Experiential Environmental Learning Manual for Primary and Middle School Teachers

Environmental education (EE) has been in practice in Vietnam from 1990s with imported approaches and methodologies from international experience. There have been dozen of projects and organizations introducing different ways of environmental education to school teachers and students throughout Vietnam.

The Ministry of Education and Training and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) have jointly implemented an environmental education project in order to bring EE to schools since 1995. In 2002, the Prime Minister approved the proposed plan to integrate EE into the national education system. However, the integration of environmental themes into current curriculum is not yet well implemented due to lack of training and clear guidance for teachers.

Experiential environmental education is relatively a new approach in Vietnam with the fact that there’s not yet a good model yet for educators and practitioners to look upon. One of the reasons is that environmental education itself is still a “fresh” idea in many schools. Some other educators who have experience in EE still find a niche in traditional classroom approach. For many other school teachers, they do not have access to good resources and materials in Vietnamese language that can enlighten them to practice new ways of teaching EE.

PanNature worked with Hanoi Environmental Education Project to develop the Experiential Environmental Learning Manual for primary and middle school teachers. This manual ambitiously aims at providing primary and middle school teachers with unique and hands-on tools for carrying out experiential EE for their students. It consists of theorical foundation and concrete activities demonstrating different methods in using experiential EE at schools.

An English translation of this manual is available on the website of Hanoi Environmental Education Project.