The existing state of the world climate creates the need for an educational programme that incorporates effective proposals for the environment that can be practically implemented. The present environmental education literature has changed due to new study paradigms. Understanding how students relate to nature, how their personal beliefs and behaviours are influenced, and how their actions are affected can provide an increased understanding of how they can contribute meaningfully to global objectives. This paper aims to analyse educational research papers published in the area of environmental art education in order to find the factor with the greatest effect and illuminate how they can help to improve the measures implemented. This study paper (i) focuses on students’ engagement with an environment curriculum; (ii) demonstrates the need for action related to the environment; (iii) encourages critical thinking; and (iv) demonstrates students’ independent thinking and rational decision making. The findings show that such research can help to improve environmental art education based on action and take future research challenges into account.

This paper presents a public commission by artist Martin Creed through an experimental essay form that replicates the structural features of the artwork itself. Creed’s work is entitled Work No. 1059 (Creed has been numbering his artworks sequentially since 1986) and consists of a flight of 104 steps that join two streets in Edinburgh, part of a refurbishment project by Edinburgh City Council and Edinburgh World Heritage. In this essay “walks” from the lowest point on Market Street to the uppermost level on North Bridge, naming as it goes each of the different marble steps sourced from twenty-seven countries. The steps had previously fallen into disuse, and were eventually closed. In 2011, they were reopened as an artwork and a public right of way: The Scotsman Steps. They are encased within an octagonal, turreted stone tower, originally part of The Scotsman Newspaper building. The whole forms part of a Category A-listed structure built in 1899 by architects James Dunn and James Finlay. Commissioning Creed’s Work No. 1059 was at the instigation of The Fruitmarket Gallery, which lies near the bottom entrance to the steps.