PDF: MedrickJSESpring2013

Beings of the Earth

Rick Medrick

Keywords:  experiential education, truth, beauty, natural, sustainability

Experiential Education embodies all that is good, true, and beautiful in educational reform.  From Outward Bound to the tiniest Montessori classroom;  from the growing network of service learning programs to locally-based community education efforts; educators are seeking the means to catalyze a profound transformation in the ways we engage learners to address a broad spectrum of concerns from environmental issues to economic sustainability to social justice and equality.

There is nothing new in this process.  Its roots go back to the earliest days of human society where peoples came together to share the knowledge that had been accumulating for millennia.  Once language had developed and stories were told, the rich tapestry of our collective experience began to take on a shape and form.  We learned it was better to listen to the lessons of our elders than repeat what they had learned through trial and error.  Once we honored that which had come before, we could move on to new explorations of what it means to know.

Much of this is intuitive rather than fact based, emerging from a common wellspring of shared history and insight.  Ancient religions, nature-based awareness, and cultural practices and traditions helped sculpt a matrix of understanding built upon common sense and creativity.  Literature and science all became a groundswell of inspiration and integration that guided our knowledge of underlying patterns of meaning that have led us to where we are today.  And it is this structure that gives us insight into what is next.

We are learning, slowly but inevitably, that estrangement from the land, and from our roots, does not lend us greater capacity to shape our own fate.  In fact, it is quite the opposite.  Our attempts to translate what we know at heart into numbers and details separates us from the very essence of who we are as living and breathing creatures of the earth.  There is more truth to a handful of soil than the mass produced detritus of our mass produced civilization.  This can be experienced on multiple levels.

At the core is our very first experience of what it means to be beings of the earth.  We are born into a world that is alight with wonders from the deep azure of the sea to the rich hues of a sunrise or impending storm.  Our existence is based on our interpretation of these natural wonders, be it fluctuations of the weather, changes in the seasons or trends over centuries, be they human-caused or nature-caused.  Even the tiniest flower enlivening our landscape elicits an incandescent sense of awe.  Artists have long sought to capture this sense of wonder and impermanence through poetry and images.  Our lifeblood is linked to these immaculate pictures of perfection of beauty immortalized.

At the next level, to speak of the “beautiful” means to capture an underlying sense of what gives purpose to our existence.  To imagine this vanishing before our eyes suggests a loss of soul that is very much tied to the land.  Yet, on a daily basis, we forget the fundamental lessons and allow this threat to our being balloon amidst overdevelopment and evisceration of that which speaks to our spirits.  We all know what sacrifices we make on the altar of civilization.  And there are very good reasons for these sacrifices:  expediency, efficiency, expansion.  But as we have extended our tendrils of growth and expansion into the forests and deserts, we have taken what is whole and broken it down into fragments that now only hint at the whole.

Finally, this takes us back to what defines our existence and provides us with an educational vision for the future.  In many spaces and places we are in a “take-back” mode to reclaim what is ours to behold and insure it is there for those who follow.  This is the reality and purpose of experiential education in all it many forms and expressions.  Without a return to direct experience and the ability to acknowledge and integrate this fundamental core into our daily lives, we face a desperate future.  We need programs in schools and colleges that engage students in field-based learning; we need efforts to engage people in community efforts involving schools and gardens; we need profound educational transformation at all levels if we are to create a future of hope and improvement.  The many and diverse articles in this issue of the JSE represent just a cross section of the perspectives and applications that define this broad based approach to learning that is grounded in our history as a species.  It may have taken millennia to assume its present form, but the articulation of this approach brings this movement into the present and, hopefully, into its application in every aspect of our society.

As I proposed in the beginning of this essay, this process takes us back to what we each know at heart… that there is a greater truth and a greater good embodied in all these explorations, expressions, inspirations, and proposals.  We must undertake a reform of learning structures as imposed by a progressive and growth-oriented society.   But if change is the medium, then this begins with individuals and their values.  This must then progress to the communities in which we live and inform our efforts to open a dialogue about what makes our lives truly meaningful.  Finally, we progress to how we manifest this in the external world through the social structures we are willing to challenge and how we bring nature back into our daily lives through re-envisioning how we live and build our environment.  These are the great explorations that this issue of the JSE hopes to open up for our future consideration.  Enjoy!

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Photo Credit:  Eduardo Amorim

PDF: MattinaJSESpring2013

To Divine Is Human

Nancy Mattina, Prescott College

Abstract The human capacity for scientific thinking is an innate one that coexists with our ability to intuit, believe, and invent. In crafting engaging narratives that urge our readers or students to think and act rationally on behalf of our imperiled biosphere, writers who are not scientists should take care not to sustain negative stereotypes of science and scientists in their commentary, even if some of our greatest storytellers have done so.

Keywords  science, scientists, trial and error, human error, environmental literature, popular science writing

Despite all the ardent prose glowing from the electronic gadgets that surround me, I still find myself browsing my undusted shelves for something to read. I rarely buy bound books anymore, which is why my collection of mostly paperback editions reflects the quirky canon I came of age on: Henry Miller, Kazantzakis, Joyce Carol Oates, James, Zola, Gordimer, Bellow, Steinbeck, Austen, Heinlein, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, and the like. These decorated sentinels have long lined my walls, the listing pillars of my literary crèche, the ones who expected me to think about the world as it was and might be. I don’t sell them off even though the stories they tell have since ascended spotlessly to the digital cloud.

Truth be told, in my late twenties I stopped reading novels. Fiction seemed to have betrayed me. Trying to live the examined life through imagined others left me churlish and awkward however adroitly I parsed the lives of each flawed protagonist. Or maybe deconstructionism, for a spell the opium of the literate, was the spoiler. Either way, although literature had been my undergraduate religion, I began to lean toward scientific explanation, like a fatted calf bunting for mother’s milk. An artfully told yarn continues to please. But recognizing that my species threatens the existence of all others has reshaped my reading priorities as well as my judgment.

For example, the other day I ran a bitten finger down the bright orange spine of a Penguin paperback containing D.H. Lawrence’s essays, Etruscan Places. Lawrence wrote them not long before he died  and in the same season that he finished writing Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the spring of 1927, the novel that Anaïs Nin would defend as “artistically…his best novel…our only complete modern love story.” Lawrence’s reputation by this time has run the gamut of visionary, pornographer, radical, and chauvinist on the loop of popular opinion but most would grant that he sought to be a truth-teller, his famous dictum “Never trust the artist. Trust the tale,” a case in point.

As a social critic, Lawrence analyzed the human condition with tools we call biases now. In his non-fiction he never shied from announcing his conclusions in a studied, sometimes antic voice. He begins “Cerveteri”, the first Etruscan essay, with a tone as wry as any blogger’s.

“The Etruscans, as everyone knows, were the people who occupied the middle of Italy in early Roman days  and whom the Romans, in their usual neighborly fashion, wiped out entirely in order to make room for Rome with a very big R. They couldn’t have wiped them all out, there were too many of them. But they did wipe out the Etruscan existence as a nation and a people. However, this seems to be the inevitable result of expansion with a big E, which is the sole raison d’etre of people like the Romans.”

This opening volley against empire rolls straight across the weedy hush of Mussolini’s back forty to rest at Lawrence’s favorite angle of critical repose—our preference for Enlightenment pieties like rationalism and progress as substitutes for passionate connection with our sacred selves, what William Blake dubbed “blood-consciousness.” We’re quite wrong to overestimate the power of reason and science says Lawrence.

“The science of augury certainly was not exact science. But it was as exact as our sciences of psychology or political economy. And the augurs were as clever as our politicians, who also must practice divination, if ever they are to do anything worth the name. There is no other way when you are dealing with life. And if you live by the cosmos, you look in the cosmos for your clue. If you live by a personal god, you pray to him. If you are rational, you think things over. But it all amounts to the same thing in the end. Prayer, or thought, or studying the stars, or watching the flight of birds, or studying the entrails of the sacrifice, it is all the same process ultimately: of divination.  All it depends on is the amount of true, sincere, religious concentration you can bring to bear on your object.”

If this seems a rare verbal hug we could glean from today’s commentariat, then readers familiar with Lawrence’s essentialism will suspect this isn’t the end of his homily. And it isn’t.

“Whatever object will bring the consciousness into a state of pure attention, in a time of perplexity, will also give back an answer to the perplexity,” he continues. “But it is truly a question of divination,” he insists.

“As soon as there is any pretence of infallibility, and pure scientific calculation, the whole thing becomes a fraud and a jugglery. But the same is true not only of augury and astrology, but also of prayer and of pure reason, and even of the discoveries of the great laws and principles of science. Every great discovery or decision comes by an act of divination. Facts are fitted round afterwards.”

On rereading these paragraphs, I feel the old arguments rise like tumuli from the Etrurian heartland: Are mystical and scientific pursuits one in the same? Is science just another form of human make-believe?

Scientists as soothsayers, lab-coated haruspices, groping animal entrails and reciting received ideas. No, that literary invention will not fly. Any bench scientist will tell you that fitting facts round your intuitions or convictions rather than enacting a measured, public, reproducible, controlled experiment will get you fired, reviled, or, worst of all, ignored. And Lawrence is equally mistaken about science being a pretender to infallibility. Scientific seeking is predicated on our capacity for error, not a claim to infallibility or its doppelgänger, perfectibility.

“Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never get anything useful done.” So writes Lewis Thomas, physician, immunologist, poet, and columnist for The New England Journal of Medicine, in his essay titled “To Err is Human.”

“We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as frequently as the right ones. We get along in life this way. We are built to make mistakes, coded for error.”

Far from presuming human perfectibility—a conceit that Lawrence roasts in a raucous essay on  Benjamin Franklin in Studies in Classic American Literature—science as a way of knowing disrupts the ego, calling into question our every perception. Thomas again:

“If we had only a single center in our brains, capable of responding only when a correct decision was to be made, instead of the jumble of different credulous, easily conned clusters of neurons that provide for being flung off into blind alleys…we could only stay the way we are today, stuck fast.”

Trial with error “open[s] the way” toward truth marbled with new errors.

There’s an emotional upside to consciously embracing our capacity for error and gullibility. Thomas calls it being “at our human finest, dancing with our minds.” But there’s also a tremendous evolutionary advantage conferred by it. “What is needed, for progress to be made,” writes Thomas, “is the move based on the error.” Only the scientific method generates an infinite number of questions, falsifiable claims, ambiguous evidence, and troves of fact. We use these to constantly redraw the topography of human ignorance on behalf of our species. Two steps forward, one back—then off in a new direction. The answers offered by augury and religion are designed to resist entropy, arising as they do in a closed system. By contrast, science thrives on accidents, revisions, and change. Doing science is adaptive behavior that may account for our success as a species more than any other human capacity we’ve exploited, after language. Like art, science draws us into a poignant tango with a carnal universe.

People who don’t think of themselves as scientists may become impatient with the pace of science  because they demand answers—too often billed as sensational discoveries by lone diviners—as the only excuse for science. And helpful answers do ensue. Lawrence’s short life transpired between a brief published note in 1875 on the antibacterial effects of household fungi  and the first mass production of penicillin in 1944, in time to save thousands of souls off the beaches of Normandy. We can’t know if his view of scientific calculation might have changed had he witnessed how hundreds of prepared people developed a community that would learn to convert a series of mishaps, false starts, and a perfectly moldy cantalope into a painless cure for the tuberculosis that killed him. This cultural adaptation to the daily threat of infectious diseases exploited our innate capacity for cooperation and altruism, two necessary (if not sufficient) human talents spiritualists praise but often fail to evoke.

And let’s not forget that science, despite its reputation as an elite calling, is essentially egalitarian. “Science belongs to everybody, ” naturalist and writer E.O. Wilson explains. “Its constituent parts can be challenged by anybody in the world who has sufficient information to do so.” There is no scientific truth until it has been patiently sought, tested, and reproduced by a community of skeptics keen to find the error in a fellow scientist’s work.

True, much wrong-doing is attributed to science by our writers, including the industrialized warfare that Lawrence sought to counter with the trope of divination. Weaponized nuclear fission, thalidomide, Agent Orange, Round Up®, armed drones, and toxically engineered crops stand as symbols for the grave moral errors of our times. Instead of insisting at every opportunity that the crimes against the biosphere we read of daily stem from institutionalized greed, malice, intolerance, or pride, contemporary social critics tend to demonize science itself rather the systems of counterfactual belief and power we humans deploy to do harm. Meanwhile, to critique religion and the occult is blasphemy in the mouths of mainstream media figures. It is even fashionable to repeat that science and technology threaten us, quoting narratives queasily parallel to those describing nature as our primeval foe. In the tabloids, scientific debate is remade as gossip; scientists earn fame as conspirators. Yet the broad sweep of chronicled time shows us that the scientific truths we have stumbled upon are not “a fraud and a jugglery” by clever initiates. Be they handy or horrible, scientific truths juggle us. They force us to decide between doing right or serving a few. Our collective struggle to be moral finds an easy scapegoat in science dismally applied.

Advances in allopathic medicine garner popular approval but many fields of science improve us. As cognitive scientist Steven Pinker points out, “The X-ray vision of the molecular geneticist reveals the unity of our species,” in spite of our perception that skin color divides us. With a single book, Silent Spring, marine biologist Rachel Carson revolutionized popular notions of water and air, substances we thought we knew from long familiarity. Her science-telling showed clearly that one group’s conveniences spelled doom for another. Because polar caps don’t calve in most people’s backyards and declining birth weights in endangered species easily elude our notice, we need scientists across the globe to patiently observe without help from the supernatural, gathering and charting the data so we can see what we didn’t suspect was true.

Science-telling, however, is only as good as its readers. More Americans accept as fact the existence of angels, the efficacy of prayer, or the predictive power of the zodiac than they do the science of Darwinian evolution or anthropogenic climate change. We still teach students of all ages to read, write, and critique texts chiefly through the study of literature, poetry, and scripture, even though (or because?) we have reasons to suspect that more than two-thirds of literate adult Americans cannot understand the science section of The New York Times. Around the college seminar table, I’ve seen humanism taught as the opposite of science (holism good, dualism bad). Words like objectivity and critical analysis are tainted with the odor of heartlessness when not fringed with air quotes. Within earshot, the word technology, short-hand for all things digital, is too often pronounced as if spitting out a fallen eyelash.

But inventing and (mis)applying technology through trial and error is what we humans have always done to deal with life. I often wonder how many writers sit down to pour their convictions onto electronic pages without recognizing that writing itself is a technology, a human invention and not a biological imperative like language. That the invention of writing over 10,000 years ago gradually altered the behavior of Homo sapiens as profoundly as the microprocessor has in the last fifty years. That writing, originating in the counting of sheep and jars of oil, was born the servant of numeracy. It took thousands of years for scratches in stone or bone to name a personal belief.  By the time the early Romans were dematerializing the Etruscans, writing was already fulfilling what the ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss declared its primary function:  to facilitate slavery. Ask any tribal historian which of her people’s inalienable rights were extinguished first at the end of a pen, and only later by the six-shooter.

To balance my students’ natural appetite for human-centered drama, I assign Thomas’ essay “The World’s Biggest Membrane” in my first-year college writing course. Few of the students in the class are science majors but most have an interest in Planet Earth strong enough to attract them to the little eco-minded college where I teach. Some admit they aren’t sure they get Thomas’ essay. Photolysis and chloroplasts appear in it. Despite the essay’s surprising buoyancy, which many of them remark on, it doesn’t occur to them to read it repeatedly and look up the new words that would help unlock its meaning. They are content to look for the plot, and finding none, send me quizzical looks.

My wish is that by the end of the semester they will start to recover their scientific natures from the sediments laid down by well-intentioned mentors many of whom were themselves suspicious of science and scientists. Perhaps our reading scientific writers together without prejudice will prevent a few students from remaining self-centered diarists as they write their way through college. Maybe more than a few of them will awaken to the fact that humankind’s creation story is written in the ancient rocks and protoplasm all around us rather than on sacred hides, impossible to revise. My writing course is not the right place to confide in them let alone reaffirm their allegiance to story for its own sake, at all costs. That’s why I don’t tell them that for this reader, who remembers leaning time and again into the sweet breath of my sleeping newborns, Thomas’ account of the Earth’s atmosphere evokes emotions as elemental as sexual love.

Beyond the classroom, crediting a scientific mindset has become a kind of ethnic marker defining a minor, under-articulated constituency. During the run-up to the last Presidential election I watched Rachel Maddow, the sure-footed political analyst and author, being interviewed on a popular late night talk show. Why, she was asked, are the candidates silent on the issue of climate change this political season? Maddow skipped the ritual excuses and offered a non-scientific opinion. “I think we need to stop thinking of science as the enemy,” she began.

Amen to that. We consume media in a world loud with vociferous science-deniers who would delight in Lawrence’s mischaracterization of scientists as nothing more than a gang of sanctimonious diviners with blood on their hands. Our actions over eons show us that each of us has a scientific nature alive in a brain that craves opportunities to be surprised as much as it loves certainty. We writers and educators who use scientific evidence to implore our listeners to act sustainably need to work out our own quarrels with science and come clean. We should refuse to force science-telling into roman á clef tales that displace the worth, not to mention the deep humanism, of scientific thinking. If there must be demonizing, expose the corporations, the nation-states, the churches, and the tribes that crush the fruits of science for their own violent toasts. Better to defend basic and blue skies research not as plot devices for a remake of “Dr. Strangelove” but as the real deal, like conservancies for the mind, a sublime expression of our first scientist, African Eve. That’s how our audiences will surmise that long-term human survival is less about the animals we slaughter than our willingness to sacrifice the sacred cows in the stories we write for each other. Of this I feel sure Lawrence would have approved.

Nancy Mettina

Photo Credit:  Eduardo Amorim

Nancy Mettina Article Thumbnail

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PDF: CopelandJSESpring2013

NOLS:  Bringing Sustainability Education to the Front-Country

Karly Copeland

Sustainability Co

ordinator

National Outdoor Leadership School

Abstract: Minimum impact camping is a focus of most wilderness programs, but what example are we setting for our students before we get to the backcountry? In the past eight years NOLS has increased its focus on leading and teaching front-country sustainability by example, in addition to Leave No Trace practices taught in wilderness classrooms. This article explores some of the strategies, challenges, and successes in bringing sustainability to NOLS’ front-country operations.

Keywords: education, experiential, NOLS, leadership, culture, sustainability education

While our formal initiative is relatively recent, environmental sustainability is not new to the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). The school was defining the concept of backcountry sustainability—minimum-impact camping and setting the standard for sustainable backcountry travel—when we first started sending students into the Wind River Mountains in 1965. Through more than 45 years of leading wilderness expeditions in nearly every type of ecosystem, we have refined and perfected the concept, learning through experience and hundreds of thousands of nights slept on the ground around the world. In the early ‘90s, in collaboration with federal land management agencies, these practices were formalized into Leave No Trace (LNT), which has become the unparalleled ethic and practice for minimum-impact travel in the outdoors.

As a leadership school, walking our talk, and leading by example is an important part of the culture at NOLS. In the backcountry we do this by faithfully practicing our LNT ethic with our students. In the past eight years, however, NOLS has expanded this focus on sustainable practices from its backcountry roots to our front-country facilities and operations. While our environmentally minded faculty and staff have always engaged in low-impact practices for our front-country operations, in 2006 we formalized and centralized environmental sustainability at NOLS. We established a school-wide Sustainability Initiative, including the creation of long-term carbon reduction goals, and began to teach our students about front-country sustainability concepts and their practice at NOLS.

As a nonprofit, we certainly have our challenges in funding capital-intensive projects such as solar arrays and extensive efficiency retrofitting. We have been fortunate to receive extensive grant funding for these types of projects. At the same time, we have completed numerous smaller projects that demand less financial investment. Our recent facility efficiency audit process is aimed specifically at identifying the remaining “low-hanging fruit” at NOLS facilities, focusing on cost-efficient energy savings. We have found that though big projects are necessary to illustrate our sustainability commitment to our students, often our smaller acts of sustainability speak louder.

For example, a big part of teaching and learning environmental ethics at NOLS is practicing what we preach. In the backcountry, students and instructors routinely reclaim fire rings and pack trash for weeks to clean up the wilderness. In the front-country, we haul buckets of food scraps to composting sites (or pigpens) and have a culture that makes reusable coffee mugs and water bottles the norm. While these small things may at first glance seem inconsequential and almost trite when compared to larger carbon reduction efforts, they are likely the most impactful part of the sustainability program at NOLS because they speak to a culture of sustainability in which students can participate.
Raising student awareness about other, less obvious sustainability efforts is also part of our larger effort to increase the educational impact of the initiative. NOLS Curriculum Manager John Gookin aptly noted in his 2010 contribution to The Journal of Sustainability Education, “Organic Gardening: Education From Within,” it would be a, “faux pas … to merely add a layer of lectures on sustainability education” to a NOLS course. Instead, instructors are enlisted to start conversations about sustainability with their students that fit into the course experience. A typical example would be examining how NOLS students are transported. Once in the field they are typically almost carbon neutral, hiking or otherwise self-propelling themselves around the backcountry. But what about before they got to the roadhead? NOLS is actively investigating alternative fuels for transporting students from in-town facilities to roadheads. There is a good chance students utilized a non-petroleum based fuel without realizing it. To continue the conversation, instructors may ask about their mode of transportation before they got to the NOLS facility. There’s an even better chance they flew thousands of miles on more than one airplane just to get to a NOLS location. Both are environmentally significant, and both are easy to overlook because they blend seamlessly into our typical way of life. The goal of our conversations with our students is to bring these efforts to the surface and give fodder to their intellectual and analytical processes surrounding this crucial topic.

Reducing our environmental footprint is critical but really only a small part of the education our students gain during their time in the wilderness. Our greatest contribution to the environment lies not in renewable energy projects, but in what students and graduates take away from their NOLS experience. They take in and value our planet’s power and beauty, and they understand its fragility. They are more aware of both the contributions and impacts the have, and can have, on our planet. They become skilled, positive leaders with acute environmental awareness and a strong ethical foundation that enhances their contribution to wild places and to the world.

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PDF: BarnesJSESpring2013

Awareness to Action: the journey toward a deeper ecological literacy

Joel C. Barnes, Prescott College

Abstract:  Environmental education (EE) strives to strengthen the ecological literacy of individuals and society. Guiding individuals along their own journey toward a deeper ecological literacy should be a central tenet of any EE program, and at least a complementary piece of programs in other closely related fields like experiential and adventure education, sustainability education, ecotourism, the natural sciences, conservation biology, public lands advocacy, wilderness-based therapy, ecopsychology and human rights and social justice. Regardless of their background, expertise, or actual job title, environmental educators should consider themselves key players in guiding individuals along their personal journey towards a deeper ecological literacy.

Five phases of learning, referred to as the Awareness to Action Continuum, have been developed that are central to strengthening one’s ecological literacy. These phases are sequential, cumulative, and temporally elastic. They represent a cogent learning process that is experienced continually throughout one’s lifetime, and include awareness and appreciation, knowledge and understanding, attitudes and values, problem solving skills, and personal responsibility and action. The ultimate strength of the Awareness to Action Continuum is that it builds a positive and informed framework for individuals to deepen their ecological literacy.

