Basic ways to approach problems and issues in  life
and to learn in high quality way and continual quality improvement are the steps towards solving environmental problems. However we need also integrating education and management. Serious alleviation and solving of environmental problems requires also many kinds of continual integration, integrativism in educational and managerial practice.

Before you read any more about the book, please construct your own tentative personal theory about the issue which we ponder in the title of this chapter.
First think by yourself what is education, what is the basic structure of the world, what is knowledge, what are values and other foundations for education.

After you have constructed your answer, only after that, please compare you conception, your tentative theory to the ideas presented in this book on the following page(s).
 

A theory of Integrating education

An integrating theory of integrating education, including Integrating Environmental Education (Based on Åhlberg 1997b)

In the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992) the principle 8 is important also for education, not only for economy: “To achieve sustainable development and higher quality of life for all people, States should reduce and eliminate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and promote appropriate demographic policies.” Only by high quality learning, integrating quality education and continual quality improvement can this be achieved.

In education there is an urgent need for better integrating theories. These theories integrate relevant knowledge about the world and ourselves. Based on the relevant knowledge these theories include prescriptive proactive elements: what ought to be done in order to have sustainable development, good environment and good life. At the same time learning and teaching practice ought to integrate better knowledge, feelings and actions to foster higher quality of environment and life, in this sense we need integrating education. There are plenty of educational development work and research going on, but it is fragmentary, often concentrated on details which alone are almost meaningless.

There is a difference between an integrative theory and an integrating theory. One can make synthesis of some field. It can be an integrative or integrating theory. If it remains a dogma, a stagnant, untouched and untested intellectual product, it is an integrative theory. On the other hand an integrating theory is a theory which is continually constructed, evidence for and against it are continually sought after, it is continually tested both theoretically and empirically. By theoretical testing I mean that it is compared to other theories and research and tested all the time in the mind, in thinking. By empirical testing I mean that it is tested both in practice in everyday life and when possible also in strict experiments and case studies.

Constructing theory in a fast developing field like Environmental Education is like to climb to a tree in the jungle. If you are on ground you do not know where you are going. By climbing to a tree top (in practice reading and thinking the best of the jungle and constructing your own theory out of it) you can see longer, e.g. which routes are probably dead ends, which lead to stagnation and to destruction and which seem productive and fertile.

In order to make real progress in solving environmental problems science ought to be taken seriously. It is true that most of the environmental problems we have are partly because of abuse of science. However without science there is no hope of solving those global and local environmental problems. In science all knowledge and assumptions are tentative, prone to scrutiny, constant checking and re-checking, testing and retesting. In integrativism we are seeking after wisdom, broad and deep causal and temporal chains of reasoning. It takes time to construct broad and deep causal and temporal reasoning chains. That is why young children are not wise. They may be intelligent, but they lack knowledge, experiences and reflection based on them.

Love, caring is one of the basic elements of an integrating theory of education. Caring communities are ideal when we think about future sustainable societies. Caring makes life meaningful. It is a human basic need to take care and to be cared, to love and to be loved. Nel Noddings (1984; 1989; 1992) has long developed a curriculum of caring. Noddings (1995, 675) develops ideas, which are at the core of education for sustainability, good environment and good life: “We would like to give a central place to the questions and issues that lie at the core of human existence. One possibility would be organize the curriculum around themes of care - caring for self, for intimate others, for strangers and global others, for the natural world and its nonhuman creatures, for the human-made world, and for ideas.” Boostrom (1994) concludes that caring is important, but alone it is not enough for a theory of curriculum.

Already Schumacher (1979, 142) wrote about importance of loving care, using expression T.L.C. or “tender loving care, and this is what our life needs. When it is organised out of the system, then everything becomes unproductive and madly expensive.”

