Contemporary environmental issues: Creating curricular connections in K-12 education

The nature of contemporary issues facing our society and the research being conducted to deal with them clearly crosses the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines. Hence, it is suggested that school education should provide students with trans-disciplinary learning experiences in which students learn to use knowledge from various academic disciplines in an integrated format within the context of specific real-life issues. Trans-disciplinary approaches hold the promise of helping students see real-life issues in an organic rather than fragmented manner and be able to apply knowledge to deal with them in an organic manner. A majority of the contemporary issues facing our society relate to the environment. Hence, environmental issues can serve as excellent organizers for designing transdisciplinary instructional units. Arguments in favor of organizing trans-disciplinary instruction around contemporary environmental issues and an approach for doing so are presented in this article.