Keywords: environmental education, ecological literacy, awareness, appreciation, love, personal responsibility and action.

In the broadest sense, environmental education (EE) strives to strengthen the ecological literacy of individuals and society.  Ecological literacy focuses on advancing one’s understanding of the interconnections among the Earth’s natural systems and human systems. The biocentirc and ecocentric views of ecological literacy support a paradigm in which human systems are nestled within natural systems; human communities sustain and enhance, instead of degrade the natural systems on which they depend.  Ultimately, environmental education aims to help individuals, communities, and societies to cultivate a deeper sense of moral responsibility to the Earth and an intrinsic desire to make lifestyle and behavioral choices that embrace the three Es of sustainability (equity or Earth care, economics or economies of nurture, and ecology).  Guiding individuals along their own journey toward a deeper ecological literacy should be a central tenet of any EE program, and at least a complementary piece of programs in other closely related fields like experiential and adventure education, sustainability education, ecotourism, the natural sciences, conservation biology, public lands advocacy, wilderness-based therapy, and ecopsychology. Environmental educators are interdisciplinary by nature; they are embedded in a wide variety of academic disciplines and professions, including those just mentioned.  Cultivating a deeper ecological literacy can also be essential in programs focused on human rights and social justice.  Regardless of their background, expertise, or actual job title, environmental educators should consider themselves key players in guiding individuals along their personal journey towards a deeper ecological literacy.

While the term ecological literacy gained wide recognition in the 1990’s from the seminal works of David Orr[i] and Fritjof Capra[ii], the EE field had embraced this concept since 1978 when the Tblisi Declaration[iii] was created at the world’s first intergovernmental conference on EE in Tblisi, Georgia in Russia.  Even though it does not use the term explicitly, the idea is clearly imbedded in the declaration’s goals, objectives and guiding principles for EE.  The content and spirit of the declaration still serves to guide today’s EE professionals toward a common vision.  Over the past three decades, scholars and practitioners have helped refine the definition of ecological literacy and explore how to elucidate its importance to individuals, communities, and societies.  As such, how we understand and practice ecological literacy has evolved and matured along side our views of the human-nature relationship.  William Stapp, Joseph Cornell, Judy Braus & David Wood, Steve Van Matre, C. A. Bowers, David Sobel, David Orr, and David Louv represent a potent sample of leaders in the EE field whose creative programming, writings, and research have made lasting contributions.  One of the most enduring lessons gleaned from EE research and programming over the years is that before people are confronted with the grim realities of environmental problems, they must be given the opportunities to experience the joy and beauty of the natural world.  Responsible stewardship for the long haul is much more likely once individuals have developed an appreciation for the complex and diverse life that inhabits the Earth[iv].

Based on the original objectives in the Tblisi Declaration and subsequent work of other aforementioned leaders in the field of EE, five phases of learning have been developed that are central to strengthening one’s ecological literacy.  Referred to as the Awareness to Action Continuum, these phases are sequential, cumulative, and temporally elastic (meaning they can occur in a relatively short and long time period in one’s life).  They represent a cogent learning process that is experienced continually throughout one’s lifetime, and include awareness and appreciation, knowledge and understanding, attitudes and values, problem solving skills, and personal responsibility and action (Figure 1).

This Awareness to Action (or A to A) Continuum reminds environmental educators of the importance of designing a holistic EE curriculum based upon a thoughtful and appropriate progression.  It aligns itself with a sphere of EE research and literature that was pioneered by William Stapp[v], Joseph Cornell[vi], Steve Van Matre[vii], and more recently by David Sobel[viii] and Richard Louv[ix].  These authors elucidate the potential negative effects of using environmental problems as the primary context for learning, particularly in the early phases of one’s journey toward a deeper ecological literacy.  The sequential, cumulative nature of the A to A Continuum encourages educators to introduce environmental problems into a curriculum only after students have thoroughly explored the first three phases.  A strong sense of personal awareness and appreciation for all life on Earth is absolutely essential to one’s journey toward a deeper ecological literacy, and to embracing personal responsibility and action for the long haul.  If educators give careful attention to the A to A Continuum and its sequential, cumulative nature, then individuals will be less likely to take actions for the Earth based on the nagging guilt they harbor from focusing on the problems they’ve exacerbated. Individuals will, however, be more likely to take actions to protect, restore, and celebrate the Earth based on inspiration from and love for the Earth.  When rooted in inspiration and love, the commitment to a deeper ecological literacy is more likely to be embraced for long haul.  Indeed, the ultimate strength of the Awareness to Action Continuum is that it builds a positive and informed framework for individuals to deepen their ecological literacy.

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PDF: RanalliJSESpring2013

Abstract: The United States agriculture sector faces a looming labor shortfall. Who will bring in the harvest? In this essay, Brent Ranalli argues for the creation of a voluntary national service program to engage youth in seasonal agricultural work. Such a program would bridge the labor gap with a segment of the workforce that is fit for the task. It would also provide educational opportunities and a stepping stone to careers in farming and allied fields, and restore dignity to an indispensable form of labor.

Keywords: agriculture; experiential education; migrants workers; national service; Peak Oil; seasonal farm labor; United States; Wendell Berry; youth

We left in droves, pushed out by machines. Whereas a century ago 50% of Americans lived in rural areas and 30% of the workforce was directly employed in agriculture, today only about 2% of Americans live on farms and agriculture occupies less than 2% of the national workforce.[1]  This is usually seen as progress: industrialization in the field has freed up labor for other pursuits, for urban employment in the factory and the office.

But despite all the mechanization that has taken place on the farm, there remains an irreducible residue of tasks that can only be performed by human hands, notably in the harvesting of fruits and vegetables. This is seasonal work, and generally requires the laborer to move on from one location to another, never putting down roots, always being a stranger. It is physically taxing. The hours are long, and the work schedule is entirely at the mercy of the weather. The pay is lousy. And there are few or no opportunities for advancement.

Who would do such work? Throughout much of the 20^th century, it was generally the most downtrodden and demoralized among us, poor citizens and immigrants who were practically invisible in the national consciousness and without a voice in discussions of agricultural and labor policy.[2] In recent years, the labor pool has shifted to an even more marginalized group, illegal migrant workers from Mexico. Since around 2000, about half of hired U.S. crop farm-workers have been undocumented Mexican workers.[3]

But today the population of farm laborers, native and foreign, is aging and not being replenished. By 2007, the average age of a farm worker in California’s Imperial Valley was over 50 and local growers estimated a 15% labor shortfall, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpicked crops that year.[4] In states like Alabama and Georgia that have cracked down hard on undocumented Mexican workers, producers are positively desperate to find replacements, and Americans are not stepping up in anything like the numbers required.[5] Tens of thousands of temporary foreign agricultural workers are flown in to the U.S. each year from as far away as South Africa to help make up the deficit under H2A visas, and producers must wade through a sea of red tape to get them.

Clearly, this is not sustainable. Those who lobby for stricter border control have argued that removing illegal Mexicans from the farm would create employment for American citizens, but it turns out the wages that producers are able to offer, dictated by the global marketplace, are simply not enough to entice many Americans to take up the basket and the crate—especially given the tough work conditions and the (for some) perceived indignity. Technological optimists might dream that in the coming years we will solve the labor shortage problem by breeding machine-harvestable, non-bruising tomatoes and apples. But a far likelier future scenario is that as we shift away from fossil fuels (proactively, in response to climate change, or reactively, in response to Peak Oil), and we reduce our reliance on heavy machinery and chemical inputs, we will need more human hands on the farm to do many of the tasks that human hands have traditionally done. Where will we find those farm workers?

As environmental educators, we can look at this problem as an opportunity. The demographic shift away from the farm has come with cultural costs. No previous generation in our history–arguably, no nation of significant size in all of world history–has ever managed to become as alienated from the land as we have. In The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry observes that as long as “the governing human metaphor was pastoral or agricultural, . . . it clarified, and so preserved in human care, the natural cycles of birth, growth, death, and decay.” To the extent we have lost access to that metaphor, Berry argues, “we have eliminated any fear or awe or reverence or humility or delight or joy that might have restrained us in our use of the world.”[6] We know that awe and reverence and delight in the natural world lie right below the surface and will readily germinate and flower in pedagogical and recreational contexts, but we also know that we are fighting an uphill battle as educators. As a people we lack the cultural resources to grapple with issues like hydrofracking except in economic terms. We lack the moral imagination, rooted in somatic experience, to perceive the costs of practices like mountaintop removal mining.

What better way could there be, I ask, to get students re-engaged with the natural world than to get them down in the dirt on a working farm? That’s what I call experiential education for sustainability.

For that matter, what other segment of the population is fitter to perform the work? Youth and young adults are in their physical prime. For a youth without dependents, a farm laborer’s wage (comparable to an entry-level wage in retail) will not represent a gross indignity or hardship. And whereas older adults are likely to be tied down in one place, young adults are more likely to be mobile, even footloose, looking for adventure, new scenery, and camaraderie. To be sure, bringing in the harvest will not be every young person’s cup of tea. But there will undoubtedly be many who would find a season of agricultural labor an attractive alternative to a season working in retail or fast food.

In fact, it is a historical aberration for youth not to be involved in agricultural labor. The traditional summer vacation was originally a time when children were expected to help their parents with farmwork. David E. Schob[7] has documented that during the westward expansion of Euro-America in the 1800s, boys and girls frequently were employed on the farms of family and neighbors. When they were old enough, young men often set out as migrant farm workers: to escape from the home environment, to see the world, to learn new skills, to earn enough to set up a farm of their own. Groups of them formed teams that traversed the young Midwestern states from south to north as the grain ripened each season, reaping and baling as they went. Young women left home for employment on farms as well.

Now as then, adolescence and young adulthood are not only a period for footloose rambling, they are also an age of idealism and career contemplation. For some young people, a season of agricultural labor might open new vistas of purpose and career aspirations.

I am a child of suburbia myself. I grew up in a town with crowded malls and few sidewalks. I had very little contact with the rural life until I was half a world away, during a college summer, in Eastern Europe. I lived with a farming family, and I was so impressed by the groundedness (for lack of a better word) of those people, and so captivated by the drama of the unfolding fate of the family farm in the midst of post-socialist reforms, that I ended up returning and making a study of prospects for rural sustainable development in the region.[8] I visited every ecovillage and sustainable development pilot project I could. On these visits I earned my keep by exchanging labor—a new and personally valuable experience. I earned a degree in environmental science and policy at a nearby international university, and I have been working in the environmental field since. The epiphany of a suburban kid’s brief and heady encounter with the land launched me on a career in sustainability education and policy. What could it do for thousands of others?

We might earnestly hope that it will inspire a new wave of smart, ambitious young people to take up farming as a vocation. Farmers too, not just their hired workers, are an aging demographic. Among current farm operators in the U.S., the average age has been rising steadily for decades and has now surpassed 57 years.[9] Thirty percent of farm assets are held by farmers age 65 or older, and in the upcoming wave of retirements only a little over half of those farmers are in a position to pass the reins on to family members.[10] There will be an opening for an entrepreneurial new cohort, ready to take on not only the physically demanding and financially precarious aspects of the farming profession, but also the heady challenge of forging new, more sustainable ways (in some cases, a reconstruction of old, time-tested ways) of working with the land as we transition away from fossil fuels. And that new generation of farmers will need the support of policymakers who understand the problems they face (starting with expanded programs to enable energetic but undercapitalized young farmers to take over the management of high-priced farmland in the first place) as well as extension workers, advocates, and an educated customer base.[11]

The current U.S. agricultural scene is heterogeneous as never before. Large conglomerates experiment with progressive, innovative pest control techniques as well as genetically modified organisms. Some organic producers are at the forefront of the transition away from fossil fuels, while others are among the most industrialized and mechanized. Producers of almost every type and size and philosophy need seasonal help. Participation as a migrant laborer would provide a golden opportunity for the prospective farmer, policymaker, or advocate to be exposed to a wide variety of crops, farming philosophies and practices, and labor management styles.

How are we to entice youth into the field? I propose that we should treat agricultural labor as a national service, and organize and reward it accordingly. The program—let’s call it “FarmCorps”—might look something like this: High school graduates who sign up would be organized in teams that would travel together and work together for a harvest season under the supervision of crew leaders with appropriate qualifications.[12] Especially at the pilot stage the program would be highly selective in terms of participant motivation, reliability, and physical fitness, to ensure that the educational goals of the program are met and provide assurance to producers that it is worth their while to take a chance on teams consisting mostly of greenhorns.[13] The participants would earn market wage, and also receive a higher-education incentive, much as do youth who perform national service in the military or programs such as Americorps. The organizers and a growing network of alumni and interested producers will debrief participants at the end of the season and help them find the educational opportunities, year-round work opportunities, and entrepreneurial resources they need to further explore the field and start them on their way toward careers. Given current labor shortage patterns, experienced farm workers are unlikely to be displaced by the program. Some will be eligible to participate in it; others may take on leadership and instructional roles.

As the program expands, individual campuses could organize their own local chapters and develop long-term relationships with local producers for mutual benefit. Producers will have a reliable, reputable source of local seasonal labor. Schools will have new service-learning opportunities that could be linked up with classroom teaching. Programs could be developed for incoming students, along the lines of the late-summer Outward-Bound-style hiking and camping programs that are already available to first-year students on many campuses.

The result will be a spearhead of educated, articulate young adults with direct knowledge of our agricultural system from the bottom up, fit to reform it to meet the challenges of the coming decades, and an entire generation of college-educated young adults that will have had an opportunity to experience agricultural production first-hand. This will be the generation that turns the tide, knowing more about the nation’s life-support system than its parents rather than less. We can expect to see long-overdue reforms in agricultural labor conditions, from living facilities to pesticide practices, as articulate youth, universities, and parents take a closer look and a keener interest in those conditions. We can expect a shift in perception about agricultural labor, from the dirty underbelly of our national economy, from which we avert our gaze, to work that is valued, dignified, and respected as a true national service.

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PDF: GarveyJSESpring2013

Only Experience Can Bring Us To The Truth

Dan Garvey,   Institute for Sustainable Social Change

Key Words:  experiential education; climate change; transformational education; sustainability; changing behavior

Recently, I had a conversation with a good friend (Richard Bakal) and he told me a story that I will repeat in order to help frame this piece.  The story involves an author, John Jerome who wrote 11 books on a wide variety of topics.  But, not a one of his books every received any commercial success.  The author’s brother-in-law, noticing how hard Jerome labored on each project asked him a simple question:” Why do you work so hard when you know few people will ever read your work?”  As the story goes, Jerome replied that the writing was useful because through his writing he got to “explain the world to himself.”  In a similar fashion I am trying to explain a small part of the world to myself and you are invited to accompany me.

I’m deeply concerned that many of us who have spent most of our careers focused on the broad topic of sustainability in one form or another, have been so ineffective in changing the behavior and opinions of people.  As just one example, how can it be that intelligent individuals are still debating the question of global warming?  I’m not talking about the causes of global warming; I’m talking about the simple fact that the earth is growing warmer.  Recently, I was flying between meetings and the two men behind me were engaged in one of those too loud conversations that one tries to ignore but keeps inserting itself into the psyche until you give up and eavesdrop in earnest.  Both men were agreeing that global warming was not really happening and that the issue was primarily political.  As I listened, I heard each man try to justify his position by offering vague and often contradictory supporting information.  Although I am generalizing from a very small sample, one conversation, I know that this conversation, or one very much like it, is taking place repeatedly.  There is a serious lack of understanding regarding climate change and I believe those of us connected with this issue have often failed to make a compelling argument because we have used the traditional educational approach rather than supplementing this approach with experiential education.

The traditional approach is based on the assumption that people change their behavior and their beliefs, almost exclusively based upon information they receive.  So, we have continually and consistently provided ever increasing mountains of information in the hope that everyone will quickly see that this information neatly proves our point.  It is true that earlier in our development as a species we needed information to know what to do.  But today, there is so much information supporting any position one might want to take that information without experience results in the type of conversation I referred to while on the plane.

I believe this lack of understanding about climate change, sustainability and indeed several other complex issues, is rooted in a fundamental problem that may not have been created through our traditional educational system but it has been supported and amplified by the pedagogy often employed to support this system.  Because we have been primarily focused on the dispensing of information and not on the experiences that will support this information, we have helped create generations of learners who are increasingly information rich but experience poor.  We are losing our ability to distinguish between subjective beliefs and objective truth.  Because there is an endless supply of information and research available to support almost any opinion.  We’ve come to a point where any opinion seems as valid as any other.

I’d like to focus on the difference between objective truth and subjective belief and why an inability to distinguish between these two orientations has thwarted much of the progress we might have made towards sustainability in any area.  Objective truth is something that exists whether we believe it or not.  For example, if I hold a pencil out in front of me and drop it, gravity will cause the pencil to fall.  Regardless of my opinion, wishes, desires or faith, the objective truth of gravity will exert its influence on the pencil and it will fall.  On the other hand, there are many things that depend upon our belief in them in order for them to be true.  If I were to mention any of the following nouns: Ford, Chevrolet, Christian, Jew, Arab, rich, poor, many of us would have beliefs and expectations that are associated with these words.  Some of our beliefs are in fact true, but many of our beliefs are simply the personal-subjective opinions we’ve developed.  Because many of us fail to distinguish between objective fact and subjective belief we naturally assume that all opinion is fundamentally someone’s subjective reality.  So, the question of global warming can, in the eyes of many, be dismissed as simply a discussion involving different and equally valid “beliefs” about this issue.  In philosophy this would be referred to as relativism.  But it’s more complicated than the classic definition of relativism because it involves an inability to accept that one’s preference is rooted in opinion not fact.  If you like Fords and I like Chevy that’s fine, but if we both fail to accept that on any particular feature of these vehicles there may be research that will give us the “true” superiority of one over the other on just that item, we substitute objective truth for subjective belief.

An over-reliance on information alone and unattached to experience, helps create the necessary environment for this failure to distinguish between truth and beliefs.  False subjective beliefs can often be supported by increased access to information but they are rarely supported by increased access to experiences.  The more we actually experience things and use the information available to supplement and complement our knowledge, the greater and more accurate the understanding.  One might have the opinion, based on information that they were given, that global warming wasn’t happening but if one had the experience of visiting the various glaciers on the planet there could be no doubt that things are changing.  Experience in this example can validate or contradict the subjective beliefs that we might hold.

I know that readers of this Journal are committed to experiential education and I urge all of us to continually examine how we are teaching and try to the extent possible to provide experiences to support the information.  As seductive as it feels to present a tight power point with dissolving images and imbedded YouTube links we need to constantly try to help create experiences where the learner can try to use the information and check it against their beliefs.

Since the first edition of this Journal we have been able to read excellent pieces that can inform our teaching, but the potency of these offerings is related to our own subjective belief about how people learn.  The jury is in!  People learn best when they are exposed to information and given an opportunity to experience this new information in the world.  As I mentioned at the beginning of this short piece, I’m trying to “explain the world to myself” and my conclusion is to recommitt to experiential education whenever possible and reject simply dispensing information.

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PDF: MedrickJSESpring2013

Experiential Education for Change

Rick Medrick

Keywords:  experiential education, change, process, natural, sustainability

What sustainability pedagogy means in practice is creating learning environments that are student-centered, experientially-based, collaboratively-focused, and directed towards potential transformative change in individuals and organizations.  When students are fully engaged in the learning process and responsible for the form and content of their learning, the focus shifts from the teacher to the student, empowering change and innovative thinking.  This approach is exemplified by such programs as MAP, the Outward Bound-inspired expeditionary learning schools, and even high performance teams in corporations.  Various methods and strategies have been developed to stimulate and facilitate creation of such healthy, high-functioning learning systems.  The teacher (or leader) becomes the mentor and coach, supporting the evolution of the learning process to more independence and autonomy.

Many versions and models for this process have been developed.  As a pedagogical approach, experiential education seeks to explore the process and mechanisms through which we learn about our place in the world and how we develop the skills, values, attitudes, and strategies to understand and manage our interaction with our environment and other living beings.  It reaches across disciplines and examines how we learn through direct experience that is deliberately processed, assimilated, and applied to new situations in a process of continuous learning that grows upon itself in stages of increased complexity.  This is a developmental process that begins in infancy and continues throughout our individual and collective lives in organizations, communities, cultures, and nations.  It is also a study of how humans absorb, process, assimilate, and apply new learning in a variety of circumstances that vary widely and require the creation of new strategies and insights into the learning endeavor.  It is not static but constantly evolving and seeking new information and understanding.  Many studies of this process have been carried out over the years. (Knowles, 1980, 1989; Kolb, 1984; Kraft & Kielsmeier, 1995; Merriam, 1999, 2001; Mezirow, 1990, 1991, 2000)

In the academic world, experience is enlightened and understood through theory and research that provides a framework for such understanding.  It is essential in this domain that research into different themes, issues, and topics be monitored and reviewed by faculty, advisors, and peers.  The direct involvement of the student in diverse learning environments—in communities, schools, clinics, or the natural world—provides a vehicle for exploration and experimentation.  In experientially-focused study, students are encouraged to seek out unique learning situations that challenge their assumptions, expand their perspectives, and demand insight and rigor, in order to extract meaning and value from that experience.

This implies a direct connection with the natural world.  Nature is the ultimate and most immediate learning environment. (Bateson, 1979; Capra 1982, 1991, 1996, 2002)  Modern science proposes that patterns and forms in nature are both a product of our evolution and an expression of our vision and foresight that helps to create the structures and processes necessary for our survival.  This is the constructivist approach  (Kegan, 1982, 1994, 2000) that human and natural forms are inextricably interwoven, involved in manifesting our reality, and that knowledge of each is essential for our future survivability and sustainability as a species.  Without such patterns and forms, the content of our experience is meaningless; without direct experience and content, our forms are empty and devoid of meaning and usefulness.

To take this one step further, approaching human experience from an internal and external perspective, in both individual and collective contexts, is essential to provide a full picture of how we experience the world. (Wilber 1995, 1997, 2000)  This entails attention to our internal awareness as well as our experience of the world, consideration of our individual needs as well as those of larger society.  Such an integral approach provides us with the most diverse, comprehensive information we need to make everyday decisions.  In this context, theory without application serves little end; application without evidence of validity is potentially dangerous.  This complicates the learning process and accentuates the hands-on need for exploring our environment.  There is such a breadth of subjects and such a range of learning needs and styles that to assume one size fits all denies the way the world really works.  As Ken Wilber says, there are no views or approaches that are 100% wrong.  While there are patterns in nature and archetypes in human behavior, there is also incredible variety and diversity in both domains.

To separate one’s learning from nature (direct experience) is to separate one’s self from the very context (environment) in which we learn and to which this learning must apply.  To see only one pattern or perspective, to credit only one style or approach, is to miss a view of the whole, and profoundly limit the depth and scope of one’s experience.  To hear only one voice or follow only one muse is to miss this variety and diversity.  To learn experientially implies a constant give-and-take or dialogue with our environment and others, an openness to new knowledge and multiple perspectives, that can transform what we know and our ways of knowing.  This is the nature of learning from experience.

