NAAEE 2005 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
* Conference Strand: Society
TEACHING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE THROUGH CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Eun-ju Lee
The Ohio State University
ABSTRACT
The field of environmental justice (EJ) education has been developed by several
researchers. All of them partly answered what to teach and how to teach about environmental
justice. However, few studies have been done focusing on children. In this paper, children’s
literature is used as a way of addressing EJ themes to K-12 students. For this purpose, strengths
of using literature for EJ teaching were discussed. One of the challenges in teaching
environmental justice to young students is in relating the concepts of justice or injustice to
students’ life experiences. Literature can address controversial issues in a meaningful and less-
threatening manner. Regarding the key concepts of EJ education, Bowers’s eco-justice pedagogy
was reviewed to guide the contents of children’s literature with EJ themes. Some exemplary
children’s books were selected for EJ teaching based on discussed eco-justice themes.
INTRODUCTION
The field of environmental justice (EJ) education has been developed by several
researchers. For example, Bowers (2002), Zehle (2002) and Hill (2003) discussed key concepts
of environmental justice education which included not only ecological but cultural, economic,
and political processes. Meanwhile, Cheng-Levine (2002) and Warren (1996) suggested ways of
addressing EJ themes to their college students. Cheng-Levine (2002) used literature of EJ
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