Applied Education Programming: Four Exemplars in Environmental Literacy and Teacher Professional Development

This paper shares four Sea Grant-funded projects from across the United States. The Hawai‘i project integrates Western science and Hawaiian culture in place- and community-based teaching. The Maryland program takes a project-based learning approach to aquaculture education in the formal education system. The Massachusetts (MIT) project focuses on state-of-the-art technology in engineering, robotics, and ocean science. The Virginia project emphasizes science communication and lesson plan design. What all four projects have in common is their focus on environmental literacy and teacher professional development in formal education. This approach aims to raise the quality of STEM instruction by expanding teachers’ knowledge, skills, and resources. Training teachers also efficiently utilizes resources by maximizing the number of students we ultimately reach, thereby creating sustainability.