There is a whole body of literature and practice that defines the field of experiential education which isPrescottCollege’s primary modus operandi. This does not specify theory or define practice but rather presents guidelines for the journey or process of learning. In one expression (Itin, 1999), this process is defined as:

Experiential education is a holistic philosophy, where carefully chosen experiences supported by reflection, critical analysis, and synthesis, are structured to require the learner to take initiative, make decisions, and be accountable for the results, through actively posing questions, investigating, experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative, constructing meaning, and integrating previously developed knowledge. Learners are engaged intellectually, emotionally, socially, politically, spiritually, and physically in an uncertain environment where the learner may experience success, failure, adventure, and risk taking. The learning usually involves interaction between learners, learner and educator, and learner and environment. It challenges the learner to explore issues of values, relationship, diversity, inclusion, and community. The educator’s primary roles include selecting suitable experiences, posing problems, setting boundaries, supporting learners, insuring physical and emotional safety, facilitating the learning process, guiding reflection, and providing the necessary information. The results of the learning form the basis of future experience and learning. (p. 93)

Sustainability Education, by its very nature, is experiential education (and vice versa), inviting learners to move through the same experiencing, application, and reflection process that one must to be able to alter one’s perceptions and challenge one’s assumptions.  It just must be informed by theory and practice, tested by application in the field, and critically reviewed for its viability and truth.  Does it achieve the goals intended and does it lead to a more sustainable world?

Itin, Christian M. (1999). Reasserting the philosophy of experiential education as a vehicle for change in the 21st century. The Journal of Experiential Education, 22(2), 91-98.

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PDF: JeffGloverJSESpring2013

A Conversation Starter: Amplifying Outdoor Adventure Education as an Innovative Tool for the 21st Century

Jeff Glover, Prescott College

Abstract: The AMP team promotes a sustainable adventure movement and increased use of Outdoor Adventure Education as an innovative educational tool in schools, communities and businesses. Taking a whole system approach and applying leading social movement and diffusion theories, the Adventure Movement Project seeks to develop a framework for integrating Outdoor Adventure Education into whole communities to inspire servant leadership, achieve sustainability, and drive innovation. A socially just and sustainable planet can thrive with Outdoor Adventure Education acting as a highly effective catalyst to drive social, economic, educational, and environmental change.

Key Words: Outdoor Adventure Education, sustainability, leadership, innovation, social movement

Getting a new idea adopted, even when it has obvious advantages, is difficult.

Everett Rogers, 2003, Diffusion of Innovations, p. 1

Framing Outdoor Adventure Education (OAE) as an innovative educational tool is at the core of the Adventure Movement Project and the mission to create a sustainable adventure movement and significantly increase the use of Outdoor Adventure Education in schools, communities, businesses, and institutions. No easy task, but a mission that with an intentionally designed plan, founded on core Outdoor Adventure Education values and featuring real, direct, and authentic experiences for a critical mass of stewards will prove to catalyze and lead the larger sustainability revolution. As Andres Edwards, author of the The Sustainability Revolution (2005) and Thriving Beyond Sustainability (2010), related to me, “If you discuss Outdoor Adventure Education as a tool… then the outdoors is an amazingly powerful ‘tool’ to help us connect to ourselves, to help us clarify our values and reveal to ourselves who we are. It’s self discovery by interacting with others and with nature” (A. Edwards, personal email, August 31, 2012). Diffusing Outdoor Adventure Education and reaching a critical mass underpins the mission of the Adventure Movement Project, but engaging a diverse community of advocates in this discussion is integral to the larger Adventure Movement Project vision.

Figure 1: Diffusion Model adapted from Diffusion of Innovations (Rogers, 2003) and Crossing the Chasm (Moore, 2002). Put yourself, your school, or your organization on the map. Where are you in this model?

       I.            The Adventure Movement Project Process

At the heart of the Adventure Movement Project is a passion for Outdoor Adventure Education and a belief that it can have a significant impact on entire communities in building a socially just and sustainable planet. The Adventure Movement Project uniquely frames Outdoor Adventure Education as an “innovation” and filters it through various social movement and diffusion theories, primarily Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (2002). Ultimately, AMP seeks to develop an intentional plan and the whole community adventure model that will drive a sustainable adventure movement. One of the first tasks I undertook was to reach out to experts in the Outdoor Adventure Education field to gain further insight especially as it related to the blending of Outdoor Adventure Education and the social movement theories. Several key themes emerged and what follows is a first look at how and why the Adventure Movement Project intends to lead the sustainable adventure movement. For a more detailed account and access to the full AMP Delphi study, all research materials are available and open sourced at http://adventuremovementproject.org/research/

    II.            Foundation for a Movement

How will AMP inspire a movement? The values that define the Adventure Movement Project will drive the swarm of AMP affiliates- service providers, investors, and enthusiasts- because values are enduring. Outdoor adventure education promotes shared human values, values that will be imperative for people facing an uncertain future in order to, as a collective human body, come up with the best possible environmental, educational, and economic solutions for our planet.  Building a diverse coalition through the following convergent values in the field of outdoor adventure education; wilderness and environmental stewardship, adventure and challenge, diversity, service and compassion, and safety and risk, will position the Adventure Movement Project to uniquely deliver the vision of a socially just and sustainable global community through a unified, amplified outdoor adventure education message.

So why does Outdoor Adventure Education Matter anyway?

Adventure education allows them[participants] to broaden their world – to learn from experience, take appropriate risks, work with others, and connect to a larger world.  These crucial skills are needed if they are to help solve the world’s problems when they sit in our shoes.  Adventure is the most effective way to grow responsible, accountable kids who can work in teams and keep the big picture in mind.

Betsey Upchurch

Preston Cline, Associate Director of Wharton Leadership Ventures at the Wharton School, calls on the founding father of modern Outdoor Adventure Education when he reflected, “For the same reason Kurt Hahn thought so.  Because, if done right, you can help someone realize that they are greater than they think they are.   It is the single greatest thing we can do in education.”  The impact Outdoor Adventure Education bears on participants is reflected in these answers and speaks to the imperative of unifying the field for the greater good around a clear message.

 III.            The Case for a Clear Message

A common theme in virtually all the social movement theories (Gladwell, 2002; Hawken, 2007; Jones, 2012; Moore, 2002; Rogers, 2003; Rosenberg, 2011) is the need to have a clear, concise message that resonates with a critical mass in order to call people to action. If the message is too complicated, not unified, or inconsistent, an innovative idea has no chance of reaching a critical mass or creating large scale change. Here is where the vagueness and complexity of defining Outdoor Adventure Education, the diversity of the methods and activities used, and the general lack of clarity in the field around a defined message poses a problem for Outdoor Adventure Education reaching a tipping point. In order to present a clear message, therefore, Outdoor Adventure Education must first find agreement and then embrace a unified message for the greater good. A prime example of this was championed by Henry Ford when he embraced the message of driving, the freedom of the road, instead of just selling cars.

A.     A Tool for the Times

Systems thinking is widely espoused today, but many organizations lack the capacity because they lack the commitment to build the skills and the tools to help them do so. Buckminster Fuller used to say that if you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to a new way of thinking. (Senge, 2010, p. 46)

Outdoor Adventure Education is a tool not an outcome, and it is the right tool at the right time. A commitment to Outdoor Adventure Education is a commitment to address our future in a way that no other single tool can do as effectively all at once. If done well, high quality Outdoor Adventure Education implemented in schools, communities, and businesses can be an extremely effective catalyst to change the world. Understandably, Outdoor Adventure Education is not a single solution that will solve all our planets woes. Nevertheless, if packaged as part of a larger movement, and connected to what matters in each community, it could be an incredibly effective tool to inspire a collaborative effort to solve the world’s most pressing issues. The bottom line is Outdoor Adventure Education as a tool solves for pattern, which “refers to a solution that addresses multiple problems instead of one. Solving for pattern arises naturally when one perceives problems as symptoms of systemic failure, rather than as random errors” (Hawken, 2007, p. 178). Acknowledging we have a systemic failure and presenting Outdoor Adventure Education as a tool to address the whole system could be an effective way to frame OAE in a new context and significantly increase the use of Outdoor Adventure Education across the board. OAE intimately engages three critical pillars which will determine the future of this planet; 1) sustainability; 2) innovation; and 3) servant leadership.

  IV.            The Call: Why AMP and Why Now?

We must find ways to manage essential commons such as water and topsoil, healthy ecosystems, rainforests, and stable climate. But we still have a long way to go until we find a number of ways to do this practically. Managing or stewarding these commons starts with a critical mass of stewards—individuals, teams, and organizations who see the risks and who are willing to act. (Senge, 2010, p. 217)

How do we engage a critical mass of stewards who see the risks and are willing to act? Outdoor Adventure Education can be a highly effective tool and a practical catalyst to mobilize a critical mass of stewards if and when OAE rests on the three pillars of sustainability, innovation, and servant leadership. AMP calls for embracing these pillars- the trunks on which OAE can grow- so that OAE can deeply address the larger societal issues that we now face.

Consequently, the Adventure Movement Project seeks to engage all people and organizations who care deeply about the environment, the economy, and education and who acknowledge the crisis present in each. AMP will intentionally develop the framework for the whole community adventure model which builds sustainable communities through a commitment to Outdoor Adventure Education. Unlike single minded solutions for each, AMP will employ a regenerative whole system approach that solves for pattern and delivers real solutions for our planet’s future by achieving sustainability, driving innovation, and inspiring servant leadership through a commitment to Outdoor Adventure Education.

1.      Sustainability

The relationship between humans and nature lies at the center of sustainability. (Andres Edwards, The Sustainability Revolution, 2005, p. 113)

We need to ask, “What would a way of thinking, a way of living, and ultimately an economic system look like that worked based on the principles of the larger natural world? And how do we create such a way of living in our organizations and societies, one step at a time?” (Senge, The Necessary Revolution, 2010, p. 41)

A common theme that ran through multiple responses in the AMP research study was how Outdoor Adventure Education could impact an awareness of sustainability and natural principles. As Edwards and Senge both reference, connecting humans to the natural world will be tantamount to truly achieving sustainability. Providing a direct, immersion experience in the natural world for people is a core principle that runs across Outdoor Adventure Education and can be a pathway to environmental sustainability. Upchurch elaborated and Cline agreed when she said, “We do not understand the natural world as the source of all other resources.  We must protect it and we can only do that with people who have been there.” Senge (2010) warns, “shaping a sustainable, flourishing world for life beyond the Industrial Age- This represents perhaps the greatest learning challenge humans have ever faced, and it will require extraordinary leadership from institutions of all sorts” (p. 12). One way institutions can lead this effort is by providing the resources and using their influence to create a sustainable adventure movement.

2.      Innovation

Johnson (2010) in Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation emphasizes getting outside, away from the monotony of daily tasks, to engage in a more associative state where innovation thrives (p. 110). Framing Outdoor Adventure Education as a tool that can drive innovation, innovative products, and innovative systems could be a potential way we can tweak the Outdoor Adventure Education message to incentivize its use for innovative businesses, schools, and whole economic and educational systems.

Business organizations have a crisis of people who have business skills.  Adventure education builds business skills such as responsibility, accountability, the ability to work successfully in teams, the ability to lead and influence others, the ability to see the big picture and what needs to be done now,” stated Upchurch with agreement from Cline.

The business skills that Upchurch refers to here are also aligned with the skills necessary to drive innovation. Connecting Outdoor Adventure Education directly to innovative thinking is integral to reframing a more inspiring message in order to break through to a critical mass.

3.      Servant Leadership

One of the fundamental attributes of leadership is knowing what to do in a situation filled with uncertainty and having the conviction to do it and inspire others in the process. A strength of Outdoor Adventure Education as stated by Cline is it can, “Start teaching people how to navigate uncertainty.   No this is not easy, but fundementally it is what we are great at.” Leadership development has long been a primary core outcome in Outdoor Adventure Education and again came out in this research. Robert Greenleaf in Servant Leadership (1977) frames developing leadership as a priority this way:

Preparation to lead need not be at the complete expense of vocational or scholarly preparation, but it must be the first priority. And it may take some difficult bending of resources and some unusual initiatives to accomplish all that should be accomplished in these critical years and give leadership preparation first priority. But whatever it takes, it must be done. (p. 46)

Positioning Outdoor Adventure Education as a tool to prepare leaders should be part of the larger message that Outdoor Adventure Education needs to make. After all, Greenleaf claims in Servant Leadership that in order to prepare people to serve society the key is to prepare, “inexperienced people to venture into the unknown, to face the inexactitude and the wildness, with assurance” (p. 189). Greenleaf’s characterization exactly reflects the leadership experience that Outdoor Adventure Education delivers in spades. Peter Roy, former President of Whole Foods Markets and a past Chairman of the National Outdoor Leadership School,  emphasized that the most powerful case for Outdoor Adventure Education is it creates leaders (P. Roy, personal communication, September 30, 2012). By emphasizing creating leaders through Outdoor Adventure Education, we can then build the confidence and assurance that we will come up with best practice solutions for each situation we encounter and the world will be a better place. 

     V.            Building the Adventure Movement Project Coalition

Collaborating is ultimately about relationships, and relationships do not thrive based on a rational calculus of costs and benefits but rather because of genuine caring and mutual vulnerability. (Senge, 2010, p. 233)

The imperative to collaborate across boundaries around such issues has been established. Now we just need to learn how to get better at it, quickly. (Senge, 2010, p. 49)

Cline framed the need for the Adventure Movement Project to collaborate by advising to:

Partner with organizations who are required to navigate complex adaptive problems, understand what their strengths and challenges are, identify ways that you can help them and the world will come calling.  The world is becoming more rapid and complex, not less, and the leaders of tomorrow will be needing our skill sets.

The complexity of sustainability issues is the crux of the complex adaptive problems that we are dealing with as a society and Senge (2010) affirms that, “Partnering across sectors will be crucial in dealing creatively with all the core sustainability issues…” (p. 94). Upchurch linked the issues by  highlighting,  “the need for cross sector collaboration to solve the world’s most pressing problems and again, we know that adventure programs builds people who collaborate better.” Cline agreed with Upchurch’s overall comments and expanded saying,  “There is a larger effort at creating sustainable lives.  To manage our time, money, relationships sustainably.  We could play a huge role in that movement.” Targeting organizations and institutions that are attacking sustainability issues and have a sustainability ethic will be a focus of the Adventure Movement Project moving forward. Getting connected with this larger movement and creating a simple, effective message that positions Outdoor Adventure Education as a tool to achieve sustainability, drive innovation, and inspire servant leaderhip will help create a sustainable adventure movement. “We have a tool.  What we don’t have is a critical mass who understand the issues deeply enough to know why we would want to fix it,” Upchurch stated.  Reaching a critical mass, finding that tipping point and diffusing Outdoor Adventure Education as an innovative tool can happen. To join the conversation and contribute to how OAE can come to embrace a fully sustainable world view, please visit the AMP website at http://adventuremovementproject.org/

Reference List

Edwards, A. 2005. The Sustainability Revolution: portrait of a paradigm shift. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.

Edwards, A. 2010. Thriving Beyond Sustainability. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.

Gladwell, M. 2002. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Back Bay Books/Little, Brown, and Company.

Greenleaf, R. 1977. Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. New York: Paulist Press.

Hawken, P. 2007. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World. New York: Penguin Books.

Johnson, S. 2010. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. New York: Riverhead Books.

Jones, V. 2012. Rebuild The Dream. New York: Nation Books.

Moore, G. 2002. Crossing The Chasm. New York: Collins Business Essentials.

Rogers, E. 2003. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press.

Rosenberg, T. 2011. Join The Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

Senge, P. 2010. The Necessary Revolution: Working Together to Create a Sustainable World. New York: Broadway Books.

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 PDF: Justin UmholtzSpring2013

Abstract:To live up to UNESCO’s definition of a sustainable development education that empowers youth with the knowledge, attitudes, motivations, commitments, and skills to solve and prevent the world’s total environmental problems, youth must be able to find

meaning in the curriculum based in their own experiences and expanded through shared group experiences. An environmental-based experiential curriculum with a positive development focus can help youth reclaim their learning process and reconnect with their communities.  However, without critical analysis, students, especially marginalized students, cannot develop the tools and competencies to truly understand their environment and their place within it.  Linking environmental and experiential education with critical theory provides students the opportunity to develop their leadership and gain the social and cultural literacy skills needed to come in from the margins.

Keywords: sustainable development education,environment,experiential,social constructivism,criticalpedagogy of place.

I begin this article by discussing my central assumption: that the current public school system is struggling to keep students, especially marginalized students, engaged in their schooling. There are well documented socially negative outcomes of youth alienation (Greene,1978; Higgs,1995; Ryan & Deci as cited in McCombs, 2001; Sinclair & Ghory, 1987) but it is a positive youth development approach (rather than a prevention focus) that promises to empower alienated students (Catalano, et al., 2002). I outline the ways an environmental-based experiential curriculum with a positive development focus can help youth reclaim their learning process and reconnect with their communities.

Such a curriculum requires a different way of viewing learning and knowledge, and I briefly explore cognitive and multiple learning style theories that shape a social constructivist approach. I then demonstrate how such an approach can be implemented in an environmental-based experiential curriculum, using the Environment as an Integrating Context (EIC) Model^TM as an example (SEER, 2005).

Although the EIC model is an excellent beginning, it does not offer the critical perspectives and skills necessary for alienated students to engage in and change their situations. I thus expand the EIC model to include David Gruenewald’s (2003) concept of a critical pedagogy of place, linking environmental and experiential education with critical theory. Thus integrated, these theories fit within the United Nation’s framework of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) (UNESCO, 2005,2004).

Challenges of Alienation, Possibilities for Reconnection

Few will argue that the public school system in the United States faces a myriad of challenges to effectively engage and educate an increasingly diverse student population. Following the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 and the ensuing fear of a loss of international economic competitiveness, the federal government embarked upon major educational reform. Successive administrations emphasized high academic standards, increased student achievement, and an alignment of curricula. The No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2002 (USDE, 2006) continued the reform, adding stronger punitive measures against teachers, administrators, and students if they fail to meet federal and state minimum test scores (loss of funding, loss of position, etc.) (McCombs, 2001). Many educational researchers believe such “high-stakes” testing models are counter-productive to effective learning (e.g. Berliner & Biddle, 1995; Bracey, 2003; Goodlad, 1983; McCombs, 2001). Some argue the current educational system actually alienates students from their schools and from the learning process (Ryan & Deci as cited in McCombs, 2001; Greene, 1978; Higgs, 1995). To put it more simply:

Students are alienated from the classroom where they are told that the content and the product are more important than they are, where the test scores are what matter, and where the value of students is measured by standards to which they cannot relate. (Higgs, 1995, p. 9)

This environment means all students run the risk of at least temporary disconnection from their school and learning (Sinclair & Ghory, 1987). Is it right to lay all of the blame on the student when they disconnect? Critical theorists argue alienation and disconnection are inevitable results for students who are not part of the dominant culture. Maxine Greene (1978) claims “thousands upon thousands of young people…have been selected out of the system…rendered invisible…de-humanized and made mute” by the very curricula meant to educate them (pp. 66-67). As one high school student put it in Patricia Hersch’s (1998) six-year study of adolescents, “I spend all my time trying to make up for the losses I get in school. It tears your soul to pieces” (p. 223). Hersch suggests that adolescents are trapped in a “tribe apart;” isolated in a world largely unknown to adults. She believes the growing number of adolescents who are alienated and disengaged from the community get caught in an escalating spiral of dangerous situations. McCombs (2001) links youth alienation to increased suicide rates, alcohol and drug abuse, school disciplinary problems, dropout rates, and delinquent behaviors.

Socioeconomically marginalized students are more likely to be alienated and must overcome particularly daunting personal and academic obstacles to succeed in the current system (Higgs, 1995; Sinclair & Gory, 1987). For students growing up in poverty, there is a distinct connection between feeling powerless and an increased risk of engaging in dysfunctional behaviors. Youth may feel little control over their economic situation, their schools, or their lives, but they often have easy access to negative forms of power such as dealing drugs or using weapons (Teen Empowerment, 2006). Particularly if poverty is persistent, the likelihood of low-income students dropping out of high school and never attending college increases (Lyter, 2002; Duncan, Yeung, Brooks-Gunn, & Smith, 1998).

Poverty can affect children and adolescents on multiple levels. Greg Duncan and his colleagues (1998) found family income had its highest correlation with children’s ability and achieving measures. Poverty also has been linked to low self-concept and its associated problems (Baum & Payea, 2004; Duncan et al., 1998; Higgs, 1995; McCombs & Whisler, 1989; Mcleod, 1996; Oman et al., 2004). According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, poverty compromises both children’s physical growth and cognitive development and reduces one’s physical and psychological wellbeing as an adult (Lyter, 2002). While current research emphasizes the need to address issues of poverty at an early age to avoid the most significant impacts on a child’s cognitive ability and achievement levels (Duncan et al., 1998), the question remains as to what we can do to better support and educate low-income adolescents and young adults before they feel so isolated and alienated that they drop out of the school system. More than that, what educational strategies and curricula may empower low-income and at-risk youth to become agents for their own learning, as well as social change agents in their own communities? As Hersch (1998) discovered, “even in a world that has disappointed and scared and hurt them, [teens] still want to connect” (p. x).

A sense of connection and meaning is key to student engagement in the learning process. Emotion is the gatekeeper to learning (McGeehan, 2001). If students feel oppressed or disassociated from their learning process, there are neurological ramifications. The brain stores most effectively what is meaningful from the learner’s perspective (McGeehan, 2001). Higgs (1995) suggests learning approaches that strengthen academic self-efficacy, improve self-concept, and help students move toward a more internal locus of control provide a better platform for individuals to make lasting changes in their beliefs about learning. High-risk youth in particular need learning environments where they have opportunities to form positive relationships with adults, to master skills, and to contribute to their own and their community’s wellbeing (National Academy of Sciences as cited in Kaplan, 1999). Kaplan argues that we need to develop support services that help teens feel safe and feel like they belong, give them a sense of independence while being supervised, and provide education as well as physical activities (Kaplan, 1999).

Shifting Focus: Positive Youth Development

What these researchers suggest is a more holistic way of working with youth. Rather than focusing on preventing a “problem behavior,” a youth development program should embrace and nurture the innate qualities and skills of each young person. By the 1990s, many prevention practitioners and prevention scientists agreed upon this point. They conceded that, “a successful transition to adulthood requires more than avoiding drugs, violence, or precocious sexual activity. The promotion of children’s social, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive development… [is] …key to preventing problem behaviors themselves” (W.T. Grant Consortium on the School-Based Promotion of Social Competence, 1992 as cited in Catalano, 2002, p. 5).  Such an approach became known among a number of educators as Positive Youth Development (PYD).

The PYD approach emphasizes the importance of supporting youth to build their positive qualities within a program that recognizes the social context of their lives (Gillham et al., 2002). Lopez and McKnight (2002) expand the definition to an “ongoing process in which all youth are engaged and invested. Youth interact with their environment and positive agents…to meet their basic needs and cultivate assets… [which they]…use to build additional psychological resources that facilitate growth” (p. 2). It is the physical and psychological competencies youth develop that best serve to facilitate their transition into adulthood.

