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Nonmajors (i.e., undergraduate students not majoring in the natural sciences) constitute a majority of United States college graduates and are a large potential audience for courses with ecology content. However, nonmajors may be unmotivated to learn about ecology because they perceive it to be uninteresting and irrelevant to their everyday lives or career goals. Although the Four‐Dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) framework can be adapted for nonmajors courses as a starting point to improve student engagement, we suggest that nonmajors ecology instructors also use ecology hooks as effective gateways to 4DEE that will motivate and deepen student learning. Selecting and developing meaningful ecology hooks requires knowing your audience, including their chosen majors. In this way, the audience should inform the hook, and the hook then helps to propel the audience's learning. In addition to being relevant to the audience, ecology hooks should be connected to student learning outcomes and multiple dimensions of 4DEE and supportive of inclusive classroom goals. We discuss how to identify and develop authentic ecology hooks and integrate them into 4DEE‐aligned courses to engage students. For heterogeneous audiences that comprise a mix of many different majors, we suggest the use of three types of universal ecology hooks: “everyday,” “local,” and “wow” hooks. For specialized audiences of a single major or similar majors, we suggest the additional use of “major‐specific” ecology hooks and provide examples for health professions, business, and visual and performing art majors. Although ecology hooks alone are unlikely to be a panacea for all challenges of engaging nonmajors, they are an important teaching tool that can bring new relevance, energy, creativity, thought‐provoking ideas, and connections into nonmajors courses.

As higher education undergoes rapid and fundamental change, eco‐educators need to be prepared to promote the inclusion of the ecological sciences in the biological sciences curriculum of the future. Here, we present an instructional alignment for an introductory ecology course, which is informed by and integrated with the Four‐Dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) Framework. Our instructional alignment was created collaboratively among faculty involved in teaching the course and emphasizes the relevance and utility of the ecological sciences. We believe that this approach positions the ecological sciences for continued success and inclusion in the biological sciences curriculum of tomorrow.

The newly developed Four‐Dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) framework, produced by the Ecological Society of America, provides updated guidance for undergraduate instruction. To help instructors align their courses to this framework and assess student progress toward its goals, we have recoded the comprehensive programmatic assessment Ecology and Evolution‐Measuring Achievement and Progression in Science (EcoEvo‐MAPS) and reanalyzed a national dataset of over 2000 undergraduate student responses. Here, we show how the EcoEvo‐MAPS questions align to the 4DEE framework and provide student performance data across the dimensions and elements. We also include information from student interviews to help inspire educators to develop new lessons, additional assessment questions, and other course materials in these areas. Finally, we provide information on a new web‐based portal that allows instructors to easily administer EcoEvo‐MAPS to students and receive an automatically generated score report that aligns results to the 4DEE framework.

Education has been and remains an important focus within the Ecological Society of America (ESA). Since the late 1980s, the number of initiatives, sections, and committees devoted to education, especially at the undergraduate level, has increased greatly. The purpose of this article is to identify and describe the education-related initiatives and groups within ESA (as of May 2025), especially to provide information for new members. Education activities within ESA are coordinated by the Office for Education and Diversity Programs (OEDP). The Education Committee, which reports to ESA’s Governing Board, engages in various education-related activities on behalf of the Board. Three sections within the ESA address education: the Education Section, the Researchers at Undergraduate Institutions, and the Communication and Engagement Section. ESA’s Four-Dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) framework was endorsed by the Society’s Governing Board in 2018 and is overseen by a 4DEE Sub-Committee. Three working groups currently help to implement aspects of 4DEE, including nonmajors and general education, video and media, and integration. The ESA sponsors various online resources to support education, including the EcoEdDL digital library, the EcoEd email listserv, and the Teaching with Issues and Experiments in Ecology (TIEE) online journal. Education has become an integral part of the ESA’s Annual Meeting, where attendees can find numerous oral presentations, poster sessions and workshops, including the popular Resources for Ecology Education Fair and Share (REEFS). The Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity and Sustainability (SEEDS) initiative is ESA’s flagship outreach program. The OEDP sponsors a Life Discovery-Doing Science Education Conference (LDC) that meets annually or semi-annually. Each year, the ESA formally recognizes an outstanding ecology educator through its Eugene P. Odum Award for Excellence in Ecology Education. ESA members wishing to become involved in ESA’s education initiatives should visit http://www.esa.org/education for more information.

