Learner-centered teaching is apedagogical approach that emphasizes the roles of students as
participants inand drivers of their own learning. Learner-centered teaching activities gobeyond
traditional lecturing by helping students construct their ownunderstanding of information
develop skills via hands-on engagement andencourage personal reflection through metacognitive
tasks. In addition learner-centered classroom approaches may challenge students'
preconceivednotions and expand their thinking by confronting them with
thought-provokingstatements tasks or scenarios that cause them to pay closer attention
andcognitively see a topic from new perspectives. Many types of pedagogy fallunder the umbrella
of learner-centered teaching including laboratory work group discussions service and
project-based learning and student-ledresearch among others. Unfortunately it is often not
possible to use some ofthese valuable methods in all course situations given constraints of
money space instructor expertise class-meeting and instructor preparation time andthe
availability of prepared lesson plans and material. Thus a major challengefor many instructors
is how to integrate learner-centered activities widelyinto their courses. The broad goal of
this volume is to helpadvance environmental education practices that help increase
students'environmental literacy. Having a diverse collection of learner-centeredteaching
activities is especially useful for helping students develop theirenvironmental literacy
because such approaches can help them connect morepersonally with the material thus increasing
the chances for altering theaffective and behavioral dimensions of their environmental
literacy. Thisvolume differentiates itself from others by providing a unique and
diversecollection of classroom activities that can help students develop theirknowledge skills
and personal views about many contemporary environmental andsustainability issues.