Thus far, I have argued that a PYD approach has the potential to create the meaningful and supportive environments researchers suggest are key for at-risk youth to overcome the obstacles limiting their growth and learning. While PYD is not limited to any one field or type of program, I next introduce what I term Environmental-based Experiential Education as an especially powerful context for its application.

Connecting Through Environmental-based Experiential Education

Environmental education can offer a context for alienated youth, particularly low-income youth, to find positive and meaningful ways to re-engage in their communities and in their learning process.Richard Louv (2005) points to studies that link the divide between the young and the natural world with mental, physical, and spiritual health problems – what he terms “nature deficit.”  The research suggests that the way a curriculum treats students’ relationships with the natural world has environmental, social, psychological, and spiritual implications.  “How the young respond to nature, and how they raise their own children, will shape the configurations and conditions of our cities, homes – our daily lives” (Louv, 2005, p. 3). Environmental education naturally provides the contextual learning, relationship and knowledge building, collaborative learning, and individual attention the aforementioned researchers identify as key to supporting low-income students’ engagement and success. There is a growing body of research linking environmental education to improved academic performance, as well as improved critical thinking and problem-solving abilities (e.g. Desmond et al., 2004; Dirks et al., 2005; Lieberman & Hoody, 1998; Sheffield, 1992; Subramaniam, 2002; and Volk & Cheak, 2003).

Environmental and experiential education naturally meld through social constructivism (Arnett, 2004; Cowan, 1978; Dewey, 1938, 1915, 1902; Elkind, 1981; Gardner, 1983; Gauvain, 2001; Keating et al. as cited in Arnett, 2004; Palincsar, 1998; Piaget, 1973, 1954; and Vygotsky, 1978) and positive youth development (Catalano & Hawkins, 1996, 2002; Pittman & Fleming, 1991 as cited in Lopez & McNight, 2002) into what I loosely term environmental-based experiential education (AEE, 2006; Fenwick, 2001). The approach creates the space for students to engage in community environmental issues in ways that are both meaningful for them and for their individual cognitive development, learning styles, and intelligences (Arnett, 2004; Gardener, 2006, 2004, 1999, 1983; Kolb 1987). Kolb likens the process to Paulo Freire’s (1968) conscientizacao, the deepening of awareness that occurs when people merge reflection and action to transform their realities.

Social Constructivism in Action: The Environment as an Integrating Context

Environmental service and project-based learning activities offer a natural context for a social constructivist approach (Couto, 1994; Fleming, 2000; Hubbert, 2002; and Liu, 2003). The west coast-based State Education and Environment Roundtable (SEER, 2005) has developed one such framework it terms “using the Environment as an Integrating Context for learning” (EIC). The EIC basic concepts include (SEER, 2005; Lieberman & Hoody, 1998):

¨        Experiential, hands-on learning, often through community-based problem-solving and project-based activities;

¨        Integrated-interdisciplinary instruction;

¨        Collaborative instruction, and cooperative and independent learning;

¨        Learner-centered, constructivist approaches adapted to individual students and their unique skills and abilities (see Dittmer et al., 1993 for details of approach criteria); and

¨        The development of knowledge, understanding, and appreciation for the environment- both the community and its natural surroundings.

According to one SEER report (2005), a number of schools across the nation have created environmental programs based on the EIC framework. Students learn through “hands-on methodologies that allow them to apply knowledge and skills to relevant, real-world learning opportunities in their local communities” (p. iv). While the number of schools that have embraced the EIC approach is relatively small, initial research suggests that students in EIC schools are outperforming their traditionally educated peers on standardized testing in reading, language, math, spelling, science, and social studies (SEER, 2005; Lieberman & Hoody, 1998).

The SEER core concepts are quite similar to the social constructivist environmental-based experiential model I have thus far outlined. It is important to note that the SEER organization was developed in a cooperative effort of sixteen state departments of education. As such, the EIC concepts are considered best practices at state level. In fact, SEER is one of the lead organizations creating California’s statewide environmental curriculum called for in the Education and the Environment Initiative (Assembly Bill 1548) (California EPA, 2013). Unfortunately, as the EIC approach is still young, I am unaware of any research evaluating larger issues of cognitive development or reduction of student alienation.

The concept underlying an EIC approach is relatively simple. Students learn better when they can work within a local, meaningful context. SEER is clear that the local environment can include both natural and social systems, thus opening rich and interdisciplinary opportunities for students to engage in their communities.

Praxis and the Total Environment: Education for Sustainable Development

It is important to mention that an environmental and experiential curriculum is not necessarily the “magic pill” for resolving the alienation many students feel toward school and learning. As successful as environmental programs can be at engaging students in meaningful learning, David Sobel (1996) suggests some types of environmental education exacerbate students’ alienation. Sobel coined the term “ecophobia” to describe the disassociation students often experience when they are barraged with example after example of environmental abuses and impending catastrophes. Students may be gaining knowledge and awareness of the environment, yet because their lives and schools are so separated from the natural world, they begin to associate it primarily with fear and apocalypse. Leon Festinger defines this reaction as cognitive dissonance, a mental condition which sets in when “awareness and knowledge of problems engage personal values, creating a desire to act, yet the student simultaneously lacks the knowledge, skills, experience, and/or opportunities to act” [emphasis added] (Festinger, 1957). To cope with their feelings of dissonance, people respond with apathy, anger, alienation, denial, and depression, and by assigning responsibility for making changes to others.

I already have discussed why environmental-based experiential education should offer students of all academic levels relevant and accessible activities that promote interdisciplinary connections and can accommodate individual learning styles and needs. At the same time, in order to avoid potential cognitive dissonance, they need to facilitate students’ ability to act based on their skills and knowledge. The United Nations has created an international definition of environmental education that emphasizes the importance of curricula that promote both knowledge and action. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 1976 Belgrade Charter and the follow-up 1978 Tbilisi Declaration (NAAEE, 2004) state:

Environmental education is a process aimed at developing a world population that is aware of and concerned about the total environment and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, attitudes, motivations, commitments, and skills to work individually and collectively toward solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones [emphasis added] (UNESCO, 1978).

The idea behind “total environment” is a key concept as it emphasizes that nature, humans, social equity, economics, culture, and political structure are all inherent parts of the environment (NAAEE, 2004). UNESCO (2004) makes this explicit in its definition of education for sustainable development (ESD) which links the environment, society, and the economy as integrated key domains.

The UNESCO definition for ESD emphasizes the importance of building the skills and competencies necessary to solve total environmental problems. The document further states that it is increasingly clear “that many social, economic, and environmental issues are connected, such as poverty, unequal distribution of resources, population growth, migration, malnutrition, health and HIV/AIDS, climate change, energy supply, ecosystems, biological diversity, water, food security, and environmental toxins” (UNESCO, 2004, p. 8). To truly move toward sustainability, environmental education curricula should therefore include a critical reflection of sociocultural and economic factors influencing people’s lives. The EIC approach is an important step toward integrating environmental education into the public school system, but it does not implicitly address the need for social change.

While educators may balk at the idea of becoming “political,” the purpose of linking critical pedagogy with experiential and environmental education is to develop the awareness and sophistication necessary to solve complex world problems. Without critical analysis, students, especially marginalized students, cannot develop the tools and competencies to truly understand their environment and their place within it. The United Nations has named 2005-2014 the “Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.” The UNESCO draft of ESD (2004) specifically states that “sustainable development is not about maintenance of the status quo, but rather the direction and implications of change…[and should include]…ending deprivation and powerlessness” in the world (pp. 12-13).

            Maxine Greene (1988) offers a useful description of the need for critical perspectives:

Poor children and others often experience the weight of what is called ‘cultural reproduction,’ although they cannot name it or resist it. By that is meant not only the reproduction of ways of knowing, believing, and valuing, but the maintenance of social patternings and stratifications as well. The young people may not chafe under the inequities being kept alive through schools, as inequities often are; they are likely to treat them as wholly, ‘normal,’ as predictable as natural laws. The same might be said about advantaged children who grow up with a sense of entitlement and privilege, but still feel they have no choice. (p. 124)

As part of their skill development, students need to learn to “read” their schools, workplaces, politicians, and media; they need to understand the world that shapes their perspectives (Christensen, 2000). Through this process, students learn to be responsive to principles of freedom, justice, and regard for others (Greene, 1978). When people can name their world, when they have the critical skills to understand and analyze their lives, they can commit themselves to working toward positive social change (Freire, 1968).

Including critical pedagogy in an environmental-based experiential curriculum thus offers students their first steps toward reclaiming the learning process. Within the social constructivist context of the program, students can take advantage of their learning community to build upon each other’s expanding perspectives, beginning the process of dialogue Freire speaks of. However, as Freire (1968) adamantly points out, dialogue is mere verbalism without action. The “focused reflection” mentioned in the Association for Experiential Education (2006) definition is an important beginning for a student’s developing consciousness, but that reflection must be integrated with action. This notion of praxis is vital to personal and social transformation, and also is an important distinction between Dewey’s vision and that of critical theorists. Many experiential education programs (and social constructivism generally) focus on Dewey’s notion of reflection, which seeks to engage students in making connections and meaning through educative experiences. However, Breunig (2005), Couto (1994), and to some extent Kolb argue that experiential education should help create a more socially just world. Greene (1978) and Freire (1968) are clear that praxis involves critical reflection and action, often in concert with others, to transform a situation in order to overcome oppression or domination. While both approaches are important to a student’s learning, critical pedagogy is how students can move beyond their cognitive dissonance to engage the environmental, economic, and social problems surrounding their lives.

A Critical Pedagogy of Place: Education for a Sustainable World

Ironically, critical pedagogy or environmental education alone can easily lead to cognitive dissonance as students confront overwhelming environmental problems and systemic injustices. Recognizing the danger, David Gruenewald (2003) attempts to integrate environmental and critical theories through what he terms “a critical pedagogy of place.” He believes the strength of environmental education is that it naturally engages people in their own social and ecological surroundings. In effect, place-based environmental education teaches us how to “reinhabit” our total environment instead of merely residing there. Gruenewald argues reinhabitation is a vital process that helps people develop the commitment and connection necessary to engage in action. As Sobel (1996) puts it, children need to learn to love the earth before they can be asked to save it. The EIC model is an excellent example of a place-based pedagogical approach. Activities and actions students engage in have direct relevance to their lives because they are occurring in their own local environment. Meaningful interdisciplinary learning is naturally applied through community-service projects, school gardens, or local restoration projects (SEER, 2005). Students build a more complex awareness of their environment, as well as a practical competence that they can build and draw upon for future actions. In effect, schools help shape the way the next generation thinks and acts toward the natural world (Orr, 2004, 1992).

However, Gruenewald argues that place-based pedagogies tend to ignore the power structures that shape our world. As I have discussed, it is important not only to engage in environmental projects, but also to critique and analyze our place within the total environment before we can make true social change. Gruenewald terms this process “decolonization,” the questioning and rejecting of the unjust dominant cultural patternings Greene referred to. At the same time, decolonization requires learning “more socially just and ecologically sustainable ways of being in the world” (Gruenewald, 2003, p. 9). Gruenewald considers decolonization the flipside of reinhabitation; one is not possible without the other.

As the decade of education for sustainable development comes to a close, there is more need than ever for programs and curricula that offer an empowering opportunity for alienated youth to re-engage and transform their total environment. The theoretical explanation perhaps overly complicates the simple idea that meaningful shared learning and work create opportunities for young people to escape their isolation. Engaging in valued activity that is easily linked to interdisciplinary learning, community service, and personal and social change is a central component of an education for sustainable development.

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PDF: Hensley spring2013

Abstract: In this article I articulate what it means to understand curriculum as bioregional text. I utilize a theoretical mode of inquiry to explicate the values of bioregional education while integrating the discussion into the reconceptualized field of Curriculum Studies. The discussion addresses the value of direct experience, in our bioregion, and explains the significant contribution that can be drawn from developing a clearer understanding of our bioregional autobiography.

Keywords: Bioregional education,place-based education,Curriculum Studies,experiential education

[Reinhabitation] involves becoming native to a place through becoming aware of the particular ecological relationships that operate within and around it.  It means understanding activities and evolving social behavior that will enrich the life of that place. (Berg & Dasmann, in Smith & Williams, 1999, pp. 214-215)

Introduction

In an effort to integrate curriculum theory and place-sensitive reforms in education, this article seeks to embrace the learning potentialities situated within particular bioregions while addressing important questions.  How can we advance the type of curriculum theory necessary to promote a sense of place?  At a time when we face environmental disconnectedness, exponential human population growth, and the inextricable increase in greenhouse gas emissions, it is becoming even more crucial to purposefully integrate place-consciousness into education (Greenwood, 2013; Gruenewald, 2003, 2008a, 2008b; Hensley, 2011; Smith, 2013).  In this article I will articulate what it means to understand curriculum as bioregional text.  I focus on theorizing while drawing from existing bioregional literature.  I believe these efforts build upon prior scholarship to inform new ways of approaching place-based curriculum theory.

Historical Context of Understanding Curriculum

Underlying most of the contemporary discourse pertaining to school “reform” and student achievement is the central theme of curriculum development (Pinar, 2004).  Curriculum development thinking, as opposed to thinking framed as understanding curriculum, is manifested through instrumentalist and mechanistic practices such as lesson planning and the collection of curriculum binders.  Curriculum development “grew out of an era in which school buildings and populations were growing exponentially, and when keeping the curriculum ordered and organized were the main motives for professional activity” (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery & Taubman, 2004, p. 6).  Thus, curriculum development focuses on promulgating organization, efficiency, and control while addressing the needs affiliated with rapid expansion.  Also, curriculum development is grounded in meeting the demands of curriculum design, implementation, and evaluation.  Contemporary curriculum work necessitates a paradigmatic shift where educational theorists and practitioners are “no longer [viewed as] technicians, that is, people who accept unquestioningly others’ priorities” (p. 6).  Instead of an overemphasis on developing curriculum, and to better accommodate the complexities associated with today’s rapidly changing socio-ecological, political, and economic landscape, understanding curriculum has gained currency.  Understanding curriculum is a more adequate approach to face the challenges associated with today’s ecological crisis.  Understanding curriculum embraces lived experience and embodies an approach to education that moves beyond the curriculum development orientation.  In the 1970s, the urgency associated with repositioning lived experience into curriculum scholarship catalyzed a new conversation, shifting curriculum scholarship into an effort to better understand the variety of “texts” that make up educational experience.

In their synoptic text, Understanding Curriculum, Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery & Taubman (2004) identify what it means to understand curriculum as a variety of  “texts.”  The forms of texts described by the authors include, among others, historical text, political text, aesthetic text, phenomenological text, and autobiographical text.  Their emphasis on understanding curriculum is embedded within the reconceptualization of curriculum studies catalyzed by William Pinar (Pinar, 2004).  The concept and process of understanding curriculum is in contrast to the prevailing curriculum development-based paradigm viewed as a more mechanistic and efficiency-based endeavor (see Pinar et al, 2004).  Understanding curriculum is less mechanistic and efficiency-based because there is an emphasis on lived experience rather than the instrumentalism associated with testing and generating uniform learning standards. In this section I set out to enter the current Curriculum Studies conversation and offer another layer of understanding.  From the perspective of advancing sustainability within the field of Curriculum Studies, I build upon Nathan Hensley’s (2011) premise heralded in Curriculum Studies Gone Wild by proposing that curriculum should also be understood as a form of bioregional text.

Hensley (2011) joins with a number of other educational theorists to outline the potential for educational theory and practice to help cultivate a sense of place within students, educators, and theorists.  More particularly, he posits that students need to understand where they are within their biosphere by learning about their bioregion through direct experience.  Thus, as many place-based theorists argue, it is primarily through direct interaction with our surrounding ecological and social communities that we can develop a meaningful sense of place (Greenwood, 2013; Gruenewald, 2003, 2008a, 2008b; Hensley, 2011, 2013; Smith, 2013).  Hensley’s theoretical framework adds to the existing literature pertaining to place-based education by drawing from the field of Curriculum Studies within the specific context of bioregionalism.  Bioregionalism is a cultural, political, and ecological form of thought and action grounded in localization and learning to live well together in a place without doing damage to other humans and non-humans (Hensley, 2013).  The process of gaining a deeper sense of place is at the root of bioregionalism.

Grounded in awareness of one’s surrounding landscapes—including ecological, social, cultural, and autobiographical landscapes—bioregionalism is a framework that blends theory and practice towards the intent of living lastingly and lovingly on this planet.  Etymologically, the word bioregionalism is from the Greek word bios (meaning life) and the French word region (more generally thought of as place).  Understanding curriculum as bioregional text involves comprehending what it means to cultivate bioregional connectedness and rootedness within one’s own life and being able to apply this knowledge to helping others develop a more experientially grounded sense of place.  Within the scope of understanding curriculum as bioregional text, developing an experientially grounded sense of place serves as the cornerstone for curriculum and pedagogical scholarship and practice.  When humans begin to viscerally “know” their surrounding bioregion, through direct interaction with it, they are more in tune with how they impact their place and thus they are more likely to participate in its stewardship (Litz, 2010; Smith, 2013; Hensley, 2011).  This place-inspired ethic of stewardship can affect and permeate academic scholarship and the way that a teacher approaches his or her practice.

Within bioregional literature, the concept of developing a harmonious relationship with one’s bioregion is referred to as reinhabitation.   Berg & Dassmann tell us that reinhabitation “involves becoming native to a place through becoming aware of the particular ecological relationships that operate within and around it.  It means understanding activities and evolving social behavior that will enrich the life of that place” (In Smith & Williams, 1999, pp. 214-215).  The act of reinhabitation involves working to harmoniously co-exist with all forms of life in a bioregion and learning how to restore the mutual beneficial relationship associated with living sustainably (Welling, 2012; Smith, 2007; Hensley, 2013).  The art of reinhabitation is well represented through traditional ecological knowledge and practice.  Traditional ecological knowledge is defined as “a cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission. [It concerns] the relationship of living beings (including human) with one another and with their environment” (Berkes, Colding, & Folke, 2000, p. 1252).  By drawing on the framework of reinhabitation and traditional ecological knowledge, understanding curriculum as bioregional text is a holistic effort that values lived experiences within the bioregion complemented by reflection and integration.  The experiential learning cycle which includes direct experience, focused reflection, and integration is embedded in the learning that takes place within one’s bioregion (Dewey, 1938).  For example, in the Sustainability and Community course I teach at Auburn University, students participate in a relevant service-learning project, then reflect upon this experience and submit a written individual reflection that addresses how their experience ties into the course curriculum and how this learning can be applied in the future.  Focused reflection allows one to process the experience and then develop ways to integrate the knowledge gained from the given experience (Dewey, 1938; Rodgers, 2002; Miettinen, 2000).

To understand curriculum as bioregional text is to value the complex interplay between the social and natural communities that make up various bioregions.  The processes and factors associated with bioregional text include working to appreciate and investigate how to cultivate “a deeper understanding about our position as humans in the greater eco-social community which falls within our life place” (Hensley, 2013).  Within the socially grounded viewpoint of understanding curriculum as a form of bioregional text, advancing diversity in the context of both how we think and what humans do within a bioregion is a priority.  In working to understand curriculum as a form of bioregional text, the emphasis on diversity is intertwined with the eco-justice effort to end the “industrialized nations’ exploitation and cultural colonization of third-world nations” (Hensley, 2013). A person who is working to reinhabit her life-place is more likely to take steps to become familiar with the natural and cultural history of her bioregion.  With historical knowledge of the exploitive and non-exploitive relationships that have occurred within a bioregion, one is better positioned to respond appropriately to current ecological and social challenges.  In essence, understanding curriculum as bioregional text is a multidimensional process involving social, ecological, political, and economic modes of inquiry.  These modes of inquiry are shaped epistemologically, pedagogically, and ethically.  Epistemology is concerned with understanding “how we know what we know.”  Thus, epistemologically speaking, it is important to recognize that bioregional inquiry embraces the knowledge that is gained through direct experiences in one’s bioregion.  Appreciating that these direct experiences provide a solid framework for teaching and learning opens up a refreshing form of pedagogy.  A bioregionally-influenced pedagogy accepts that students learn effectively in contexts that are embedded in their surrounding community in ways that are experiential and active.  Ethically, bioregional inquiry emerges from the recognition that humans are destroying the very life base which makes the earth habitable.

Thus, the imperative to interact with this planet in a way that is mindful, intentional, and mutually beneficial (between humans and the biosphere) becomes a part of the moral fabric of day-to-day life.  It is a form of text that pushes one to understand the localized relationships that make life within the bioregion possible while attending to others who are impacted by the decisions made within the bioregion—both downstream and upstream.  Understanding curriculum as bioregional text is thus a complicated conversation that invokes both human and non-human perspectives, an eco-socially grounded sense of place, and an affinity for advancing the forms of knowledge that help us to live well within our places.

Understanding Curriculum as Bioregional Text

Instead of the predominant emphasis on curriculum development or focus on non-ecological modes of curriculum theorizing, understanding curriculum as bioregional text involves unpacking the significance of bioregional education, namely the relationships between people and environments and how these relationships affect where we place our epistemic assumptions in order to ensure a defensible quality of life for future generations of people.  The emphasis on interrelationships and interdependence, associated with understanding curriculum as bioregional text, necessitates a more emergent design of coursework because systems thinking is inherently more dynamic and animated than object-based thinking.

The process of comprehending bioregional texts is part of the context of advancing a more harmonious human-earth relationship that tends to preserve socio-ecological integrality and overall ecological wellbeing (Hensley, 2011).  As mentioned above, it is a form of curriculum scholarship that builds upon the reconceptualization movement, a movement that shifts the focus from developing curriculum to understanding curriculum, by adding an ecologically-oriented dimension to understanding one’s lived experiences.  Working to comprehend bioregional texts is holistic and emergent.  Gregory Smith (2002) provides several examples of place-based education which exemplify the kind of learning aligned with cultivating bioregional inquiry.  Water quality testing in nearby wetlands, field trips to a municipal wastewater treatment facility, and phonological studies in one’s backyard or in the schoolyard offer great contexts for employing the form of bioregional inquiry discussed in this article.  It is important to note that these experiences need to embrace the experiential learning cycle while pushing the student to connect the experience to previous experiences and apply the learning to future experiences.

From an autobiographical lens, our places provide the eco-social context of our lived experiences.  Within the realm of Curriculum Studies, the process of understanding how our lived experiences, in various places, have shaped our attitudes and behaviors, enables us to deepen our ability to educate and theorize in ways that are more eco-socially congruent.  Eco-social congruency is a concept that I have developed that has to do with promoting a stronger ethic of ecological stewardship while advancing a more mutually beneficial human-earth relationship.  Because place-based education does not come “prepackaged,” its “curriculum and activities arise from the individual qualities of specific communities and the creative impulses of particular teachers and students” (Smith, 2002, p. 31).  Thus, place-based education cultivates a pragmatic and localized ethic of ecological stewardship that mobilizes an eco-social congruency.

A large component of understanding curriculum as bioregional text is grounded in understanding one’s evolving autobiographical perspective.  Understanding our autobiography involves reflecting on the experiences we have had within various bioregions and working to comprehend how these experiences have cultivated the paradigms and perspectives pertaining to our role within this biosphere.  Our worldview is intertwined with our sense of place within our community, which involves an integrated and experientially-based connectedness with one’s surrounding ecological and social contexts (Hensley, 2011).  Perspective reflection pushes us to develop a stronger sense of place through the experiential process of directly encountering and being fully engaged in and with a bioregion.