Sometimes in the name of equality intellectual differences between people are tried to be suppressed. However the real dynamo of wealth of nations and regions is in the innovativeness, creativeness of its best thinkers, inventors, scientists, artists etc. In schools and in society everybody’s talents ought to be promoted as much as possible (Gardner 1993, 71; Åhlberg 1997, 212 - 214). The point is that we ordinary people need brilliant individuals. But also the extremely creative individuals need others to take care of good society, good environment. Together we can have a better environment and better chances for good life.

In order to get a better society, sustainability, good environment and good life, we need to customize education and learning. E.g. Covington (1996, 24 - 25) states: “Striving for excellence - that is maximizing the intellectual potential of each student - is the most legitimate of all academic goals... this kind of excellence is best promoted when achievement standards are applied flexibly, according to gifts and experiences of each child, not imposed uniformly in procrustacean ways across all children... Standards and standardization is not the same thing, nor can equivalence substitute for excellence.”

Reigeluth (1997, 205) suggests that we need: 1) learning-focused instructional processes, 2) appropriate pedagogy and systemic support, 3) teacher’s role must change from traditional controller to a coach and a mentor, 4) much more reliance on team-based learning, self-regulated learning, and advanced technology for customised learning.

In this context only some of the underpinning elements of an integrating theory of education can be named:

As an ontological ground integrativism or systemism is named. The universe is the biggest system known. All other systems are elements of the universe. If there were a part of the world which is not connected to other parts of the universe, we would not be able to acquire any knowledge about it.

As an epistemological ground tentativeness of all human knowledge is named. All knowledge claims, all assumptions of those claims are provisional, tentative, prone to continual theoretical and empirical testing. All human knowledge is continually constructed and reconstructed starting from its basic elements, concepts, to propositions and theories.  There are different versions of constructivism. Ours is scientific constructivism: knowledge is continually constructed, but also tested for its truthfulness in science and efficiency in technology.

As an example of value theory (axiology) caring and love as value is named. According to our integrating theory values imply both rights and duties. Everybody has right to knowledge, to democracy, good healthy environment, satisfaction of basic needs, good life, to be loved, to be taken care of etc. But there are corresponding duties to protect all those values and rights. There are many authors who write only about rights, but not about corresponding duties or responsibilities. E.g. Waks (1996) presents three different environmental rights frameworks: 1) a pure human rights approach, 2) a rights-to-environment approach and 3) a rights-of-environment approach.

There are three basic approaches to values:
1) value objectivism: values are objective, absolute
2) value relativism: values are subjective, relative to societies, to circumstances and
3) value constructivism: values are human constructions which are partly based on objective properties of real objects and real processes and partly human constructions.
The last one is coherent with integrativism, which is the main approach of this textbook.

Van Matre (1990, 165) only names, and do not elaborate ten green values, which are worth thinking, and testing both theoretically and empirically:
ecological wisdom
grassroots democracy
personal and social responsibility
nonviolence
decentralization
community-based economics
postpatriarchal values
respect for diversity
global responsibility
future focus.

Bell (1997b, 225) presents a different and longer list and justifies it well: Knowledge, education, honesty, truth, integrity, evaluation, justice, co-operation, loyalty, freedom, a sense of community or brotherhood, industriousness, sufficient wealth or riches, peace, health, opportunities for family life and sexual behaviour, love and affection, kindness, friendliness, generosity, caring for other people, reciprocity, courage, reliability, respect, power, participation, trust and trustworthiness, self-control, moderation, fulfilling one’s obligations to others, adaptability, respect for life, respect of the life-sustaining capacities of the Earth, and living a meaningful life. According to Bell (1997b, 226) these “Near-universal values have withstood the test of time. They have contributed to the survival and well-being of the human species and they have been forged out of the millennia of human existence... They have endured in those human societies that have lasted. They have endured despite tremendous changes in agriculture, industry, settlement patterns, science, technology, and belief systems about the nature of reality.”

Practical suggestions:

For every field of education as many integrating theories of education ought to be constructed, as many as there are serious workers in the field. For sure there would be many common elements between those theories.