Wisconsin Standards for Environmental Literacy and Sustainability

Wisconsin Standards for Environmental Literacy and Sustainability

In May 2018, the Wisconsin Standards for Environmental Literacy and Sustainability (ELS) were adopted by the Wisconsin State Superintendent for school districts, educator preparation programs, and non-formal environmental education centers to consider in their work with environmental education. This site provides resources to support the implementation of the standards.

The Wisconsin Standards for Environmental Literacy and Sustainability provide a foundational framework that identifies what students should know and be able to do in environmental education. These standards take an interdisciplinary approach to integrating environmental education into multiple subject areas. 

Connect

This strand has four learning priorities: Perspective, Sense of Place, Curiosity and Wonder, and Wellbeing.

Perspective

A perspective is comprised of both a point and a view. Understanding multiple stakeholder perspectives, (including where they are coming from — point — and what they are seeing — view) is a key piece of systems thinking and developing environmental literacy.  Nonhuman living beings and nonliving objects can also be a point from which something is “viewed.” It can be challenging to know what that view is, but we, as humans, can estimate or imagine what that might be.

Sense of Place

Throughout these standards is reference to “place” and developing a “sense of place.” Place refers to the defining characteristics of a particular location, including natural features such as landscapes, watersheds, and relative location, and cultural aspects such as architecture, human-environment interaction, and economic activity.

Curiosity and Wonder

This learning priority focuses on learners asking questions about their place, identifying patterns, and looking for relationships between parts of the system. 

Wellbeing

This learning priority encourages learners to consider the question "how does where I live impact how I live?" and reflect on the impact of nature on one's health and wellbeing.  

Explore

This strand is broken down into four standards with the following learning priorities: 

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking is about examining a system as a whole.  Systems thinking is an emergent property (Cabrera & Cabrera, 2015, p. 9) that results from using four simple rules together:

1. Distinctions Rule: Any idea or thing can be distinguished from the other ideas or things it is with;
2. Systems Rule: Any idea or thing can be split into parts or lumped into a whole;
3. Relationships Rule: Any idea or thing can relate to other things or ideas; and
4. Perspectives Rule: Any idea or thing can be the point or the view of a perspective.

Through making distinctions, identifying relationships, organizing into parts and wholes, and considering perspectives, students gain the skills needed to understand their own mental models of how the world works, adjust those models based on feedback (learning), and create the desired outcome. Students who are able to address concepts and issues from a systems thinking approach will be able to design a more sustainable future. 

Systems and nested systems are additional “big ideas” within the standards and present in both systems thinking and Capra’s ecological principles. While Stone writes about it in terms of natural systems, the concept applies to cultural systems as well: “Nature is made up of systems that are nested within systems. Each individual system is an integrated whole and—at the same time — part of larger systems. Changes within a system can affect the sustainability of the systems that are nested within it as well as the larger systems in which it exists” (Stone, 2012).

Throughout the standards, students are asked to examine impact to systems and outcomes. The outcome of a system is determined by the system’s structure. To achieve different outcomes, modifications to the system’s structure must be made.

Feedback is information taken from a situation or experience. As systems respond to change, the results or effects create feedback in various forms, such as biochemical changes or behavioral responses. In systems thinking, students analyze feedback to consider potential modifications to the system structure to receive different feedback.

Natural Systems Emphasis

Each of the standards in the Explore section has a Natural Systems Emphasis learning priority. In several places, performance indicators are split into a “natural systems emphasis” or “cultural systems emphasis.”  Natural systems refer to all of Earth’s systems which are not human designed, including both physical and living systems. 

Cultural Systems Emphasis

In several standards, performance indicators are split into a “natural systems emphasis” or “cultural systems emphasis.” Cultural systems are human designed, such as educational, agricultural, economic, social, and political systems.

Multiple Perspectives

Learners are asked to consider multiple perspectives at it relates to decision making, responsibility, and wise use. It is important that learners first understand how their own lived experiences shape perspectives and mental models before trying to grasp other people's perspectives. 

Decision Making

Learners explore the complexity of individual and collective decision making.