Conclusion

When students are able to participate in a transformative form of bioregional education they are better positioned to practice the “art of living well in one’s place” (Orr, 1992).  These students encounter the concept and practice of “reinhabitation,” which involves learning to live well together in a place without doing damage to other humans and non-humans. Students situated in a bioregional educational model develop a more refined sense of place and understand their own bioregionally-influenced epistemology (Smith, 2013).  This builds upon the student’s abilities to comprehend how the larger ecosystems in the natural world are interconnected and interdependent with the cultural systems, which are commonly viewed as disconnected from one another—this comprehension is referred to as ecological literacy or ecojustice (Mueller, 2009).

Similarly, when curriculum theorists practice reflecting and building upon their bioregional influenced condition through an epistemology grounded in place, they are better situated to respond to the epidemic of ecological aversion, phobia, disconnectedness, crisis and so forth. Curriculum theorists are uniquely positioned to respond to the epistemological pitfalls associated with ecological aversion because Curriculum Theory is inherently linked to understanding lived experience from multiple perspectives.  Since Curriculum Theory embraces pluralistic forms of inquiry, it is well situated to move beyond the contemporary educational discourse steeped in advancing more uniformity in standards and educational efficiency.    Curriculum theorists are well situated to draw from many different disciplines, pose important sustainability questions, and formulate answers to these questions, which have to do with localizing our efforts and re-emphasizing the value of learning from direct experience (Hensley, 2012).

When the pedagogical and curricular possibilities for infusing place are better understood, it is likely that educational theorists and practitioners will be more intentional about infusing experientially-grounded bioregional education techniques into all aspects of the learning process.  The importance of advancing place-based education dialogue is grounded in helping future generationd to build the ecological and social resilience necessary to withstand the range of crises associated with the sustainability challenge.

References

Berkes, F., Colding, J., & Folke, C. (2000). Rediscovery of Traditional Ecological Knowledge as             Adaptive Management. Ecological Applications, 10(5), 1251–1262.

Dewey, J. (1938a).  Experience and education.  New York:  Kappa Delta Pi.

Greenwood, D. (2013). A critical theory of place-conscious education. In R. B. Stevenson, M.     Brody, J. Dillon, & A. Arjen (Eds.), International handbook of research on        environmental education (pp. 93–100). New York: Routledge.

Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). Foundations of Place: A Multidisciplinary Framework for Place-         Conscious Education. American Educational Research Journal, 40(3), 619–654.

Gruenewald, D. (2008a). Place-based education: Grounding culturally responsive teaching in        geographical diversity. In David Gruenewald & G. A. Smith (Eds.), Place-based            education in the global age : Local diversity (pp. 137–153). New York: Lawrence           Erlbaum Associates.

Gruenewald, D. A. (2008b). The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place.           Environmental Education Research, 14(3), 308–324.

Hensley, N. (2011). Curriculum studies gone wild: Bioregional education and the scholarship of               sustainability. New York: Peter Lang.

Hensley, N. (2012). Beyond a carbon copy curriculum:  Cultivating stewardship and awareness    through sustainable education. In J. Lin & R. Oxford (Eds.), Transformative Eco-          Education for Human and Planetary Survival (pp. 61–74). Information Age Press.

Hensley, N. (2013).  CIDER: An Acronym for Understanding the Educational Possibilities for     bioregionalism.  Journal of Sustainability Education, 4.

Litz, K. (2010). Inspring environmental stewardship: Developing a sense of place, critcal   thinking skills and ecoliteracy to establish an environmental ethic of care (Unpublished            Masters Thesis). Prescott College, Prescott, AZ. Retrieved from             http://gradworks.umi.com/1476123.pdf

Miettinen, R. (2000).  The concept of experiential learning and John Dewey’s theory of     reflective thought and action.  International Journal of Lifelong Education, 19(1),               54-72.

Mueller, M.P. (2009). Educational Reflections on the “Ecological Crisis”: EcoJustice, Environmentalism, and Sustainability. Science & Education, 18(8), 1031-1055.

Orr, D. W. (1992). Ecological literacy: Education and the transition to a postmodern world.           Albany: State University of New York Press.

Pinar, W. (2004). What is curriculum theory?  Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Pinar, W., Reynolds, W., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. (1995). Understanding curriculum: An         introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. New    York: Peter Lang.

Rodgers, C. (2002).  Defining reflection:  Another look at John Dewey and reflective        thinking.  Teachers College Record, 104(4), 842-866.Smith, G. A. (2002). Going Local.            Educational Leadership, 60(1), 30.

Smith, G. A. (2007). Place‐based education: Breaking through the constraining regularities of       public school. Environmental Education Research, 13(2), 189–207.

Smith, G. A. (2013). Place-Based Education. In R. B. Stevenson, M. Brody, J. Dillon, & A.         Arjen (Eds.), International handbook of research on environmental education (pp. 213–   220). New York: Routledge.

Smith, G. A., & Williams, D. R. (1999). Ecological education in action: On weaving education,    culture, and the environment. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

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PDF: Sullivan&WaltersJSESpring2013

Abstract: As sustainable construction continues to increase its market share in the commercial construction realm there is continued discussion regarding providing adequate exposure to sustainable practices in the undergraduate curriculum.  Sustainable construction, specifically United States Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Engineering, places an emphasis on design integration, professional and industry education, and market transformation – both in products and installation techniques.  The question at hand is how to prepare construction and engineering students for what is quickly becoming the norm for construction in the United States.  Previous research has discussed integration of curriculum and has found there are no existing standards in place. This study finds that when sustainability is viewed as integral to high performance design and delivery that course development is more a function of integration than revision.  This paper reviews the progress made since 1998 to present in undergraduate integrated and supplemented education courses in a prominent four year construction program.  The question of accreditation requirements and initial career offerings are also discussed.  Integrating sustainability into the curriculum is perceived to enhance the students’ learning and provide a superior experience.

Keywords: sustainable construction,integrated curriculum,LEED rating system

Introduction

This paper summarizes the continued adaptation and creation of sustainable programs, coursework, and degrees for a School of Building Construction from 1998 to present. This paper’s focus is to summarize efforts within a University, a College, and a single traditional Construction Management (CM) school.  The M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Building Construction at the University of Florida established the first United States Green Building Chapter (USGBC) student chapter in 1998 and has continued to review curriculum content and respond to industry support over the past 15 years ⁱ.  Programs continue to struggle in comparing their efforts to other institutions and in defining sustainable goals ^{ii, v}.  This paper provides a possible roadmap of a single institution with regards to pre-requisites, course integration, course creation, and faculty involvement.

Drivers for Sustainability

In 2007, Governor Charlie Crist signed an executive order that all state funded buildings must be in accordance with USGBC LEED for New Construction and Major Renovation (NC) or LEED for Existing Building (EB).  In 2008 the Florida Energy Act mandated that all state funded buildings pursue a nationally recognized high-performance green building rating system as approved by the Department of Management Services.  LEED and Green Building Initiatives Green Globes are specifically mentioned.  In 2010 there were over 600 registered LEED projects in the state of Florida.  Preparing our students for these jobsite requirements is essential.

University Facilities Setting

The College of Design, Construction, and Planning established an Office of Sustainability in 2000 to facilitate, support, and analyze sustainability initiatives on campus.  In 2001, the university adopted LEED certified criteria for design and construction for all major new construction and renovation projects to deliver high performance and sustainable buildings.  In 2003, the University of Florida Facilities, Planning, and Construction (FPC) Office constructed the first USGBC Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold building in the State of Florida; the Rinker School of Building Construction was the first such LEED project on campus.  In 2006 the Student Senate urged the formation of an Office of Sustainability on a University level.  That same year the University President established the Office of Sustainability and hired a Director of the Office of Sustainability to facilitate and manage campus wide goals and directives ⁱⁱⁱ. That year LEED Silver certification became the design and construction goal.  This bar was raised in 2009 with Gold now being the certification attempted on each project.  By the end of 2009, the USGBC ranked the University of Florida as the number 1 campus for LEED project registrations.  Table 1 summarizes the projects by certification or registration level ^iv.

Table 1:  LEED Certifications since 2001on University of Florida’s Campus

The great support from FCP has allowed for all design and construction students to tour and interact with LEED projects being built around them over the past ten years.  Review of standards and fee curves indicate the University does not pay a premium for these projects relative to the option of building a non-LEED project on campus.  Construction management students interact with the project managers, superintendents, and subcontractors working on the projects to discuss LEED parameters and action plans for success.  These jobsite tours of over 20 projects have allowed the students to experience first-hand from design and construction professionals what is necessary to deliver sustainable projects.

Establishing Objectives for Sustainability

Enhancing a curriculum to include sustainability requires that the program outcomes be evaluated to ensure that the principles of sustainable design are integrated into the material. To accomplish this task as set of educational objectives were established to define what a student should be able to do at the end of a lesson. These objectives must encompass the core principals of sustainability and be specific, measurable, and observable. Table 2 lists the core set of objectives adapted from a study by Soria, et al.^vi that are specific for a construction management program.

Table 2. Learning Objectives for Sustainability

Applying educational objectives to the program was accomplished by mapping the learning objectives into major instructional areas (Table 3). This list provides specific topics covered in the undergraduate curriculum, and are each mapped to the core set of sustainable educational outcomes.

Table 3. Major Instruction Areas for Sustainability in a Construction Management Program

Development of a Sustainability Track

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has established a Bachelor of Arts in Sustainability Studies.  This across-discipline degree places an emphasis on environmental well being, economic welfare and social justice.  A focus is also placed on local, national, and global sustainable initiatives.  The courses for this major are set in clusters for which students must pick a select number of courses to complete the requirements for graduation.  A review of the courses indicates that very few courses were added by departments across campus to accommodate the ‘sustainable degree.’  Courses such as Environmental Ethics (Cluster A), Conservation of Resources (Cluster B), and Soil, Water, and Land Use (Cluster C) were established courses that were linked under the same program.  Each cluster consists of courses that fall under the umbrella topic but are housed in different schools across campus.  This allows the student to self-select and experience courses from several schools or programs.

The Bachelor of Science in Sustainability and the Built Environment degree is housed in the College of Design, Construction, and Planning.  The courses focus on solutions to building challenges with an emphasis on impacts such as energy, water, and land.  There is also an available Minor in Sustainability and the Built Environment.  This degree places more emphasis on the impacts of the built environment and, thus, there is more course work centered in the College of Design, Construction, and Planning.  In addition, practicum or studio credits and a capstone project related to sustainability are required.

Integrating Sustainability into the Construction Management Degree

The undergraduate program in construction management has been strategically improved over the last twelve years but the effective change to accommodate sustainable topics has resulted a change in prerequisites, adoption of limited elective courses, integration, and drive of the faculty for the students to have access to material outside of required course work. Through the addition of a prerequisite international sustainability and addition of sustainability modules in other prerequisites students are getting a better understanding of the built environment impacts on the world.

Prerequisites

International Sustainable Development was established as prerequisite to the upper division.  The course satisfies the social/behavioral science requirement.  The instructor is a building construction faculty member with a research interest in high performance and low-impact construction.  The course focus is on providing resources for the understanding human impacts, limits of design, natural capacity, and social sustainability.  The course is currently divided into three broad sections: 1) Ethical and social framework for sustainable decision making, 2) Food and energy limits of a closed global system, and 3) Built environment impacts and potential mitigation processes and systems.  This course broadens the concept of sustainable construction for a student into the realm of societal and environmental needs and limits.

Elective Courses

Elective courses consist of related high performance and technology delivery courses.  High Performance Green Building was an established elective that covered such topics as life-cycle assessment, life-cycle costing, energy modeling, value engineering, and sustainable rating criteria (e.g., LEED).  Building Information Modeling (BIM) is an elective that goes beyond the students’ an exposure to Revit modeling to include HVAC systems and layout concerns.  Design Build is a related elective in that most of the project based learning incorporates elements of LEED requirements.  Likewise Sustainable Housing is a course that covers housing economics and green home standards.  Note that no specific sustainable course has been added to the requirements to graduate.

Integration with Core Undergraduate Classes

High performance owner directed buildings (i.e., green building) have been integrated throughout the existing design, finance, and construction technique courses.  The introduction construction materials course, a program prerequisite, covers environmental impacts of building materials as well as ethics of development in the built environment.  Table 4 comprises the breakdown of courses that integrate sustainable facets into the established course material (not all required courses are listed). Along with the courses is the associated major instructional area.

Table 4. Integrated Curriculum Courses

Faculty Involvement Outside of Class

Faculty support sustainable endeavors outside the classroom as well.  Traditional involvement with regard to this topic is with student competition teams.  The LEED team has obviously focused on LEED rating system design and construction requirements and alternative execution costs.  Recently however, the Construction Management and Design Build teams’ pre-qualifications and problems have been on LEED certification required projects.  LEED is being continually integrated into established competition teams just as it has in the industry.

In addition the faculty provides ‘after hours’ LEED accreditation training to the graduating undergraduate class and other interested students each semester.  During this LEED training students have the opportunity to interact with students from other disciplines while focused on the intent and submittal details associated with LEED credits.  Table 3 lists the number of students that have attended the training sessions.  Passing rate for each section has been above 90% for those who follow through with the testing process while still a student in the program.

Table 3:  Number of Program Undergraduate Students taking Optional LEED Training

In addition faculty have supported and given LEED accreditation training to over 5,000 professional attendees (contractors, architects, and decision makers) since 2004.  This continued connection within the state regarding high performance construction has strengthened the perception of the program as addressing and meeting the needs of the industry.  It is expected that the graduates from this program have exposure to the LEED rating system.  Accreditation during the job interview process has been a determining factor company selecting candidates.  Several students have gone on to be the ‘green champion’ within their organization.

Conclusion

While initial concerns of LEED premiums has subsided with increased education of all involved.  An understanding that first cost premiums are relative to the project, owner, standards, and certification levels has developed with project experiences.  So too has the understanding to integrate sustainable constraints in existing construction management courses.  Sustainable design is not unique.  All references associated with LEED credits are established industry best practices and continue to be updated as the industry standards evolve.  While there is a need to understand the system, submittal, and approval process the core traditional concepts that are involved in designing and building a project remain.  This study reflects, if anything, the need for faculty and programs to integrate best practices, or sustainable practices, within the framework of their existing programs while augmenting classes with synergistic technology and sustainability elective classes that allow for better understanding of building impacts and performances.

References

1.         i.                        Kibert, C. (2005).  Integrating Sustainability into Construction Programs.  ASC Proceedings of the 41^st Annual Conference. University of Cincinnati, Ohio, April 6 – 9, 2005.

1.       ii.                        Tinker, A. & Burt, R. (2004). “Greening” the Construction Curriculum. International Journal of Construction Education and Research, 2004 (1) 26-33.

1.     iii.                        Univeristy of Florida (2012).  “Sustainable UF.” <http://sustainable.U*l.edu/about/> (January 3, 2012).

1.     iv.                        Univeristy of Florida (2012).  “Facilities, Construction, and Planning.” <http://www.facilities.Ufl.edu/sustain/> (January 3, 2012).

1.        v.                        Wang, Y. (2009).  Sustainability in Construction Education.  Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, 135(1) 21-30.

1.      vi.                        Soria, B., Bella, Jose, Hernandez, J., Sunen, E., and Diaz, J. (2013). Education for Sustainable Development: Methodology and Application within a Construction Course. Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, 139(1) 72-79.

Jim Sullivan

Russell Walters

Rinker Hall: First University of Florida LEED project and first certified LEED Gold building in Florida (completed in 2003).

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PDF: N. J. Smith-Sebastospring2013

Abstract: This report describes a unique technique for presenting an introduction to sustainability science course that is both required for sustainability science majors at a large Mid-Atlantic state university and a general education non-laboratory science course. The World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity, released by the Union of Concerned Scientists in the late 1990s, serves and an indictment of humanity. The course mimics a trial as it proceeds from the indictment through an arraignment, pre-trial, trial, verdict, and sentencing with students acting both as the accused and the jury.

Keywords: education,environmental; experiential,innovative,sustainability,undergraduate

In 2009, Kean University (NJ) received formal state approval to offer a B.S. in Sustainability Science.  It is one of only two such degree programs in the nation. In fact, there are fewer than 100 programs in the nation that include the word sustainability or sustainable in the degree name (S. Vincent, personal communication, 16 June 2012).  This is a paradox because it has been suggested, “Higher education institutions bear a profound moral responsibility to increase the awareness, knowledge, skills and values needed to create a just and sustainable future” (The Essex Report, 1995, p. 4).  A decade later, it was observed, “At the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, education was identified as one of the key forces central to the process of sustainable development during the 21^st century.  Some years later, the goal of sustainability and the need for education in all of its forms in order to seriously engage with this imperative remain as significant as ever—possibly more so…” (Blewitt, 2004, p. 1).

In 2010, Smith presented a case study of how he teaches a graduate-level course that pertains to sustainability.  This presents another paradox because it is the only such detailed description of sustainability education pedagogy that I’ve been able to locate in the literature.  So, clearly there is a need for more reports about how sustainability education is being accomplished.

The sustainability science program strives to provide students with educational experiences that will provide them with the knowledge, skills, abilities, and experiences that will position them to demonstrate comprehension of: 1) the unique characteristics of Earth that have facilitated the development and evolution of life as we know it, 2) the human actions and behaviors that are compromising these characteristics, 3) the reasons why humans are acting and behaving in unsustainable ways, and 4) the solutions that will produce long-term reversal, if not elimination, of unsustainable actions and behaviors in favor of those that are sustainable.  The program seeks to empower students to embrace sustainable lifestyles whereby they will serve as change agents for others in their personal and professional communities.

Students are required to enroll in 14 courses (37 semester hours) as part of the major foundation requirements.  The course described in this case study is the absolute foundation for the entire program.  It is a required course for all sustainability science majors, but because it is also an approved general education non-laboratory science course, students from other majors enroll in it.  It is offered in both the autumn and spring semester, but it is not offered during the summer sessions.  The additional 13 courses as well as additional non-major courses in biology, chemistry, Earth systems, etc. complete the foundation of the program and serve as the basis for understanding the four components of the curriculum.  Once students have completed roughly 60 semester hours, they self-select into one of two concentrations: Earth systems or human systems.  The Earth systems concentration coursework, much of which is upper division, focuses on Earth’s atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, and biosphere.  The human systems concentration coursework, much of which is upper division, focuses on communication, business, infrastructure, and social topics.

The challenge I presented to myself in 2009 regarding this course was to present it in a way that would provide the students with an authentic experiential learning experience that allowed them to gain understanding of the concept of sustainability while at the same time convincing them of the urgency with which humanity must abandon so many of its unsustainable behaviors all without coming across to them as proselytizing.  The answer came to me while re-watching the movie, The Hunt for Red October.  In it, Alec Baldwin is seen pondering how to get a Russian submarine crew off of the ship that the Capitan wants to present to the United States as part of his and his crew’s defection.  He is shown thinking out loud, “So how’s he gonna get the crew off the sub?” he pondered.  “They have to want to get off. How do you get a crew to want to get off a submarine? How do you get a crew to want to get off a nuclear sub (an abrupt end to his speaking and his facial gestures indicates he has found his answer)?” [emphasis added to indicate his intonation]  His epiphany was the fact that a threat of exposure to radiation would be all that is necessary to convince the sailors to abandon ship regardless of other circumstances.  I wondered how I could make students want to care about sustainability.  That made me think that the way to do so was to make it intensely personal; to make it so that they perceive their own welfare is at stake much like the sailors would think their own welfare is at stake as a result of a potential radiation contamination; to make it experiential.  Now the question became how to do so.

Having worked for 6 years at a residential experiential environmental education field campus, I was familiar with the concepts of experiential education.  I considered that according to the Association for Experiential Education, in addition to other conditions, experiential education occurs when:

• carefully chosen experiences are supported by reflection, critical analysis and synthesis;
• experiences are structured to require learners to take initiative, make decisions and be accountable for results;
• learners are actively engaged in posing questions, investigating, experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative, and constructing meaning;
• learners are engaged intellectually, emotionally, socially, soulfully, and/or physically;
• the results of learning are personal and form the basis for future experience and learning;
• opportunities are nurtured for learners and educators to explore and examine their own values; and
• the educator’s primary roles include setting suitable experiences, posing problems, setting boundaries; supporting learners,…and facilitating the learning process. (http://www.aee.org/about/whatIsEE).

So, I thought long and hard about how I might achieve some of these conditions after all, I did not have the same situation as the commander of a nuclear powered submarine.  I wondered under what situation would a learner need to experience these conditions.  The light went off when I considered being on trial, not that I ever had been.  Still, I cannot image a more deeply personal experience than having to defend one’s self from prosecution for a crime.  I also considered that having to serve on a jury and determine the fate of an accused would also likely be a deeply experiential event.  I realized that structuring a course reasonably to resemble a trial in which the students were both the accused and the jury would likely involve achieving most, if not all, of the bulleted points above, thereby providing a truly unique experiential and motivational, perhaps even transformative, learning opportunity.

So, I began investigating aspects of the legal system for which I was not knowledgeable and learned that a criminal prosecution commonly begins with an indictment, which is “a formal written statement framed by a prosecuting authority and found by a jury…charging a person with an offense” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/indictment).  A subsequent step is the arraignment, which is commonly defined as a formal reading of a criminal complaint in the presence of the defendant to inform her/him of the charges against her/him, followed by the pre-trial and trial and the verdict/sentencing if appropriate.

Ever since its release, I’ve used the World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity in my teaching.  Written by the late Nobel Laureate Henry Kendall, the Warning was sent to nearly 2,000 of the most preeminent scientists in the world in 1992 for their endorsement.  Over 1,700 provided theirs.  Since the advent of the Internet, the substance of the pamphlet is now available at http://www.ucsusa.org/about/1992-world-scientists.html.

The folded pamphlet opens to an 11-inch by 17-inch document.  The introduction reads:

Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course.  Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources.  If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.  Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.

One particular sentence, Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources, seemed to me to read like an indictment. Clearly, the Warning is a formal written statement.  I considered the Union of Concerned Scientists the prosecuting authority and the more than 1,700 scientists that endorsed it the jury.  The “person” charged with the offense I considered as all human beings.  My thinking evolved to conclude that if I were to present this document in its entirety to students, that would constitute arraignment.  I decided that I would play the role of the prosecuting attorney, so I began to gather evidence to support the indictment that would be introduced during the course, which serves as a proxy for the trial.  I decided to present the materials based on what seemed to me as a logical progression that a prosecuting attorney might use.  I consulted a friend/colleague who is a practicing attorney to confirm that my thinking was appropriate and he did so.

On the first day of the course, before exposing the students either to the readings or the documentaries, I explain my intentions to them and I poll them to determine if they understand the idea of an indictment, arraignment, trial, etc.  For the seven times that I’ve offered this course, the students have unanimously embraced the idea of them being both the defendant and a member of the jury.

