Adjunct Professor Keith Skamp - ACT's first AAEE Fellow
By Vivienne Pearce OAM
The AAEE Fellowship is to recognise a member who has made an outstanding
contribution to environmental education at a national and international level
over their career. Local member, Keith Skamp has certainly done that over the
years as detailed below. At the
2021 AAEE Conference in WA,
Keith was awarded the AAEE Fellowship. Here in the ACT we count ourselves lucky
to have such a talented and distinguished person as an active member in our
Chapter. Since joining the ACT he has been actively mentoring and supporting
our local ACT educators. Whether it be as a panel member for our awards,
helping with submissions and advocacy to local government, sparking ideas
around curriculum or other issues in ACT members, Keith is our local treasure.
It is wonderful to have his lifetime of work in environmental education
acknowledged by AAEE.
Keith is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Education at Southern
Cross University in northern NSW. He has held visiting scholar and professorial
positions at several universities in England and North America. His research
and teaching areas are science education, environmental education, and research
methodology. He has been an AAEE member for several decades. He moved to
Canberra and has been involved with the ACT chapter for about 5 years,
assisting with various submissions, meetings, and publications (including a
soon to be published paper with Jodie Green on Earth System Science
Education). His personal involvement with environmental issues dates to the
late 60s when he heard Paul Ehrlich speak in Sydney about his book The
Population Bomb. It influenced many of his later decisions.
Keith introduced Environmental Education (later to
embrace ‘Education/Learning for Sustainability’) as a subject in preservice
Teacher Education degrees (and later other degrees) in the mid-80s. This was
the only EE subject offered at Southern Cross University until 2011 (Keith
continued teaching after his retirement in 2009). Keith’s contributions to
teaching and learning were recognised when he received the Southern
Cross University Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence and Achievement (Teaching
and Learning) as well as the Australian Science Teachers’
Association’s Distinguished Service Award. Both awards were based,
in part, on contributions to teaching and learning in EE.
Keith’s
major EE research grants and outcomes have related to the impact of Learnscapes on
school teaching and learning and school students’ willingness to take actions
to reduce global warming based on their beliefs about such actions. The latter
area is an ongoing international investigation with several very recent
publications. These and other EE areas have been the focus of publications for
over 35 years up to and including the present time; they include 20 refereed journal
articles, two book chapters (one overviewing EE in Australia in 2009) and
EE/Sustainability Education contributions to the most highly recommended
(primary) science education text in Australian universities. Keith is the main
editor and writer (Teaching primary science constructively [7th edition,
2021]). He has shared his EE research and scholarly contributions through
papers at 19 international conferences as well as invited international
lectures and seminars at various universities in Canada and the USA, the UK and
Tanzania. Similar presentations have occurred at state and regional levels.
Some
major funded EE consultancies that Keith has completed (several within the last
decade) include the external evaluation of a University’s Sustainability Education
contribution to its various degrees, a comprehensive world-wide research and
best practice review on EfS for the then NSW Department of Education and
Training and an international review of Air Quality Education for the
Australian Government Department of Environment and Heritage.
Keith’s
other contributions to EE over the years have included an ongoing role as an
external examiner of doctoral theses, continuing in the role – for more than a
decade - as a member of the International Board of Advisory Editors of
the Australian Journal of Environmental Education as well as
an occasional reviewer for other international EE journals and attracting EE
scholars to Southern Cross University.
Congratulations
Keith!
