ABSTRACT
Too much environmental and global education has been outer-directed and has denied interiority. This chapter discusses in broad strokes only, the early development of environmental education, which mirrored historical events, while navigating shifting ground within the field of education. There are three commonly accepted antecedents to environmental education—conservation education, nature studies, and outdoor education—now coexisting with/in environmental education. Second and Third Wave environmentalism would beget a dramatically different entity called environmental education. Environmentalism created a seismic cultural shift that is now acknowledged, despite periods of backlash, denial, and political paralysis. Environmental communication, closely linked to science communication, communication theory, and media studies, addresses any type of communication concerned with environmental issues. Environmental interpretation, whether in parks, museums, zoos, nature centres, historic sites, or aquaria, has been defined as communication that is both an informational and inspirational process to create intellectual and emotional connections between natural sites or species and the learning audience.
