The compu ter is a g reat complement to current educational approaches, and does make new approaches feasible. However, the computer offers no adequate substitute for real-world interaction between professors and students, real eld trips, real objects of interest, real laboratory equipment to ddle with, real frogs to dissect, real libraries with real books to browse, and real extra-curricula activities in which to engage. Thus, there will continue to be an expanding array of educational choices at all educational levels. The educational high ground will clearly remain in the control of on-site schooling. For the best schools, information technology offers much more opportunity than threat. However, community colleges and third echelon four-year colleges will have to change their focus radically to remain relevant. l
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There appear to be several macro-trends shaping environmental education,with reference to speci c examples and echoed in both the literature and practice throughout the eld, including: movement toward integration, at all levels, between t heory and practice, between u niversit y a nd community, between disciplines; a reformulation of how students learn best and of what it is that we want them to learn, with an emphasis on active learning, on developing skills of synthesis and critical thinking, and on exploring the real-world implications of academic material; and a renewed and rigorous emphasis on the notion of citizenship, with its emphasis on interdependence and its clari cation of our responsibilities to think and live in accordance with the common good of the community of life. From my perspective as both an Environmental Ethics instructor and a Project Director on the NC State University Service-Learning Curricular Development

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Project, it is clea r tha t these key elements of environmental education are also the central concerns of service-learning, another emerging trend in higher

T hese key elem ents of environm ental education are also the central concerns of service-learning
education with great possibilities for signi cantly enhancing the preparat ion of our students for meaningful and effective lives in the 21st century. This essay explores several of the conceptual and practical point s of convergence b etween env ironmental education and service-learning, grounded in examples from our experience at NC State.

develop a habit of critical reflection on their experiences, enabling them to learn more throughout life; s trengthen their ethic of social and civ ic responsibility; feel more committed to addressing the underlying problems behind social issues; understand problems in a more complex way and can image alternative solutions; demonstrate more sensitivity to how decisions are made and how institutional decisions affect peoples lives; respect other cultures more and are better able to learn about cultural differences; learn how to work more collaboratively with other people on real problems; and realize that their lives can make a di fference (Kendall, 1990). Although not exhausting the objectives of environmental education, these benefits of service-learning are certainly key to ecologically informed citizenship. The remainder of this essay considers speci c elements of environment-related service-learning.

Service-learning
An emerging form of experiential education, servicelearning involves placing students in service situations in which they are confronted with real-world manifestations of course concepts and supporting their consequent learning with rigorou s reflect ion mech anisms. Its ob jectives include academic enhancement (subtler and deeper understanding of cou rse ma teria l, pra ct ice in thinking from the perspective of a practitioner in the discipline), personal growth (self-awareness, risk- taking, goal-setting), and civic engagement (increased familiarity with processes of social change and appreciation for ones own ability to promote meaningful change in others lives). It functions through the full reciprocal partnerships of educational institutions (including faculty and staff ), citizens, community organizations and students.

Prospects for Environment-related Service-Learning

De ning the service-learning eld experience. Among the

rst tasks involved in integrating service-learning into a course is the identi cation of possible sites and needs in the community which will present students with real-world manifestations of course material. The National Center for Service-Learnings list of speci c service-learning projects undertaken by college and high school students in the U.S. includes the following representative environment-related ideas: Establish a community gardening project for retired people [Agriculture] Design economically feasible energy saving plans for homes in poor neighborhoods [Architecture] Design a system to help people who are blind to experience zoos or parks [Public Health or City Planning] Assist neighborhood groups with non-contaminating pest control programs [Biology] Sponsor workshops on fund-raising and organize activities to generate resources [Business] Monitor levels of pollution in local air and water; bring pressure on polluting industries to abide by regulations [Chemistry or Environmental Science] Provide plant therapy in nursing homes [or] organize an educational program for prison inmates [Education or Sociology] Help increase the self-reliance of community cooperatives by building compost makers, solar energy panels or waste-recycling units [Engineering]
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Service-learning involves placing students in service situations in which they are confronted w ith real-world m anifestations of course concepts
Service-learning shares with environmental education a focus on active knowledge and an emphasis on personal as well as institutional change. The relevance of service-learning for environmental education is apparent in lists of common outcomes of well-crafted service-learning experiences, such as that offered by the National Societ y for Experiential Educations consensus document on the Principles of Good Practice for Combining Service and Learning. Students:

