Environmental Literacy: functional, cultural, critical. The case of the SCAA guidelines

Summary The author has argued elsewhere for an increased role for linguistics and literary studies within environmental education. Here he argues that the tripartite division of literacy skills as functional, cultural and critical can be useful in both planning and evaluating programmes of environmental education. As exemplification of the latter, the model is applied to a brief discussion of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) guidelines for environmental education in England. It is concluded that these offer opportunities for teachers to develop all three kinds of environmental literacy, but with an emphasis on skills development which must largely be seen as functional.