Toward eco -citizenship: A praxis for empowerment

My teaching practice and research is about holistic education which assumes that, at some fundamental level, everything is connected. Holistic education is a philosophy, a worldview, that challenges the fragmented, reductionist, mechanistic and nationalistic assumptions of mainstream culture and education. The ultimate goal is to transform the way people look at themselves and their relationships in/to the world from a fragmented to an integrative perspective. This emerging paradigm can also be called ecological, evolutionary, spiritual and global. There is a growing belief that such education is fundamentally spiritual, in its search for wholeness. Western civilization has been dominated from its Graeco-Roman beginnings by separateness which was given philosophical legitimacy by Aristotelian logic and theological legitimacy by Augustine. The entire Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm is built on this reductionist, pragmatic philosophy. Many great scientific discoveries have resulted from this model. However, in the light of serious degradation to the biosphere, many scholars and physicists now recognize an implicit wholeness and connectedness. Our educational models need to reflect this unity and, as such, holistic education has the potential for transforming the world, each individual-in-relationship at a time. This dissertation explores and develops an emerging educational model aimed at helping students come to a deeper and broader ecological-spiritual awareness and attitude toward nature through a spiritual identification with it. I argue that this \u27identification\u27 actively facilitates and promotes a change in students\u27 behaviour toward the environment and thereby supports a sustainable, ecological ethic. The model will be grounded in case studies from the classroom, follow-up interviews, the writings of various classic and contemporary writers and hands-on experience with teachers and practitioners. The writings of my students in \u27their own words\u27 and text excerpts will be woven throughout. The aim of phenomenological \u27truth\u27 is expressive disclosure of immediate experience that enables, in this case, eco-spiritual learning to be seen. So, I offer up some of the students\u27 reflections to see what can be uncovered in our search for understanding what might be involved in eco-spiritual learning and transformation

Development of a systems model to visualise the complexity of children's independent mobility

Substantial changes to the built environment, urbanisation patterns, and societal norms have contributed to limiting children's opportunities for being independently mobile. Several linear causal pathway models have been developed to understand the influences on children's independent mobility; however feedback loops between and within the various levels of influence cannot be modelled using such an approach. The purpose of this paper is to refine the interrelationships of factors related to children's independent mobility, taking into account earlier models, broader contextual factors, recent children's geographies literature, and feedback loops. Systems model components were informed by attributes known to influence children's independent mobility, related qualitative findings, and the development of a framework that could lend itself to multilevel modelling approaches. This systems model may provide a useful structure for identifying how best to develop and monitor interventions to halt the declining rates of children's independent mobility

Helping Others Shows Differential Benefits on Health and Well-being for Male and Female Teens

Altruism, Well-being, Health-related quality of life, Gender, Adolescents,