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O rg anize letter w rit ing campa ig ns assist communit y groups w ith the preparation of a newsletter assist communit y agencies with proposal writing [English or Political Science] Bring information about the needs of low-income community to the attention of local mass transit authorities [Public Administration or City Planning] Set up workshops to inform community members about the history of an issue and possible strategies for resolving the issue, so that they will be better able to evaluate the opinions and actions of local government of cials [History or Political Science] (Kendall, 1990).

Example from a course in the environmental education eld.

NC State will be offering a service-learning enhanced Environmenta l Ethics cou rse during the spr ing semester of 2001. St udents cou ld b e helping a grassroots community effort to reclaim and revision a commercial area near campus, enhancing its walkability and environmental quality. During one component of the class, we might identify the wide range of environmental values and read excerpts from Bryan Nortons Toward Unity Among Environmentalists as a basis for considering the dynamics whereby people work together toward a common goal despite value differences. Supporting the efforts of this grassroots project (which includes representatives of the university, members of the local merchants association, staff from the N.C. Division of Transportation, and local residents) will confront students with real-world examples of the value trade-offs involved in such collaboration for social change. Students will re ect on the extent to which Nortons unity thesis holds in this endeavor and on the dynamics of collaborative decisionmaking when deeply held, divergent values are at stake; beyond this academic enhancement, the service-learning experience will also provide them with opportunities to re ect on their own values and the conditions under which they are apt to make trade-offs (personal growth) and on the dynamics of integrating different agendas toward the common good (civic engagement).

Designing and implementing an integrated learning experience.

After the community need has been identi ed and a course-relevant project has been developed, both through th e colla borat ion of instructor a nd community representatives, the instructor designs and the class implements mechanisms for thoroughly integrating the service experience with the course content, including a re ection framework structured to help students articulate their learning in the academic, personal, and civic arenas (our model at NC State, regardless of the speci c curriculum in question, is a combination of journalling and intensive small group oral re ection that is guided by a rigorous re ection framework we hope to publish soon).

Example from a course in a eld other than environmental education. At NC State we eld-tested a service-learning
enhanced science, technology and society course during the spring semester of 2000. Several students served at Raleighs new Exploris Global Experience Center where they developed such programs as a rainforest product appreciation activity and a Trash to Treasure activity in which children constructed a globe by re-using materials taken from the garbage and considered the extent to which their own schools and families re-use and recycle. As one example of the integration of course content with this experience during the semester: we read Stephen Sterlings Toward an Ecolog ical Worldview, we discussed the current process of paradigm shift towards an understanding of ecological interdependence, and at the site the students learned to recognize different worldviews and their influ ence on indiv idua l b ehav ior. Throu gh the integrative power of intensive re ection, we achieved a more subtle understanding of the tensions involved in this process of paradigm shift (academic enhancement); we became more aware of the extent to which our own assumptions and behaviors are products of both the modern and the ecological worldv iew (personal growth); and we increased our appreciation of the dif cult educational tasks facing institutions such as museums and of the possibilities for individual contributions to this endeavor (civic engagement).
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Implications
Well-crafted service-learning has the potential for a remarkable level of engagement among all participants in what Robert Sigmon has called the shared search for doing what needs to be done and pursuing what needs to be learned (Sigmon, 1996). Community needs can be better served through the partnership with faculty and students, faculty can experience the professional development associated with an intensive and challenging pedagogy and can themselves develop a personally satisfying avenue for civic engagement, and students can experience enhanced learning and growth academically, personally and civically. Service-learning offers instructors in a variety of disciplines and across all grade levels a range of opportunities for integrating consideration of issues cent ra l to environmental educa tion into their classrooms; and it allows Environmental Ethics, Environmental Policy and Environmental Science and Studies courses to explore in-depth those ideas and attitudes and behaviors that are most important to environmental education. It presents opportunities to experience, re ect on, and better understand not only course-speci c material but also such trans-discipline concepts and practices as citizenship, group dynamics, the common good, decision-making and trade-offs, values, the role of individuals in larger systems, social

