Description of the Workshops

Locations:
The Pennsylvania Center for Environmental Education has sponsored four professional development workshops entitled, "Essentials of Environmental Education for Pennsylvania." The workshops have taken place in southwestern Pennsylvania in the Pittsburgh area, in eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, northeastern Pennsylvania in the Pocono mountain region, and central Pennsylvania in State College.

Funding:
The workshops have been partially funded by a grant from the U.S. EPA Region III. The EPA grant provided stipends to cover the cost of workshop attendance for formal and nonformal educators. In addition, the grant will be paying for the publication of a workshop manual. The Pennsylvania Department of Education funded some of the stipends for the higher education workshop to supplement the EPA funding.

Content:
· An overview of the goals and guiding principles of environmental education;
· Hands-on practice in applying these goals and principles in professional practice;
· An overview of Pennsylvania's Department of Education environment and ecology standards;
· An overview of the NAAEE "Guidelines for Excellence in Environmental Education;"
· An overview of how to use these standards and guidelines as criteria for selecting environmental education activities;
· A facilitated discussion of the major trends and issues in environmental education in Pennsylvania.

In addition, several environmental education methods were demonstrated in the workshop. These include: constructivism, cooperative learning, and interdisciplinary inclusion of environmental education. The higher education workshop also included discussion and activities related to environmental issues and information on "the Pa. Dept. of Education's proposed " environment and ecology standards.

Timing:
The workshop schedules varied, with subsequent adjustments being made to lessen the amount of content covered. The four schedules are included for comparison in Appendix E. Each adjustment attempted to address a disparity that surfaced between the amount of material that could be covered in depth, and the workshop time allotment.

During the Philadelphia workshop, a particular difficulty arose in that most of the participants were not able to arrive on time. The problem was due to traffic congestion encountered by suburban participants attempting to reach an inner-city location. Careful attention needs to be given to planning workshop locations that are easy for participants to access, or are located near affordable overnight lodging.

Types of Participants:
The first workshop was exclusively for nonformal environmental educators and had fifteen participants. The middle two workshops, which were marketed to both formal and nonformal educators, had thirty-one nonformal educators participating, and ten formal educators. The fourth workshop was marketed for faculty of higher education institutions directly involved in preservice education and had 24 target participants and 4 non-target participants.