Citizen-science programs are often touted as useful for advancing conservation literacy, scientific knowledge, and increasing scientific-reasoning skills among the public. Guidelines for collaboration among scientists and the public are lacking and the extent to which these citizen-science initiatives change behavior is relatively unstudied. Over two years, we studied 82 participants in a three-day program that included education about non-native invasive plants and collection of data on the occurrence of those plants. Volunteers were given background knowledge about invasive plant ecology and trained on a specific protocol for collecting invasive plant data. They then collected data and later gathered as a group to analyze data and discuss responsible environmental behavior with respect to invasive plants. We tested whether participants without experience in plant identification and with little knowledge of invasive plants increased their knowledge of invasive species ecology, participation increased knowledge of scientific methods, and participation affected behavior. Knowledge of invasive plants increased on average 24%, but participation was insufficient to increase understanding of how scientific research is conducted. Participants reported increased ability to recognize invasive plants and increased awareness of effects of invasive plants on the environment, but this translated into little change in behavior regarding invasive plants. Potential conflicts between scientific goals, educational goals, and the motivation of participants must be considered during program design. Los programas de ciencia-ciudadana a menudo son vendidos como útiles para que el público avance en sus conocimientos sobre conservación, en su conocimiento científico y en el incremento de las habilidades de razonamiento científico. No existen directrices para la colaboración entre científicos y el público y casi no se ha estudiado el grado en que estas iniciativas ciudadanos-ciencia cambian el comportamiento. Durante dos años estudiamos a 82 participantes en un programa de 3 días que incluía educación sobre plantas invasoras no nativas y la recolección de datos sobre la ocurrencia de estas plantas. A los voluntarios se les proporcionó conocimiento básico sobre la ecología de plantas invasoras y fueron entrenados en un protocolo específico para la recolección de datos de plantas invasoras. Posteriormente recolectaron datos y se reunieron para analizarlos y discutir sobre comportamiento ambiental responsable en relación con plantas invasoras. Probamos si los participantes sin experiencia en la identificación de plantas y con poco conocimiento de plantas invasoras incrementaron su conocimiento de ecología de especies invasoras, si la participación incrementó su conocimiento de métodos científicos y si la participación afectó su comportamiento. El conocimiento de plantas invasoras incremento 24% en promedio, pero la participación no fue suficiente para incrementar el entendimiento de cómo se lleva a cabo la investigación científica. Los participantes reportaron incremento en su habilidadpara reconocer plantas invasoras e incremento en la conciencia sobre el efecto de las plantas invasoras sobre el ambiente, pero esto se tradujo en pocos cambios en el comportamiento respecto a las plantas invasoras. Los potenciales conflictos entre las metas científicas, las metas educativas y la motivación de participantes deben ser considerados durante el diseño del programa.

Strategies to mitigate climate change often center on clean technologies, such as electric vehicles and solar panels, while the mitigation potential of a quality educational experience is rarely discussed. In this paper, we investigate the long-term impact that an intensive one-year university course had on individual carbon emissions by surveying students at least five years after having taken the course. A majority of course graduates reported pro-environmental decisions (i.e., type of car to buy, food choices) that they attributed at least in part to experiences gained in the course. Furthermore, our carbon footprint analysis suggests that for the average course graduate, these decisions reduced their individual carbon emissions by 2.86 tons of CO2 per year. Surveys and focus group interviews identify that course graduates have developed a strong personal connection to climate change solutions, and this is realized in their daily behaviors and through their professional careers. The paper discusses in more detail the specific components of the course that are believed to be most impactful, and the uncertainties associated with this type of research design. Our analysis also demonstrates that if similar education programs were applied at scale, the potential reductions in carbon emissions would be of similar magnitude to other large-scale mitigation strategies, such as rooftop solar or electric vehicles.

Numerous scholars have argued that the terms environmental literacy, ecological literacy, and ecoliteracy have been used in so many different ways and/or are so all-encompassing that they have very little useful meaning. However, despite the seemingly arbitrary and, at times, indiscriminate use of these terms, tremendous efforts have in fact been made to explicitly define and delineate the essential components of environmental literacy, ecological literacy, and ecoliteracy, and to firmly anchor their characterizations in deep theoretical and philosophical foundations. A driving purpose behind these ongoing conversations has been to advance complete, pedagogy-guiding, and broadly applicable frameworks for these ideals, allowing for standards and assessments of educational achievement to be set. In this manuscript, we review a diversity of perspectives related to the often nuanced differences and similarities of these terms. A classification of the numerous proposed frameworks for environmental literacy, ecological literacy, and ecoliteracy (advanced within the fields of environmental education, ecology, and the broader humanities, respectively) is presented, and used to compare and contrast frameworks across multiple dimensions of affect, knowledge, skills, and behavior. This analysis facilitates close examination of where we have been, where we are, and where we might be headed with respect to these vital conversations. This work also offers points of reference for continued critical discourse, and illuminates a diversity of inspiration sources for developing and/or enriching programs aimed at cultivating these types of literacies.

Since its introduction in 2018, the Four‐Dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) Framework has advanced ecology education. Yet, ecology educators have had different understandings of aspects of the Framework. Here, we describe the updates to the original Framework that aim to provide more clarity. Specifically, we describe higher‐level changes in how the Framework is presented on the 4DEE website, changes to some of the elements within the dimensions, mostly in the Human–Environment Interactions dimension, and perhaps most substantively, replacing the lists of subelements with more descriptive paragraphs that explain the intent of the elements. We hope that these updates will promote the advancement of ecology education such that students are learning about the full range of knowledge and practices in contemporary ecology.

Tourism is of growing economical importance to many nations, in particular for developing countries. Although tourism is an important economic vehicle for the host country, its continued growth has led to on-going concerns about its environmental sustainability. Coastal and marine tourism can directly affect the environment through direct and indirect tourist activities. For these reasons tourism sector needs practical actions of sustainability. Several studies have shown how education minimizes the impact on and is proactive for, preserving the natural resources. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a citizen science program to improve the environmental education of the volunteers, by means of questionnaires provided to participants to a volunteer-based Red Sea coral reef monitoring program (STEproject). Fifteen multiple-choice questions evaluated the level of knowledge on the basic coral reef biology and ecology and the awareness on the impact of human behaviour on the environment. Volunteers filled in questionnaires twice, once at the beginning, before being involved in the project and again at the end of their stay, after several days participation in the program. We found that the participation in STEproject significantly increased both the knowledge of coral reef biology and ecology and the awareness of human behavioural impacts on the environment, but was more effective on the former. We also detected that tourists with a higher education level have a higher initial level of environmental education than less educated people and that the project was more effective on divers than snorkelers. This study has emphasized that citizen science projects have an important and effective educational value and has suggested that tourism and diving stakeholders should increase their commitment and efforts to these programs.