We explore the concept of burden of proof in the U.S. legal system and the difference between the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt (the standard in a criminal prosecution) and the standard of a preponderance of the evidence (the standard in a civil prosecution).

For the first unit of the course, I assembled a group of readings and a documentary that constitutes the arraignment.  In addition to the World Scientist’s Warning to Humanity, the readings include[i]:

• Hinrichsen, D. & Robey, B.  (2000).  Population and the environment: The global challenge, Population Reports, Series M, No. 15.  Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, Population Information Program.
• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.  (2005). Ecosystems and human well-being: Synthesis (pp. 1-24).  Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
• Steffen, W., Crutzen, P.J., and McNeill, J.R.  (2007).  The Anthropocene: Are humans now overwhelming the great forces of nature?  Ambio, 36(8), 614-621.
• The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment.  (2008).  The state of the nation’s ecosystems 2008 (pp. 13-27).  (Available online at http://www.heinzctr.org/Ecosystems.html).
• Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.  (2010).  Global biodiversity outlook 3 (pp. 5-7, 9-13, 89).  (Available online at http://www.cbd.int/gbo3/)
• WWF International, Institute of Zoology, & Global Footprint Network.  (2010).  Living planet report 2010: Biodiversity, biocapacity and development.  (Available online at http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/2010_lpr/)

Each of these readings clearly identifies how human actions have inflicted harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources.  The documentary is intended to provide a segue from the arraignment to what might constitute the pre-trial by starting with an effort to address the question “Does sustainability, or the lack of it, represent an indictment of human actions?”  In other words, is there just cause to proceed with a trial of the accused?  To explore this question, I show the students Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh and either the 174-minute, 2007 CNN special Planet in Peril or the 140-minute 2009 CNN special Planet in Peril: Battle Lines.

The assessments for all reading assignments are 10-item pencil and paper instruments I designed for each reading that include multiple choice, false/true, and short answer response items.   Three critical thinking questions for each reading are also assigned. The assessment for all documentaries has its origins in several of the techniques proposed by Angelo and Cross (1993).  I call it a reaction paper.  I ask the students to reflect in 1,000 words or less on how viewing the documentary affected their

• knowledge of the topic (addresses the cognitive domain);
• attitudes, opinions, beliefs, values, etc. regarding the topic (addresses the affective domain); and
• behavior regarding the topic (addresses the conative domain).

The writing assignment recognizes Shulman’s (1996) claim that “We do not learn from experience; we learn by thinking about our experience” (p. 208).  I explain this to my students and ask them to think about their experience of viewing the documentary when they compose their responses.  I also share with them the notion that “the point of…education is change; if there is no change, there is no point” (Van Mater, 1990, p. 19), and suggest to them that if they watch the documentary and cannot identify how their above domains have changed, then it is as they did not experience the viewing.  The documentaries and the readings have been carefully selected to illicit critical thinking and change.  I also strongly encourage them to consider the often-heard admonition: if you’re not part of the solution, you are the problem.  Lastly, I deliberately try to embrace the Chinese proverb: Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.  By embracing both written and electronic media and by requiring the students to serve as both the accused and a juror, I hope to tell, show, and involve them in their assessment of sustainability.

The second unit (the remaining units are considered to be analogous to the witness testimony phase of a trial) of the course is intended to address the question: Is sustainability a new paradigm?  I take this approach, as I explain to the students, because I think it is conceivable for a defense attorney to argue that her/his client is not guilty as charged because sustainability is so new that no one really knows what it is or what it means.  To explore the plausibility of this notion, I have them read

• Lemonick, M.D.  (2009).  Top 10 myths about sustainability.  Scientific American: Earth 3.0, Vol. 19.
• Raskin, P.D., Electris, C., & Rosen, R.A.  (2010).  The century ahead: Searching for sustainability.  Sustainability, 2, 2626-651.
• Warde, P.  (2011).  The invention of sustainability.  Modern Intellectual History, 8(1), pp. 153–170.
• Adams, W.M.  (2006).  The future of sustainability: Re-thinking environment and development in the twenty-first century.  Report of the IUCN Renowned Thinkers Meeting.  (Available online at http://www.scribd.com/doc/57189764/Future-of-Sustanability-The-World-Conservation-Union)
• Cairns, J., Jr.  (2007).  Sustainable co-evolution.  International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 14, 103-08.
• Orr, D.W.  (2006).  Framing sustainability.  Conservation Biology, 20(2), 265-268.
• Dernbach, J.C.  (2002).  Synthesis. In J.C. Dernbach (Ed.), Stumbling Toward Sustainability (pp. 1-8).  Washington, D.C.: Environmental Law Institute.

The documentaries we watch are Affluenza (56 minutes), Escape from Affluenza (56 minutes), and The End of Suburbia (78 minutes).

The third unit of the course is intended to address the question: What are the unique characteristics of Earth that have allowed life to evolve and to develop to the extent that it has?  This is background information about the concept of sustainability that further reinforces the information presented in the opening remarks of the trial.  Remembering that this experience is a university course and certain content must be provided, I suggest to the students that, so far as we know, Earth is the only celestial body on which life is found.  I suggest that we may be wrong about this, but, so far, that is what the evidence suggests.  So, Earth must be characterized by unique features not found anywhere or we would find life elsewhere.  I further opine that in order to understand fully sustainability, one must understand how it is possible for life to exist on Earth, much like a physician must fully understand the anatomy and physiology of the human body in order to understand both health and disease.  It is important to understand that the question is not how life came to exist on Earth; rather it is how life is sustained.  So, for students who have a religious belief regarding how life can to exist on Earth, the question remains the same because if they believe a creator put life on Earth, then it is logical to presume that the creator would have assured that life support systems existed prior to doing so.  For this unit, I have them read:

• Costanza, R., d’Arge, R., de Groot, R., Farber, S., Grasso, M., Hannon, B., et al.  (1997, 15 May).  The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital.  Nature, 387, 253-260.
• Daily, G.C., Alexander, S., Ehrlich, P., Goulder, L., Lubchenco, J., Matson, P.A., et al.  (1997).  Issues in ecology: Ecosystem services: Benefits supplied to human societies by natural ecosystems.  Washington, D.C.: Ecological Society of America.  (Available online at http://www.esa.org/science_resources/issues_ecology.php)
• Reid, W.V., Mooney, H.A., Cropper, A., Capistrano, D., Carpenter, S.R., Chopra, K., et al.  (2005).  How have ecosystems changed? In Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and human well-being: Synthesis (pp. 26-38). Washington, D.C.: Island Press.  (Available online at http://www.maweb.org/en/Synthesis.aspx)
• Reid, W.V., Mooney, H.A., Cropper, A., Capistrano, D., Carpenter, S.R., Chopra, K., et al.  (2005).  How have ecosystems services and their uses changed? In Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Ecosystems and human well-being: Synthesis (pp. 39-48). Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
• Hardin, G.  (1960, 29 April).  The competitive exclusion principle.  Science, 131, 1292-297.

The documentaries we watch come from the 13-part The Habitable Planet: A Systems Approach to Environmental Science series. The four 30-minute parts we watch are: Many Planets, One Earth; Atmosphere; Oceans; and Ecosystems.  We do not watch the other nine programs because they do not address the specific question of interest in this unit.  We also watch Dirt! The Movie (80 minutes), which addresses the ecological importance of soil.

The fourth unit of the course is intended to address the question: Why do humans behave in such maladaptive, unsustainable ways?  I think psychologists Michael Maloney and Michael Ward summarized the sustainability issue quite accurately, even though they did so before the word sustainability had become fully established in our vocabulary.  Back in 1972, they opined, “the ecological crisis [read sustainability crisis] is a crisis of maladaptive behavior… the solution lies with the sciences that deal with changing human behavior” (p. 583).  What I encourage my students to consider is that if the sustainability crisis is caused by inappropriate human behavior and because there is abundant evidence that human behavior can in fact be modified, perhaps if we understand the precise nature of the maladaptive behavior, we might be able to design behavior interventions that will promote adaptive and sustainable choices.  For this unit, I have them read:

• White, L., Jr.  (1967, 10 March).  The historical roots of our ecological crisis.  Science, 155, 1203-1207.
• Moncrief, L.W.  (1970, 30 October).  The cultural basis for our environmental crisis.  Science, 170, 508-512.
• Hardin, G.  (1968, 13 December).  The tragedy of the commons.  Science, 162, 1243-1248.
  • The Narcotizing Dysfunction, which is a one-page portion of Lazarsfeld, P.F. & Merton, R.K.  (1957).  Mass communication, popular taste and organized social action.  In B. Rosenberg & White, D.M. (Eds), Mass culture: The popular arts in America (pp. 457-473).  Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
  • Kollmus, A. & Agyeman, J.  (2002).  Mind the gap: Why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior?  Environmental Education Research, 8(3), 239-260.
  • Leiserowitz, A.A., Kates, R.W., & Parris, T.M.  (2005).  Do global attitudes and behaviors support sustainable development?  Environment, 47(9), 22-38.
  • Kordell, H.K.  (2008).  The latest on trends in nature-based outdoor education.  Forest History Today, 14(1), 4-10.

The documentary we watch is The Corporation.

The fifth unit of the course is intended to address the question, “What are the impacts of our actions?”  It is important for students to understand that if the majority of the scientific community is correct, human actions are degrading the life support system of the planet, but their understanding must be sophisticated and substantially more insightful than simple recognition of the obvious.  They must understand how human actions might be perturbing biogeochemical cycles, accelerating species extinctions, altering landscapes, etc.  They must also link impacts with behavior.  To do this, the assigned readings are:

• Díaz, S., Fargione, J., Chapin, F.S., III, & Tilman, D.  (2006).  Biodiversity loss threatens human well-being.  PLoS Biology, 4(8), 1300-1305.
• Cordell, D., Drangert, J-O, & White, S.  (2009).  The story of phosphorus: Global food security and food for thought.  Global Environmental Change, 19, 292-305.
• Vitousek, P., Aber, J., Howarth, R.W., Likens, G.E., Matson, P.A., Schindler, D.W., et al. (1997).  Issues in Ecology: Human alteration of the global nitrogen cycle: Causes and consequences..  Washington, D.C.: Ecological Society of America.  (Available online at http://www.esa.org/science_resources/issues_ecology.php)
• Vitousek, P.M., Mooney, H.A., Lubchenco, J., & Melillo, J.M.  (1997, 25 July).  Human domination of Earth’s ecosystems.  Science, 277, 494-499.
• Myers, N. & Kent, J.  (2003).  New consumers: The influence of affluence on the environment.  PNAS, 100(8), 4963-4968.
• Amundson, R., Guo, Y., & Gong, P.  (2003).  Soil diversity and land use in the United States.  Ecosystems, 6, 470-482.

The documentaries we watch are The Human Footprint (120 minutes), Power Surge (60 minutes) and The Light Bulb Conspiracy (75 minutes).

The final unit of the course addresses the question, “How do we correct our actions and embrace sustainability?”  It is vital that the students are able to propose solutions to the sustainability challenge.  These solutions must move beyond mere symbolism.  They must be measurable and they must be sustainable.  They will most likely require a substantial paradigm shift and out-of-the-box thinking.  The assigned readings are:

• Ridley, M. & Low, B.S.  (1993).  Can selfishness save the environment?  Atlantic Monthly, 272(3), 76-78.
• Ruckelshaus, W.D.  (1989).  Toward a sustainable world.  Scientific American, 261(3), 166-174.
• van den Bergh, J.C.J.M  (2007).  Abolishing GDP.  Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper.  (Available online at http://ssrn.com/abstract=962343)
• Owen, D.  (2010, 20 & 27 December).  The efficiency dilemma.  The New Yorker, 86(41), 78-85.
• Harriss, R. & Shui, B.  (2010, November/December).  Consumption, not CO₂ emissions: Reframing perspectives on climate change and sustainability.  Environment, 52(6), 8-15.
• Despommier, D.  (2009, November).  The rise of vertical farms.  Scientific American, 301(5), 80-87.
• Union of Concerned Scientists.  (2009).  Climate 2030: A national blueprint for a clean energy economy, Executive Summary.  Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists.  (Available online at www.ucsusa.org/blueprint)
• Friedman, T.L.  (2007, 15 April).  The power of green.  New York Times Magazine, 40-51, 67, 71-72.

The documentary we watch is Architecture to Zucchini (120 minutes in segments).

Throughout the semester, at the beginning of each class meeting, I ask the students to state the indictment.  I provide a recap of the evidence presented to date.  At the start of each unit, we discuss each of the readings and examine them in a manner that we believe is consistent with how a jury would consider evidence.

On the final meeting of the course, I poll the students for their verdict.  Without exception, every time I have taught the course, the verdict has been unanimous: guilty.  The final meeting is reserved for discussing the implications of such a verdict and a recommendation for sentencing.

In addition to having to render a verdict, I encourage the students to reflect upon their reactions to what they’ve read and viewed.  I remind them that thinking about their experiences is vital.  I encourage them to consider the suggestion: if it is to be, it is up to me.  This is important, because there is abundant evidence that the psychological construct locus of control of reinforcement, particularly an internal perceived expectancy for reinforcement, which would be representative of a person who believes it is up to me, is linked to the adoption of and perhaps sustained performance of behaviors representative of sustainability.  If they have encountered any piece of information that they find undesirable or uncomfortable, then I suggest to them that they have the option to change it.  To extend the idea presented earlier that the point of education is change, there are two types of change associated with education: the change the student experiences directly regarding her/his affective, cognitive, conative domains and the societal change that the student instigates as a result of her/his education.

References

Angelo, T.A. & Cross, K.P.  (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers, 2^nd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Blewitt, J. (2004). Introduction. In J. Blewitt & C. Cullingford (Eds.), The sustainability curriculum: The challenge for higher education (pp. 1-9). London: Earthscan.

Maloney, M. & Ward, M. (1973). Ecology: Let’s hear from the people. American Psychologist, 28, 583-586.

Shulman, L.S. (1996). Just in case: Reflections on learning from experience. In J.A. Colbert, P. Desberg, & K. Trimble (Eds.), The case for education: Contemporary approaches for using case methods (pp. 197-217).  Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

The Essex Report: Workshop on the Principles of Sustainability in Higher Education.  (1995).  Retrieved from http://www.secondnature.org/history/writings/articles/essex_report.htm

Van Matre, S. (1990). Earth education…A new beginning. Greenville, WV: The Institute for Earth Education.

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PDF: Moscovici Spring 2013

Abstract: The field study (or short-term study abroad) creates a successful hybrid of study abroad and field research. These short-term educational adventures (edu-ventures) give environmental or sustainability students opportunities to gain practical knowledge while traveling domestically or overseas. In addition, it presents the opportunity for both faculty and students to extend the traditional Boyer model of scholarship, a reputable professoriate model, by developing continuity. The field study fulfills the four pedagogical goals of the Boyer model: creating research opportunities (discovery); breaking down the silos of traditional academic departments (integration); acting as consultants on-site (application); and educating students beyond the faculty members’ expertise (teaching). In addition,

these field studies fulfill a fifth goal: building relationships and transgressing time (continuity). The development of this Boyer Plus model from a field-study experience serves as a tremendous tool for colleges, universities and professors to build the opportunities and necessary pedagogical skills for both traditional and non-traditional students.

Keywords: Pedagogy; field study; study abroad; sustainability ed 

Colleges and universities across the world strive to develop new curricula, attract diverse students, and further refine the role of higher education, especially with respect to sustainability and the environment. Two archetypes, the Boyer pedagogical model and study abroad education, while very different, can be combined and refined to develop successful experiential education. A variety of research exists which demonstrates the benefits of the Boyer model of scholarship, as well as the advantages of study abroad education. Little has been documented, however, regarding the relationship between the academic model and the study abroad experience, particularly shorter term programs. The lens of this research seeks to fill this gap by focusing specifically on courses with short-term embedded education opportunities.

The successful development and completion of a field study (also known as embedded, short-term study abroad, edu-venture) course allows faculty to convey and students to fulfill the academic contract of the Boyer pedagogical goals (discovery, integration, applic

ation, and teaching). Traveling to a specific site utilizing the field-study model transcen

ds the traditional Boyer paradigm to a Boyer Plus exemplar.

A Case for Short-Term Field Studies

Field research can allow students to focus on scientific analyses of specific locations or subjects, sometimes as a lab component to a regular class. Alternatively, traditional study abroad programs provide opportunities for students to spend one or two semesters taking courses at global institutions, to experience new cultures and often to travel widely. There has been a 232% increase in study abroad from 1985-2002, however the amount of time a student goes abroad is decreasing (Institute of International Education, 2011). The short term study abroad (eight weeks or less), in 2010, accounted for 56.6% of all US study abroad. Some continue to posit that there are greater benefits from the longer periods of studying abroad (Institute of International Education, 2011; Dwyer, 2004).

However there has been little consideration given to students who often do not have the flexibility to move for a semester or more.  The field study (or short-term study abroad), creates a successful hybrid of study abroad and field research, and will often be the best choice for students who seek to gain the experiential benefits of out-of-classroom experiences.

The short-term study abroad program does not have the same problems as semesters or more away.  Obligations such as, jobs, sports, family commitments, sometimes other classes, and finances often prevent students from participating (Paus, 2008; Pappano, 2007). Short-term study abroad alleviates some of these concerns as most students can be absent from short-term academic requirements with notice, take a week of vacation from work, forego a few days of extra-curricular events, or make arrangement for family care for approximately one five-day work week period.[i]   In addition, even though a fee is usually added to the course, it is smaller than a traditional semester abroad. Students can more easily save or find funding for the out of classroom experience. This flexibility is resulting in a greater demand for these types of programs.

In 2004 to 2005, the proportion of total U.S. students participating in a short-term study abroad program quadrupled from 1.7% to 8% (Institute for International Education, 2006). Given that more than half of all enrolled undergraduate students in the United States are non-traditional (Coulter, 2012); building, marketing and capitalizing on these attractive field study courses is essential. A well planned, more intensive and focused experience can leave students with a holistic understanding of the issues surrounding the course material as well as their personal and academic growth. The course fulfills the goals of learning through the Boyer model and adds a unique personal element.

Application of the Boyer Model

Boyer proposed an in-depth representation of scholarship that balances four subsets of academia: discovery, integration, application and teaching (Boyer, 1990). His breakthroughs in pedagogy have justified a variety of academic techniques, including the cooperative extension and service learning as an important and relevant form of scholarship (Campbell, 1999). Building on these niches, short term field studies embedded in truncated course semesters is the newest opportunity for students to have hands on educational experiences and overcome new academic challenges of getting students interested and focused on the material.

While developed in the early 1990s, the Boyer model still remains relevant, necessary and essential for all colleges and universities. We should not discard the important principles guiding our academic system. However, moving beyond Boyer’s ideas, implementing the model, and integrating the philosophies into the institutional fabric have been more difficult than anticipated. The pedagogical goals must be more deeply considered, analyzed, and implemented at the college, university, and national level of education (Johnston, 1998). It requires cohesive support and leadership by both faculty and staff—in short, institutionalization. Professors and administrators must continually reinforce communication, remain agreeable to inputs and constantly reinforce the changes (Diamond, 2005). These modifications then require a redefinition of faculty expectations and representative alterations in how they are evaluated and then rewarded (Nibert, 2006).

In this new short-term study abroad model, faculty and students perform first-hand research. Travel groups are often diverse and interdisciplinary as they study issues and transcend academic departmental boundaries. Meetings with government officials, business executives, everyday citizens and generally underrepresented stakeholders facilitate the opportunity for students to have a hands-on approach to the material. Also, during the travel portion students can transition what they learned in class to first-hand knowledge, and develop specificity and expertise in their research endeavors (Long et. al, 2008). In the end, students can go beyond what the professor knows and develop a deeper network of educational sources than found in a traditional college classroom environment.

The field studies fulfill the four pedagogical goals of the Boyer model by: creating research opportunities (discovery); breaking down the silos of traditional academic departments (integration); acting as consultants in the field (application); and educating students beyond the faculty members’ expertise (teaching). In addition, these field studies fulfill a fifth goal: building relationships and transgressing time (continuity). The development of this Boyer Plus model from field-study courses serves as a tremendous tool for professors, colleges, and universities to build the necessary bridges between pedagogy and environmental practice for all students.

Boyer Plus

Where does the field study fit into the university model? The techniques, methodologies, and processes are so diverse across colleges or universities and fields of study that there has been little written about their theory or application. The Boyer method has been chosen as the pedagogical framework for transferring the benefits of the field study from an academic tool to applied learning. These studies lend themselves to understanding diverse environments far from the campus.    When applied to an environmental field problem and when the travel component occurs after a semester worth of learning on  specific subject matter, students can have a comprehensive sustainable understanding of the issues, the places, the people and the complexities. While away, students meet with stakeholders, tour natural environments, receive presentations from experts, and live and breathe the issues and culture all day. When faced with real complexities of sustainability problems, students must think and research more deeply. This experience, if properly repatriated into the student’s lives, can lead to greater impact on themselves, their families, peers, careers and the local community.

Student learning moves beyond class discussion, words in a text book,  or images on a slide and takes form in front of all of their senses. The class experiences heightened sense of discovery each day in new places. They integrate complex topics with background material on the ground. They apply this knowledge by researching on-site and acting as consultants in the field. It is important that the professor and student present themselves as there to learn, local communities should not feel patronized or colonized, rather informed and partnered. Students experience advanced teaching methodologies not only from their professor but from local experts, people affected and from those who normally would not be invited into a classroom. Having these stakeholders available to students is a critical connection. Furthermore, depending on the nature of the course material, working in the natural environment can have greater health benefits and spark new interests which were not part of the course objectives. For example, a course focused on international rainforest management can lead to a variety of unintended subtopics, including, agriculture, habitat, water management, grazing, entomology, indigenous anthropology, energy, biology and many more.  Complex problems are often multi-disciplinary.

Finally, this learning technique moves beyond the Boyer model and offers a form of continuity. Students returning year after year can build on previous research from their predecessors. Contacts and observations made during the field study can turn into independent studies, research projects, or develop volunteer opportunities locally. Furthermore, faculty continues to engage and network new connections, have opportunity to develop financial resources, and create or strengthen research opportunities at the destination, as they continue to grow at the pre-tenure and post-tenure levels (Moseley, 2009). The achievement of the field study is found in the strength of the pedagogy and the successful transition from learning to research for both students and faculty.

Conclusion

There is a unique opportunity for staff and faculty in environmental and sustainability programs to encourage and develop short-term study abroad programs. Often, these programs are managed in-house, can be international or domestic, and have the potential to heighten learning for the traditional and non-traditional students. Building upon the essential pedagogical objectives developed by Boyer – discovery, integration, application and teaching – the field-study course has the opportunity to achieve a fifth goal of continuity.

As we move to a globalized and sustainable educational model at most of our institutions of higher learning, it is important that we continue to seek experiential opportunities for students. Global careers are changing and our techniques must prepare students for these complexities (Norris, 2009). In conclusion, education and pedagogy are in a state of change. Field-study courses not only teach students about complex topics, but also introduce them to potential professions, prepare them for graduate recruitment and develop an interest in scholarship and research (Yin, 2006). We must be poised to train existing and future leaders with new methodologies that can propel them to address the multidisciplinary issues of the future.

