The Environment as the Integrated Context for Learning (Eic) Model

“The Environment as the Integrated Context for Learning (EIC) model focuses on developing programs unique to each school and community. The model combines best practices into a comprehensive educational framework that simultaneously addresses content standards from multiple disciplines. EIC uses the school’s natural and socio-cultural settings to engage students in schoolwork that they perceive as relevant to their daily lives, thus increasing their motivation for learning and academic achievement. (The Education Commission of the States, 2002)

The EIC model is a complex system of interconnected and interrelated pedagogies. It is an educational framework that uses the natural and social systems in the local community as a context within which students can construct their own learning, guided by their teachers and other members of a collaborative instructional team. The EIC Model encompasses integrated-interdisciplinary instruction as a means of addressing educational standards and simultaneously underscores opportunities for students to develop basic life skills, citizenship and problem-solving skills, and the understanding of natural and social systems. When students participant in programs based on the EIC Model, they work both independently and in cooperative groups so that they have the chance to strengthen their communication skills and contribute to teams seeking a common goals.

The principal components of the EIC Model include:

• Integrated-interdisciplinary instruction;
• Community-based Investigations – service activities;
• Collaborative Instruction’
• Learner-centered, Constructivist Approaches;
• Cooperative and Independent Learning; and,
• Local Natural and Community Surroundings as the Context for Learning.

Educators who use the EIC Model involve their students in community-based investigations that provide students with experiences examining real-world issues through the application of skills and knowledge from multiple disciplines. Using these innovative instructional approaches, teachers addressing state content standards and adopted instructional materials can insure that their students have authentic and engaging learning opportunities. Using these innovative instruction approaches, teachers addressing state content standards and adopted instructional materials can insure that their students have authentic an engaging learning opportunities.

The State Education and Environmental Roundtable (SEER) developed the EIC Model based on:

• Its research, as reported in Closing the Achievement Gap: Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning.
• The knowledge and experience of SEER’s staff in the United States and Internationally;
• Input from representatives from SEER’s original 12 state departments of education (California, Florida, Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington),; and
• Other relate educational research