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and ecological consciousness, and institutional change and policy-making. A pedagogy that helps students to develop the skills and attitudes necessary for lifelong learning, to view themselves as responsible for and capable of addressing social and environmental issues, and to appreciate and understand the role of both collaborative action and individual voice in social change, if carefully implemented, cannot help but advance the agenda of environmental education. This convergence of objectives holds promise for ser vice-learning as well as for env ironmental education. The perspective of environmental education can enhance the philosophy and practice of servicelearning through the explicit recognition of an ecological element: for we are not merely citizens of social systems but of ecological systems as well. And it is understanding and caring for the intersections of these two highly interdependent arenas that must be central to any notion of planetary citizenship and civic responsibility for the 21st century.

The Future of Distributed Competence: Constructing a PostEducation Paradigm

Arthur M. Harkins
Educational Policy and Administration University of Minnesota
harki001@um n.edu

George H. Kubik
The Graduate School University of Minnesota
kubi0021@um n.edu

Service-learning offers instructors in a variety of disciplines and across all grade levels a range of opportunities for integrating consideration of issues central to environm ental education into their classroom s
REFERENCES
Graham, D.N. Campus Ecology: Practical Education. On the Horizon, 1996, 4(5). Graham, D.N. Eco-Literacy and Worldly Knowledge. On the Horizon, 1997a, 5(3). Graham, D.N. Eco-Literacy Integration: The North Carolina Plan. On the Horizon, 1997b, 5(4), 12 13. Graham, D.N. Integrating Social and Natural Sciences for Environmental Studies. On the Horizon, 1998, 6(6). Kendall, J.C., and Associates. Combining Service and Learning: A Resource Book for Community and Public Service, Vol II. Raleigh, N.C.: The National Society for Internships and Experiential Education, 1990. Sigmon, Robert, and Colleagues. Journey to ServiceLearning: Experiences from Independent Liberal Arts Colleges and Universities. Washington, D.C.: The Council of Independent Colleges, 1996. l

his article explores the evolution of early Distributed Competence (DC) over the next ten years, or the capacity for novices and experts alike to successfully complete decisions and tasks anywhere, any time, and to immediately share their results and improvements locally, regionally and globally. We assert that the primary goal of education cannot continue to be learning for later life. Rather, a co-goal must be to support DC in a rapidly changing world beset by an existing and growing performance divide. DC promotes successful decision and task outcomes supported by Distributed Compe tence Software (DCS). DCS is partially self-correcting/evolving and interconnected both vertically and horizontally.

What Supports Distributed Competence?

As we envision it, the future of DC requires a posteducation paradigm. This means developing DC in parallel to Classroom Base Schooling, or learning situated in a building designed for preparatory learning. Our substitution is Performance Base Learning (PBL), which initiates learning at the point of performance beyond the classroom. We are calling for wirelessly delivered DC that serves as a source of PBL. The extrapolative technology we envision to support PBL is based on ground- and satellite-supported portable equipment permitting interaction with DCS designed to produce desired performance outcomes. Our term for this equipment is Body Area Network (BAN). Distributed Competence will depend upon BANs to link users across networked geospheres and sociospheres.

What Is Our Practical Intent?

Ou r pr actica l aim is to promote th e routine expectation of performances at or beyond expected
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