References

Boyer, Ernest L. (1990) Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass). 147pgs.

Campbell, Gerald R. (1991). “Scholarship Reconsidered: Tools of the Trade” Journal of Extension. Vol. 29, No. 4, Winter 1991.

Coulter, Xenia and Alan Mandell. (2012). “Adult Higher Education: Are We Moving in the Wrong Direction?” The Journal of Continuing Higher Education. Vol. 60. No. 1. pp. 40-42.

Diamond, Robert. (2005). “Scholarship Reconsidered: Barriers to Change” in O’Meara & Rice Faculty Priorities Reconsidered: Rewarding Multiple Forms of Scholarship. (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass).

Dwyer, Mary. (2004). “More is Better: The Impact of Study Abroad Program Duration” Frontiers Journal. Vol. 10. pp. 151-163.

Institute of International Education. (2006). Study abroad: Duration – selected years. Retrieved September 16, 2009, from http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/?p89222

Institute of International Education (2011). Open doors: Report on international education exchange. New York, NY.

Johnston, Rita. (1998). “The University of the Future: Boyer revisited” Higher Education. Vol. 36, No. 3. pp. 253-272.

Long, Susan Orpett and Yemi Susan Akande, R.W. Purdy, Keiko Nakano. (2008). “Deeping Learning and Inspiring Rigor: Bridging Academic and Experiential Learning Using a Host Country Approach to a Study Tour” Journal of Studies in International Education. Vol. 0. 21pgs.

Moseley, William. (2009). “Making Study Abroad a Winning Proposition for Pre-Tenure Faculty” Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad. Vol. XVIII.

Nibert, Marta. (1996). “Boyer’s Model of Scholarship” Pacific Crest Faculty Development Series. 9.4.06 from: http://www.webs1.uidaho.edu/mkyte/ui_strategic_plan_implementation/resources/Boyer%20module%20Pacific%20Crest%20recd%209.4.06.pdf

Norris, Mohajeri and Joan Gillespie. (2009). “How Study Abroad Shapes Global Careers: Evidence from the United States” Journal of Studies in International Education. Vol. 13, No. 3. pp. 382 – 397.

Pappano, Lara. (2007). “A semester in Ghana: $4,725. A year in Beijing: $35,150. Experience Abroad: Priceless? New York Times. Education Life. Nov. 4, 30-36.

Paus, Eva and Michael Robinson. (2008). “Increasing Study Abroad Participation: The Faculty Makes the Difference.” Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad. Vol. XVII. Fall. pp. 33-49.

Yin, Runsheng. (2006). “Preparing Resource and Environmental Managers with International Understanding and Merits (PREMIUM): Introducing a Research Experience for Undergraduates Program” Journal of Forestry. Vol. 104, No. 6. Sept. 2006. pp. 320-323

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Ryan King:PDF

Abstract:  The Ashland Apiary Project is a multi-pronged, multi-aged learning design that uses beekeeping as a thematic avenue for hands-on experiential learning and the cultivation of land stewardship. The project is a student-led, collaborative effort by Southern Oregon University to establish an on-campus apiary that serves as a model of place-based and community-based education for a wide audience of students in an elementary, secondary, and collegiate setting. Through the Ashland Apiary Project, the pedagogic approach of “apiary-based learning” is considered in the field of sustainability education.

Keywords: Apiary-based education; beekeeping; experiential learning; place-based education; school gardens; sustainable agriculture; project-based learning

Over the course of my graduate studies, the following set of seemingly random facts crossed my path:

• It is estimated that one third of the human food supply depends on insect pollination, most of which is accomplished by honeybees.
• Since 2006, these same bees are experiencing a rate of attrition alleged to have reached new proportions.
• Annual state spending on standardized tests increased 160% following the passage of NCLB in 2002.
• Nearly one in 10 American children today now receives an ADHD diagnosis.
• Roughly 70 percent more food production will be required by 2050 to meet a growing world population.
• For every one farmer under the age of 25, there are five who are 75 or older.

These facts only appear to be random.  In reality, they are not random at all but part of a larger pattern that includes titanic agroindustry and overpopulation, a stuffy indoor school curriculum and proliferating standards, cosmetic policies and divided policymakers, and place detachment.  How we see and think about these things as disconnected entities only perpetuate a mindset of industrializing rather than sustaining the earth.  Before us lies the challenge to find solutions to impending cultural shifts.  Some of these shifts will include a fundamental reorientation of how we grow food and strengthen local food networks, a radical redesign of our built systems to conserve resources and increase biodiversity, and a renovated model of education to prepare the next generation for climate change.  One possible model for such a shift revisits the age-old practice of keeping bees.

The Ashland Apiary Project

The Ashland Apiary Project was conceived as a tool to compress some of the issues of sustainability to a manageable scale.  Southern Oregon University (SOU), a public liberal arts college located in Ashland Oregon, provided a launch pad for the Ashland Apiary Project to take flight.  On the wings of strong partnerships and a crescendo of student interest, three beehives, managed by university students under the mentorship of Sarah Red-Laird, a local beekeeper who runs a nonprofit organization called BeeGirl (www.beegirl.org), were installed adjacent to the campus community garden.  The Ashland Apiary Project pivots on intertwined environmental and educational goals.  At the core of this project is a multi-pronged, multi-aged learning experience that uses beekeeping as a thematic avenue for dynamic hands-on education and the cultivation of land stewardship.

Beekeeping as Pedagogy:  Educational Goals

David Sobel (2004) describes how environmental education might be locally reconceived through a blend of school, environment, and community.  This place-based approach grants a way to engage young people in local actions that restore the health of local social and natural systems.  According to Smith (1992), instead of physically separating children from the natural world, “educators must strive to create learning experiences that break beyond the boundaries of the classroom and root themselves in the broader environment.”

Beekeeping is the delivery model of transdisciplinary learning for a wide audience of students in the elementary, secondary, and collegiate settings. The term “apiary-based education” parallels the theory and practice of garden-based education; both utilize a concrete metaphor to create and enhance curriculum.  In theory, the Ashland Apiary Project promotes “apiary-based education” as a pedagogical tool for experiential learning. In practice, just like school gardens, the Ashland Apiary Project provides opportunities for students to put their academic learning to practical use.

A TransdiscipLinary model of Apiary-Based Education:

The Ashland Apiary Project is comprised of the following educational goals:

• Creating a curriculum framework for both K-12 and post-secondary to infuse courses with experiential learning concepts embedded in apiary studies;
• Awakening a new generation of adept workers in the field of conservation biology and sustainable agriculture; and,
• Offering scientific research opportunities for SOU undergraduate and graduate students in related subject areas, such as entomology, conservation biology, microbiology, environmental science, and botany, to name a few.

Beekeeping as Ecology:  Environmental Goals

Most U.S. farmers rely on a single managed pollinator, Apis mellifera, a species that is experiencing declines in number due to a collection of factors, including habitat fragmentation, monocultures (resulting in poor nutrition), the loss of native flora, and pesticide use (National Research Council 2003). Habitat degradation that eliminates or reduces pollinator populations disrupts communities, and in extreme cases reduces or eliminates key ecosystem processes.  It is of no surprise, then, that the success of crop pollination services provided by honeybees will be most influenced by the ability of human societies to embrace efforts to conserve habitat.

Located in a bioregion of incredible biodiversity, SOU provides a nutritious loam to promote the health of honeybee colonies, the integrity of the practice of beekeeping, and the pollination services provided by honeybees to local agriculture and food networks.  In this vein, the Ashland Apiary Project supports the protection, conservation, and restoration of natural systems upon which our welfare ultimately depends.

The Ashland Apiary Project is comprised of the following environmental goals:

• Exploring causes and consequences of, as well as responses to, declining honeybee populations;
• Empowering young and old citizens to restore fragmented and damaged habitat with native flora for pollinators; and,
• Inspiring ecologically sustainable practices on school campuses and within the community.

Catching the Buzz:  A Model for Experiential Education

Just as a bee colony operates as a “superorganism”, the Ashland Apiary Project is a joint effort by many ‘worker bees’ to advance the educational and environmental goals of the project.  The project fosters a place-based and experiential learning design that uses beekeeping as the epicenter of multi-tiered social and environmental change in diverse settings.

Similar to light refracted through a crystal, the outcomes of the Ashland Apiary Project will look different from different vantage points.  To elementary students, they may participate in summer workshops taught by university students to study bee biology and plant-pollinator interactions.  To high school students, they may contribute as valuable members in the SOU Beekeeping Club, collaborating with university students and securing post-secondary scholarships.  To faculty, they may offer accredited agroscience and research courses using beekeeping as one lens of study. To community members, they may enroll in master beekeeping programs hosted at the SOU apiary to learn the principles and trade of apiculture.  To teachers, they may support the establishment of an on-campus apiary adjacent to an existing or new school garden.  To school district officials, when crafting policy, they may link best instructional practices with the value of experiential learning.  A growing body of academic research supports the use of experiential learning in schools as a way to engage students, cut absenteeism, boost cooperative learning skills, and improve test scores.  Findings from the Place-based Education Evaluation Collaborative reiterates the positive effect that situating learning in authentic contexts can have on student motivation, engagement, and self-efficacy (Billig et al., 2005).

A truly sustainable culture is uniquely informed by the local climate, geography, and ecosystems that are connected to that culture (Orr, 1992).  In order to learn to live in such a way that these intricate natural systems are not compromised for future generations, we must develop a deep awareness and understanding of these systems and how human activities affect them.  Rather than taking each system, whether it be human or natural, and studying it in isolation from the others, the Ashland Apiary Project connects these systems through the exciting hands-on experience of beekeeping.

Speak to any beekeeper and you will find a deep appreciation between these tiny pollinators and their kindred guardian.  Honeybees pollinate the seeds of our imagination, carrying with them mysteries and wonders digestible only through hands-on immersion.  In other words, to understand the vast interconnectedness of our living world, we only need to drink from the sweet teachings of honeybees.  Apiary-based learning provides attachment points for the acquisition of new skills and transformational experiences for all who participate.

The buzz is audible.

References:

Billig, S., Root, S., & Jesse, D. 2005. The impact of participation in service-learning on high school students’ civic engagement.  Denver, CO:  RMC Research Corporation.

National Research Council. 2003. Chapter 3- Causes of Pollinator Declines and Potential

Threats. Status of Pollinators in North America. National Academies Press.

Orr, D. W. 1992.  Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Smith, G. 1992. Education and the Environment: Learning to Live with Limits. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 15, pg. 95.

Sobel, D. 2004. Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms and Communities. Great Barrington, MA: Orion Society.

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Whales (hval)

• Baleen
• Minke Whales (minkehval) Migrate between Azores & Svaldbard, actively hunted by Norwegians
• Sei Whale (seihval)
• Fin Whale (fin hval): Second largest whale in the world.  Norwegians invented the exploding harpoon to hunt these whales.
• Blue Whales (blåhval) haven’t been seen in Nowegian waters since the 1960’s.
• Sperm Whales (spermsetthval)
• Humpbacked Whales (knolhval) N. of Ålesund
• Toothed Whales
• Killer Whales (spekkhogger)
• ·Pilot Whale (grindhval)
• Belugas (hvithval) Arctic, Barents Sea
• Narwhale (Narhval) Arctic, Barents Sea
• Dolphins (delfin) Bottle Nose, White-beaked, White sided, Common

D.  Fish: Extensive varieties that provide an important part of Norway’s economy.

Salt Water

• Cod (torsk)
• Sprat (brisling)
• Haddock (kolje)
• Mackeral (makrell)
• Capelin (lodde)
• Sandeel (stersil)
• Ling (lange)
• Ocean Perch (uer)
• Pollock (sei)

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PDF: Kelly&WilliamsJSESpring2013

Teacher Professional Learning Communities for Sustainability:

Supporting STEM in Learning Gardens in Low-Income Schools

Sybil S. Kelley

Portland State University

Dilafruz R. Williams

Portland State University

Abstract: In order to address the ecological and social problems of sustainability in our modern times, citizens need to be empowered with an understanding of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts and practices. Furthermore, STEM must be democratized and taught in life-giving and life-sustaining ways that include all students instead of the small fraction of “high achievers” and limited to the “potential” scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. At present, K-12 students and their teachers rarely have the opportunity to learn beyond their concrete school walls and to reconnect with nature, exacerbating their disconnection of STEM from real life and hence sustainability. We believe that engagement with school grounds and gardens and the very soils on which learning takes place can provide simple yet authentic day-to-day educational experiences that can bring mindfulness of lessons related to the cycles of life and death and to the interplay of justice and power in our communities. To transform teaching and learning in the classroom, teachers need different learning experiences that provide them with the time, space, and appropriate supports to translate their learning into teaching practice making education relevant to life. School gardens provide a rich context for learning both for teachers and students by embracing experiential, integrated, and collaborative learning. This study highlights an example of a summer program that involved teachers in hands-on education related to STEM in the learning gardens at four low-income schools in southeast Portland representing the growing ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity of the districts in the metropolitan area. Teacher voices capture the essence of learning STEM in the learning gardens, and also address issues of social and environmental justice.

Keywords: Learning gardens, professional learning community, STEM, low-income schools, teacher education, educational justice

Sustainability… cannot be simply a ‘green’ or ‘environmental’ concern, important though ‘environmental’ aspects of sustainability are.  A truly sustainable society is one where wider questions of social needs and welfare and economic opportunity are integrally related to environmental limits imposed by supporting ecosystems.

Agyeman, Bullard, & Evans (2002, 78)

Three recent trends provide context for this project: (1) National interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) with efforts to enhance K-16 education in these subjects as proposed by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST, 2010; NRC, 2012) among others; (2) Disproportionate under-representation of racial and ethnic minorities in STEM-related careers (Museus et al., 2011); and (3) Sustainability imperatives and related STEM concerns given the increasingly complex environmental issues confronting the present and future generations (Williams & Brown, 2012). Unprecedented global environmental and social problems of our modern times require literacy in STEM. For instance, the realities of climate change, clean water shortage, air pollution, food insecurity, perpetuation of a monoculture across the globe, and increasing rates of obesity and diabetes among children and youth, are intensifying social injustices everywhere. As Agyeman et al. (2002) point out, environmental concerns are intricately woven with social and economic concerns. Sustainability, thus, has a broader domain where power and privilege also must be attended to.

An important component of the renewed emphasis on STEM is concern for the participation of populations who are typically under-represented in STEM fields. Achievement gaps continue to exist for ethnic and racial minorities. While some progress has been made to increase STEM literacy in the past four years, achievement gaps in Science between minority and low-income students and their white, middle-class peers are persistent and significant (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2012).  According to the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), there was a 35 point difference in assessment scores between black and white students, with only 32 percent of black students at or above the proficient level (NCES, 2012). In 2000, approximately 6% of all white 24 year olds held a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field compared to just under 3% of those 24 year olds who were black or Hispanic (Museus et al., 2011).

If we wish to seriously address equity and close the achievement gap, then we also need to focus on excellence in teaching and simultaneously address preparation of the next generation of students for knowledge, skills, and attitude to live sustainably (Sterling, 2001). Outstanding teachers are essential in high-poverty and high-minority schools. Unfortunately, such high-needs schools employ a disproportionate number of inexperienced and under qualified teachers compared with schools serving other students (Kelley, 2009; Penske & Haycock, 2006). Notwithstanding evidence that new teachers require several years of classroom experience to reach their full potential, high-poverty and high-minority schools are twice as likely to have new teachers as are more affluent schools (Penske & Haycock, 2006). Teachers’ needs in under-privileged and inner-city schools require attention, especially since their students are more vulnerable to problems impacting their health and neighborhood environments.

Professional Learning Communities for Teachers:

Engaging in Experiential Learning

What is critical to advancing STEM education in ways that also address sustainability and attend to the education of low-income, ethnic and racial minority students is to provide teachers with opportunities to engage with issues of sustainability and STEM in simple yet profound ways. While there is not a dearth of approaches, resources, and recent funding to advance STEM in our schools including designing sophisticated laboratories and advanced technologies to engage students, we take a rather non-traditional approach: actually engaging teachers with the school grounds and dirt right outside their classrooms thereby interrogating the very soils on which the enterprise of teaching is conducted. Bringing mindfulness to the teaching enterprise, our intention is to help educators and students understand ways that they can engage themselves and their students in simple, down-to-earth teaching and learning through the learning gardens and foster wonder and curiosity (Opdal, 2001). Mueller (2011) persuasively uses the metaphor of “leaving the classroom” in order to bring “ecojustice perspectives in science education and the ways that a dialogical conversation addressed the world rather than focusing narrowly on science education” (p. 351). In low income schools, often with large percentages of linguistically and racially diverse student populations, the living soil of learning gardens provides connections to life and hence to life-giving education for children and youth (Williams & Brown, 2012). One does not have to go far when leaving the classroom.

Yet, to improve teaching and learning in STEM, teachers need support as learners so they can provide the educational experiences their students deserve. Therefore, teacher preparation and their continuing professional development need to incorporate time for teachers to learn content and to apply their new understandings into curricular plans. Teachers need to be active participants in their learning as they develop knowledge, skills, and dispositions related to students, learning, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment (Marx et al., 2004). By providing relevant and meaningful learning experiences teachers can develop competencies in STEM with particular focus on sustainability. An important aspect of this process involves time and structure for reflection (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Lambert & McCombs, 1998; Marzano, 1992).

In STEM and sustainability education, inquiry-based, project-based, experiential, place-based (Smith & Sobel, 2010), and interdisciplinary learning (Brand & Triplett, 2012) approaches align with what is known about how students learn, and can provide opportunities to engage students who are often marginalized in more traditional models of education. Experiential education, championed by John Dewey (1912) over a century ago, is a philosophy where educators purposely engage learners in direct experience. However, reflection is an important component of learning from experience in order for students to be able to not only increase knowledge but also develop skills and clarify values (Collier & Williams, 2005). Kellert (2005) proposes direct experience with nature for children and youth who are increasingly distanced from natural environments and rooted within concrete structures and walls of schools. There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that experiences associated with unstructured activity and play in a natural setting positively influence environmental behaviors and beliefs later in life (Chawla, 1988; Lekies & Sheavly, 2007; Louv, 2005). This manner of the child experiencing the world around her helps her to form ideas and perceptions of how the natural world works and helps to create bonds that are meaningful over time. Kellert (2005), in describing the lack of “natural” experiences in today’s children, says:

Children today too often confront a contrived, artificial nature in place of an actual, ordinary experience. Confronting nature as fantasy creatures in story and film or as herds of exotic wildlife on television may be entertaining and sometimes instructive, but it can never adequately substitute for direct and real contact. The contrived experience of nature rarely provokes in children strong and lasting emotional responses, such as wonder, joy, surprise, challenge, and discovery. (p.74)

In keeping with these sentiments, numerous examples of project-based science programs, aligned with national science standards, have shown positive impacts on students, including addressing the achievement gap between white students and their low-income and minority peers (e.g. Marx et al., 2004; Schneider, Krajcik, Marx, & Soloway, 2002). In many cases, particularly at the elementary level where teachers do not often have strong grounding in STEM disciplines, teachers have benefited from support in developing pedagogical content knowledge and improving their teaching practices related to STEM (Schneider et al., 2002).

Teaching STEM in the Learning Gardens:

Theory to Practice

               To address the needs for increasing teacher confidence (Gunning & Mensah, 2011) in STEM fields we offered courses in the summer of 2012. Our intention was to provide hands-on experiences in the learning gardens at schools in low-income communities by having teachers actually engage with students enrolled in a summer program through Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN, 2013). SUN schools in Multnomah county are full-service neighborhood hubs where the school and partners across the community come together to provide holistic support to families and their children for success.

Why Learning Gardens?

Since the early 1990s, school grounds that were previously covered with asphalt or grass are instead increasingly becoming sites for growing school gardens. Thousands of school gardens have sprouted across rural and urban areas in the United States of America, with newly   designed garden curricula being aligned with subject standards (Blair, 2009; Ozer, 2006; Williams & Dixon, 2013). First Lady Michelle Obama (2012) has further validated the school garden movement by joining children from local public schools in planting and harvesting organic vegetables at the White House. Moreover, garden-based learning is at the convergence of two overlapping and significant strands of public concern:

(a)   Obesity, Health, and Food Insecurity: There is heightened interest in teaching students how to grow food, and school grounds are considered prime places for local food production and garden-based learning. The following trends give a sense of urgency to this interest: all-time high childhood obesity rates; waves of salmonella, E. Coli and other bacterial outbreaks related to industrial agricultural processes and practices; and increase in Type II diabetes among children (Azuma & Fisher, 2001; Ozer, 2006; Vivian, Carrel, & Becker, 2011;  Williams & Dixon, 2013).

(b)  No Child Left Inside Coalition: Louv’s (2005) best seller Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder has spurred the formation of a large national Children and Nature Network (2009) with a sense of urgency to offer children outdoor spaces to play and experience nature. As an antidote to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, seen as narrowly defining curriculum and restricting children, a No Child Left Inside Coalition (2009) has emerged. School gardens are seen as common denominators for children to gain “outdoor” learning experiences on school grounds.

Given these trends and the national interest in gardens at school sites, the school garden movement and garden-based learning continue to gain legitimacy. 

Course Overview

In the summer of 2012, we offered two interrelated STEM courses entitled Theory to Practice in School Gardens and Connect to Science through Learning Gardens to teachers in the Portland metropolitan area, most of whom were from the Portland Public School (PPS) District, along with coordinators of the SUN program in PPS (See Appendix A for content, readings, and objectives). Thirty teachers and educators of the SUN program from various contexts and in various stages of professional development (in-service teachers, pre-service teachers, extended-day/SUN school teachers, informal science educators, etc.) joined forces to put research-based science education into practice. Each day, educators worked with K-8 students at one of four partnering SUN schools in outer southeast Portland (Lane, Kelly, Lent, or Woodmere schools), collaboratively enacting a co-designed STEM program at the school’s garden. The garden-based STEM program provided teachers and community-based educators with the opportunity to implement a standards and place-based curriculum that incorporated the effective use of formative assessments, and hands-on, inquiry-based activities with elementary students, all in the fun and engaging context of a summer garden program. Utilizing the garden as a context for teaching and learning, this summer program provided the foundation for aligning learning and enrichment activities across the regular school day and the extended-SUN school program.

Teacher Reflections, Teacher Voices:

Teaching and Learning in a Garden-Based Context

            Two intensive weeks of the course were spent working with the educational team at each of the four sites, and getting to know the students enrolled in the summer garden program. Teachers met in the afternoon as a larger class to develop curriculum and authentic assessments. We asked the teachers to reflect on their experiences and address several questions that also included the following: (1) What have you learned about teaching and learning in a garden-based context?; and (2) How has working with a team of educators shaped your experience? We have clustered their responses in three broad categories below. We have deliberately chosen to use extensive quotes without further comments for each of the three categories in order to honor the teachers’ understandings and voices. In the final section, Conclusion, we capture the essence of what emerges in the teachers’ voices.

(a)  Experiential and Engaged Learning: Embracing Practical Experience

Teachers clearly expressed how the opportunity to learn through hands-on experiences in the gardens, both as teachers and learners, profoundly impacted their confidence and sense of self-efficacy using the gardens as a context for STEM education. Furthermore, teachers shared their observations of how engaged students were as they investigated the gardens, dug in the dirt, and made sense of their explorations.

