Never have the stakes been so high for the role of science education in shaping how people interact with the earth and its environment. The rising importance of the environment as a scientific and public policy topic over the past fifty years has been built around a framework stressing the functional interdependencies between human life and the natural environment. As science about the environment generates even more knowledge, increasingly large proportions of the world’s population are challenged to understand and use this knowledge (Kastens and Turrin, 2006; NA S, 2007; Bybee, 2008).