I am surprised at how easily students are engaged in the garden—the first day we gave students trowels and they dug for 45 minutes straight! I shouldn’t be surprised—I have been an educator for seven years—but it was just so simple. They were so happy to use their hands, to find bugs, to dig up rocks…It is a shame we keep them sequestered to a desk for so much of their educational experience when we could take them 15 feet outside of our classrooms and let them learn in the schoolyard! (Sandy)

Teaching is downright fun when the subject matter is engaging. That little point can get lost in the onslaught of curriculum standards and time constraints. (Jason).

I was most struck by how engaged the children have been in the garden. I was surprised the first day by how long the students spent happily digging in the dirt. I was also surprised that some of the students had great knowledge about soil already from the SUN after-school program. It was great to see students excitedly discussing soil and insects with each other. One group was discussing what would happen to a worm if it were cut in half. Another group was debating if a spider was a bug, arachnid, or both. (Gwen).

Figure 1: 2^nd-5^th grade students work alongside teachers, exploring soil composition, searching for worms and insects, and recording their observations and insights in their garden journals.

I really appreciate the hands-on learning experience I had in the morning class at Kelly Elementary. Thanks to the encouragement from teacher peers, I used a power drill and helped build a garden bed. I also used a rototiller for the first time. Like other inexperienced students, I felt so empowered by learning a new skill and successfully building something! I can now go back to my students, model how to build an easy garden bed, and help them to do the work. The students at Kelly were really proud of their beds and took ownership over them, especially when they gave 1^st graders a tour of the garden, answering their questions and teaching them about what they had built. Talk about a heart-warming experience! (Sandy)

The big idea that I have gained is that soil is alive and is an inseparable part of interconnectedness with humans and we together are part of a web of life; but also, that children really respond to opportunities to touch the garden. I can call to mind right now one little guy…who is bilingual. He is very shy and as a result reluctant to involve himself in most of the verbal interactions throughout our gardening day…As I was walking with the garden students to the where they would receive their lunch (he said): “I want to show you something in my journal.” …As I reflected on it later I was reminded that many of the children we teach need that scaffolding that grants them access to express their ideas, excitement for what they are experiencing and sincere appreciation (or confusion) alongside their fellow students, which likewise speaks to an ability to feel socially able to interact in a way that feels satisfying. (Rhonda)

(b)  Integrated Learning

Seeing how gardens could provide a meaningful context for teaching STEM was impactful for teachers; and many of them were struck by the interdisciplinary opportunities that school gardens provide. Numerous teachers shared their observations of students writing extensively in their garden journals. These observations were especially insightful when students who had been disengaged, “problem” children during the regular school year were suddenly transformed into engaged, cooperative learners. Finally, teachers were inspired by the holistic, interconnected nature of learning in the gardens, recognizing how important out-of-class experiences are for children (and adults).

The traditional educational culture we teach in rarely focuses on the needs of the whole child—emotional, psychological, spiritual, physical, social, and intellectual. I have learned through these courses that learning gardens are magical places where connections to the heart and the soil are natural and almost easy to make. … It is such a relief to have the permission to address that emotional, social and spiritual component of ecological education. (Sandy)

The past two weeks have been an eye opener for me. Most of my teaching career has been in preschool and kindergarten. I was a little apprehensive about working with older elementary school students. I discovered that the older children were just as curious as the kindergarteners I work with and just as in early childhood education settings, older children thrive when they can learn hands on. One day in the garden a small group made a mountain of dirt and then poured water down it…They were fascinated by the hole that broke through on the side of their mountain and continued to pour water down it. One teacher took the opportunity to point out that erosion was taking place. Another pointed out that it was creating a delta and yet another teacher pointed out that an oxbow was being created. I myself learned what the term oxbow meant when speaking of rivers. This spontaneous activity ended up being a rich learning experience for all involved. (Gwen).

Figure 2: A somewhat shy 5^th grader shares the work that she and her friends accomplished during the summer garden club to curious 1^st graders and their teachers. While leading this tour, she and other 2^nd-5^th grade students proudly explained square foot gardening and vegetable choices, while also (unbeknownst to them) practiced their speaking and communication skills, deepening their own learning experience.

Possibly what I found most exciting about teaching through the context of a garden was the ease with which you can connect the experience to different standards. I am not familiar with the standards from many other grades, but in third grade I was thrilled to find such perfect connections to our study of Portland and its history (place-based learning!) and math (measuring and fractions). Language, reading and writing standards are easily related to multiple concepts and subjects. I am so grateful to have had the time to sit down and piece together a unit and see firsthand just how relevant learning through the garden can be, not to mention to have the related standards on hand as proof of this relevance. (Kathy)

It was a thrill to see that when we turned the garden over to the children and asked them to develop a plan to improve the space they came up with all of the ideas that we had hoped to cover. By handing the challenge over to them they got to be the creative problem solvers. I believe this really heightened their motivation to work hard on their garden improvement projects. This was a good reminder to me of how rewarding it is to let go of some of the control and to trust the children as learners. (Gwen).

Here are some of the ideas that I will be incorporating next year:

Sit Spots- I am drawn to this activity for so many reasons; mostly because children are being stimulated at such a deafening rate by watching cartoons and playing video games that they are in need of a break and to practice being mindful. We are so lucky to live in a place where we can watch and feel the seasons change, and I am excited to make these observations a regular part of our learning throughout the year…

Technical Drawings- So often, students are opposed to the idea of drawing because they feel insecure about their skills. But I truly believe that by slowing down and focusing on the details of an object, even those that struggle with fine motor skills can be successful.  Our discussion about technical drawings brought me back to a moment in fifth grade when our class went outside to draw something up close. I chose the bark of a birch tree that was growing near my school. While I have never considered myself an artist and tend to struggle with spatial concepts, I can still remember feeling proud of the work that I’d done because it was small-scale and I took the time to really concentrate on the tiniest of elements of the tree’s bark.  (Kathy)

This week with the students has been all about teaching science, but the children are doing amazing writing and even some math this week. In order for me integrate science into my writing more I need to be more planful and make sure that I am fitting science into my daily schedule. I can see how I can blend it more with writing; the students are so motivated to write when they are given those meaningful, rich, and engaging experiences. I just need to figure out how to have them do more than just write, but to focus on skills as they are writing. (Karen)

Unfortunately, too often teachers feel trapped by the core [curriculum] and its isolated approach, but simply from observation alone, let alone research, this can be so disengaging for our students.  There is no connection and sometimes little relevance to our students.  At Title 1, zone schools we have little opportunity to stray from this, but we are really doing a disservice to our students if we do not begin to integrate the curriculum and use a more student-centered, inquiry based approach in which STEM education is considered vital.  The underrepresentation of minorities in STEM careers makes it clear that those of us working with these students need to create a more equal playing field. (Margaret).

(c)   Collaborative Professional Learning

Perhaps the most transformative aspect of these courses for teachers was the opportunity to collaborate and learn with a group of peers. With a few exceptions, most of the teachers had at least one colleague from their school, but also worked with teachers from other schools and districts, as well as with SUN program educators. Nearly all of them commented on how rich their own learning was as a result of working with teachers having very diverse perspectives and approaches. As instructors, we tried to provide an environment where teachers were nudged out of their typical comfort zone, while still providing a safe, collegial atmosphere. Many teachers indicated that they learned more because of this.

I think the way the teachers have learned in the garden very closely parallels the experience the school children have also had in the garden. We have all collaborated, problem-solved, and worked as a team toward a common goal. (Gwen).

Working collaboratively with a team of educators has challenged me in both positive and productive ways. I have felt challenged to work outside myself (not always easy to do), to consider multiple perspectives, to seek for a (or the most) common proactive consensus on how to proceed with our group task; which I might say is a slower process than working independently (which is also my comfort level). That is, one can more quickly and easily agree with oneself and it’s less painful. I think the most beneficial experience in having to work collaboratively is having had a problem‐solving situation presented with which to work through together. I believe that if one is open to the “real” living experience that one must go  through to accomplish this task (mind, emotions, and will and physical self), then it can only lead to a measure of human‐social profit. Personally, I feel greatly benefited, especially because I have felt somewhat like an “odd ball” during this whole experience. (Rhonda)

Figure 3:  Teachers had the rare opportunity to interact with students in very small groups, giving them the chance to see how students make sense of their observations. After each session with the students, teachers had time to debrief together, sharing their insights and making plans for increasing student engagement and learning.

Working with my group has been beneficial to me and helped shape my experience for two particular reasons. The first is simply the energy they have provided. They are a positive team who interact so well with the kids. I have learned quite a few techniques simply by observing their interactions with students. The second benefit to me is the ideas and insights that they have shared after the kids have gone for lunch. The perspective of others on specific situations definitely helps give a more well-rounded view of things. We have discussed student engagement and why we think at times it is high and at times not so much. We have talked about the needs of the ELL’s [English Language Learners] in the class. We have talked about specific students who are having trouble engaging and strategies that seemed to have worked to help pull them in.  We do not often get this opportunity in the classroom and it has been very insightful. (Margaret)

Working with this team of educators has been helpful and enlightening.  It is really important to understand other perspectives and hear from other teachers about better ways to teach and ways to overcome strife in the classroom. (Desmond).

Over the past week, I have developed much stronger connections to the teachers …and I have been reminded of how important it is for educators to collaborate with one another. (Carrie).

I love learning from young teachers, and they’ve had much to teach me about action research and data collection. At the same time, I have often felt left out as the “old fogey” who doesn’t get all the electronic stuff and who longs for the old days of integrated curriculum and project teaching. What a shock it was to be regarded as an asset in terms of garden learning experience! (Brenda)

I have enjoyed collaborating with teachers from other school districts. I really appreciate the garden knowledge I am quickly gaining—when to plant what, how to build a garden bed, etc. My dirty little secret is that I am really a garden novice. My experience as a student has definitely been enriched by what knowledge and insight my team has shared, both professionally and personally. One of my peers is a self-proclaimed “Go big or go home” kind of person, and I am inspired by the ambition that I am often too tired or nervous to take on in my classroom. (Sandy).

Conclusion

Standards-based education does not have to equate with narrow, overly-scripted, and disconnected teaching and learning. On the contrary, standards should serve as a framework for designing integrated curriculum and instructional plans that use topics related to STEM, sustainability, and social justice as themes for authentic, real-world learning. School learning gardens provide an easily accessible entry point for teachers and children to connect to the natural world while learning important concepts and skills in an integrated, holistic manner. For teachers to feel confident and empowered to leave the classroom walls, they need to have similar experiences as learners themselves, as well as time, space, and support as they translate their own learning into their teaching practice and instructional design.

The stories highlighted by teachers participating in our summer, STEM-focused garden course emphasize ideas that have been well-supported in the literature. For instance, the importance of constructivism was clear. Learners inquired and co-constructed understandings through direct observations of phenomena they experienced together. This was especially important for teachers as learners. Several teachers expressed, they learned as much (perhaps more) from each other—drawing on their shared, collective expertise—as they did from the course instructors. In many cases, their knowledge and skills might not have seemed relevant in traditional settings but in a holistic, garden-based context, a wide array of knowledge and skills were invaluable to the overall learning experience.

This leads to another important aspect of teaching and learning: when any learner feels she has been successful, it builds confidence and self-efficacy. As Museus et al. (2011) articulate, this can often mean the difference between success or failure in school and participation in STEM fields, particularly for racial and ethnic minority students. For students who have not been successful in traditional settings, learning in school gardens can provide the opportunity for different ways of learning, communicating, and thinking. Learning in the garden is by nature multi-sensory, acknowledging diverse learning styles and ways of expressing ideas and understandings. Honoring different perspectives and approaches seems especially important for addressing the needs of today’s diverse, multicultural student population reflecting the changing demographics in our country.

            We end the article with a quote from a teacher since it captures the essence of the transformation through action and reflection as she works with low-income and culturally diverse students:

This class has reminded me why I wanted to teach science in the first place: I want to help students of all backgrounds to be nature explorers. Every child should feel safe and encouraged to practice science, to see him- or her-self as a scientist, and to use his or her education to help others and our environment. I have gotten caught up more in planning curriculum and helping students to feel successful with their assessments than in nurturing their souls…most people would say, “um, yes, that is your job description.” But this course has reminded me that as a teacher I have the ability to not only help students learn academic skills and content, but also to guide them towards the higher purposes of self-discovery, environmental justice and community-building. I have heard students at Kelly [School] talk about adding tables and flowers so more students will want to hang out and relax in the school gardens, or how one’s uncle is an artist and could help make the garden prettier, or stop a student from digging because she didn’t want a bug to get hurt. These are all authentic and natural outcomes of garden-based learning, and I feel they are far more important educational experiences than many of our standards that I spend so much time thinking about. (Sandy).

Notes

Both authors have contributed equally to this article. We are grateful to our colleague Nancy Lapotin for her support in designing and co-teaching the courses. We also wish to acknowledge Dunya Minoo, the principals, the SUN coordinators, and the participating teachers and educators for their willingness and enthusiasm in shaping the courses and engaging innovative pedagogies.

References

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Bottom of Form

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Appendix A

COURSE: Theory to Practice in School Gardens

The purpose of this course is for teachers to:

1. Build professional learning communities among the entire group, spanning various schools and locations, that support the development of knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for reflective practice and action research;
2. Develop an understanding of theoretical frameworks for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and Garden-based education (GBE); and
3. Apply STEM education research and GBE theory into practice, through the context of school and community-based learning gardens.

Course Objectives 

Upon successful completion of this course, teachers will:

1. Build professional relationships as co-learners and co-teachers with colleagues from various locations;
2. Gain experience and confidence working with diverse, “at-risk” students in a garden-based (out-of-school) setting;
3. Develop proficiency utilizing gardens as a context for standards-based instruction;
4. Develop proficiency utilizing formative assessment strategies to identify students’ current understandings and to guide instruction.

Topics

Teachers and their students will engage collaboratively to cover the following topics:

1. Soil exploration/ investigation; Soil testing;
2. Types of soil: What type of soil is in your garden?
3. Composting/ decomposers
4. Plants in the garden; Parts of plants; Connection of plants to soil
5. Animals in the garden; Signs of animals scavenger hunt; Insects
6. Food web (connections of animals & plants to soil)
7. Mapping your garden; Measurements
8. Outside forces in the garden (humans, weather, etc.)
9. Exploration of our garden’s needs; Brainstorming solutions/ projects
10. Re-visioning your garden space; Mapping, art, project

Reflective Writing

Reflective Writing #1: Reflect on your experiences from this first week. In a 2-3 page, single-spaced reflection paper, please address the following questions:

1. What have you learned about teaching and learning in a garden-based context?
2. How has working with a team of educators shaped your experience?
3. What ideas have you had about integrating STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) topics into your teaching?
4. Describe any ideas or inspiration you’ve gained from the readings. How do the readings connect to what you’ve been observing with students?
5. How has your comfort and/or confidence teaching STEM concepts changed?
6. Although classroom teaching rarely provides an opportunity for such low adult:student ratios, what insights have you gained from this experience? About young people? About learning? About your own ideas about teaching?
7. What do you hope we will accomplish next week and/or what modifications would you suggest?

Reflective Writing #2: Reflect on your experiences from this two-week program. In a 3-4 page, single-spaced reflection paper, please address the following questions:

1. What have you learned about teaching and learning in a garden-based context?
2. How has working with a team of educators shaped your experience?
3. What ideas have you had about integrating STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) topics into your teaching?
4. How has your comfort and/or confidence teaching STEM topics changed?
5. How do you envision this experience influencing your teaching practice?
6. What suggestions do you have for this course in the future?

Text: Williams, D. R. & Brown, J. D. (2012). Learning gardens and sustainability education: Bringing life to schools and schools to life. New York, NY: Routledge.

Articles: Majority of the readings are articles from Science & Children and from Science Scope, the National Science Teachers’ Association’s journals for elementary school and middle school, respectively.

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PDF:MaryBreunigsSpring2013

Abstract:Environmental sustainability and justice and experiential education are present-day “buzzwords.” This case study of one secondary school Environmental Studies Program in Ontario, Canada problematizes the assumption that environmental knowledge(s), one form of experiential education, automatically leads to students acting pro-environmentally, querying: 1) how does environmental education impact secondary school students’ pro-environmental behaviours?; 2) to what extent does environmental knowledge inform environmental actions? Four primary themes emerged in one case study: a) strong sense of community; b) the evolving mission/vision in the program; c) the teacher’s evolving pedagogical praxis; and d) an increase in activist leanings in students. The role of the teacher on student learning, a discussion of emancipatory environmental actions, and educational policy implications are discussed.

Key words: Environmental Education in Ontario Secondary Schools, Experiential Education, Case Study Research

Introduction

Experiential Learning and Experiential Education have become buzzwords within corporations and organizations and across university campuses. Alongside this trend, environmental issues and environmental sustainability per se are currently being debated at dinner tables, in popular and documentary films, in newspapers, books, and magazines, in boardrooms and classrooms and within all levels of government (Breunig, 2012). Two recent books that seem to have caught the public’s imagination, Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle, describe the consequences of “nature deficit disorder” including: children’s declining contact with nature and the simple (experiential) pleasure of having dirty hands and wet feet (Louv, 2006, 2011). Additionally, recognition of global environmental degradation is on the rise and changes in the environment and its natural systems have emerged as a matter of increasingly urgent concern around the world (Bondar et al., 2007, Jorgenson, 2006; Kola-Olusanya, 2005). As we approach the midpoint of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), governments around the World have introduced a variety of environmental education initiatives.

The purpose of this present study is to investigate: 1) how environmental education impacts secondary school students’ pro-environmental behaviours; and 2) to what extent and in what ways does environmental knowledge inform social and environmental actions. I will present the results of one case study of an integrated Environmental Studies Program (ESP) in Ontario, Canada, employing data that spans a four-year period from the time of program commencement in 2009.

Literature Review

What ought and can be done about environmental degradation is contested and relates to opinions regarding fundamental cause(s). One solution commonly suggested is education (NGO Treaty, 1992; WCED, 1993). Environmental education is one common practice and form of experiential education. This next section will define experiential education and environmental education and will provide an overview of environmental education in Ontario with specific mention of the integrated Environmental Studies Program.

Experiential Education

 There are numerous published definitions of experiential education (Breunig, 2008; Joplin, 1981; Itin, 1999). The Association for Experiential Education (2011) defines experiential education as both a philosophy and methodology in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people’s capacity to contribute to their communities. Central to this definition is the distinction between experiential education as methodology and experiential education as philosophy. Clifford Knapp, a prominent experiential educator, helps to highlight the difference between what is often referred to as experiential learning (methodology) and experiential education (philosophy). This distinction is important given these terms are often erroneously used interchangeably (Breunig, 2008; Itin, 1999).

Knapp (1992) explains that experiential learning consists of four distinct segments: “(a) active student involvement in a meaningful and challenging experience, (b) reflection upon the experience individually and in a group, (c) the development of new knowledge about the world, and (d) application of this knowledge to a new situation” (pp. 36-37). The experiential learning cycle in Figure 1 helps to illustrate this:

Figure 1. The experiential learning cycle (Kolb, 1984).

Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning cycle illustrates how experience, reflection, new knowledge, and application can be employed as a way of teaching. Many experiential educational initiatives are based on this learning cycle but do not prescribe an intended learning outcome or aim. In essence, employing the experiential learning cycle without an intended educational aim represents a methodology, implying that there is a certain way of teaching that makes the learning experiential. Experiential education as philosophy employs both methodology (experiential way of teaching) and philosophy as part of the educative process. Experiential education as philosophy implies that there is an intended aim toward which the experiential learning process is directed and that this philosophical/teleological orientation holds social and environmental transformative potential (Breunig, 2008; Warren, 2002).

Environmental Education

Similarly, there are many definitions and approaches to experiential education’s varied practices, forms, and settings, including, place-based education, service-learning, adventure education, environmental education, and eco-pedagogy, to name a few (Lund, 1997). Each approach and practice reflects particular contexts and ideological predispositions (Sauvé, 1996). I, alongside other educators, favour a “critical” and “holistic” approach to environmental education. Educators working from this position aim to encourage critical reflection on human/nature relations, nurture healthy relationships both among humans and between humans and other life, while working concurrently toward social and environmental justice (e.g., Fawcett Bell, & Russell, 2002; Gough, 1997; O’Sullivan, 1999). I believe that issues of social and environmental justice are intimately intertwined and affirm that an experiential, environmental pedagogy is one means to work toward these forms of justice (Breunig, 2005; Itin, 1999).

Experiential and environmental education are often considered to be “alternative” pedagogies in light of these positions and definitions (Allison & Pomery, 2000) and counter-hegemonic in light of their intended justice-oriented aims. One challenge across North America and beyond is that the current educational climate has been moving away from educational innovation and alternative pedagogies (e.g. forms of experiential education) and toward greater accountability, fiscal efficiency, standardization, and “back-to-basics” curriculum (Edmondson, 2004; Orr, 1992). One result in Canada has been the deprioritization of curricular content related to the environment (Elrick, 2000; Puk, 2002).

Environmental studies programs. Even during these challenging times in Canada, however, one particular initiative has continued to flourish–the integrated Environmental Studies Programs (ESPs)–wherein environmental topics are integrated into a holistic and interdisciplinary curriculum model taught at the secondary school level to students who register for a “package” of courses and spend the full semester with one to two teachers and a single student cohort (Horwood, 2002; Russell & Burton, 2000). The full-day cohort structure of ESPs provides for environmentally related experiential learning opportunities such as extended outdoor field trips or field study camps, volunteering, co-op placements and service learning with environmental organizations, and investigations of local environmental issues and processes (Russell, Bell, & Fawcett, 2000). The intent of integrated ESPs–that learning be grounded in authentic “real world” experiences and provide students with opportunities for critical and holistic thinking–is a good example of a socially critical approach to environmental education and one that provides the foundation for this study.

One recent policy-oriented initiative in Ontario, Canada is the Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) – The Environment, which was introduced in 2009 by the Ministry of Education. According to the Ministry of Education (2009), the environmental education curricula associated with the SHSM will enable “students to build a foundation of sector-focused knowledge and skills before graduating and entering apprenticeship training, college, university, or an entry-level position in the workplace” (p. 3). Currently, 35 school boards in Ontario are attempting to operationalize this curricular initiative.

In 2007, the Minister of Education commissioned a group of experts to make recommendations on environmental education policy in schools (known as The Bondar Report). The Ministry has publicly declared that all 26 recommendations of that report will be implemented. The introduction of the SHSM in 2009 and the Bondar Report have increased momentum and further renewed justification for the ESP programs. There exists a need for the successes, challenges, and implications of the enactment of both the SHSM – The Environment and The Bondar Report to be investigated.

Methods

The study employs case study methodology. It is field-based, sensitive to context, and calls attention to particulars (Yin, 2009). To attain a rich, in-depth understanding of educational practices and student learning in ESPs, we are currently in the midst of a longitudinal study consisting of multiple cases where data has been collected through student focus group sessions, interviews with students, teachers, and administrators, and document analysis. This larger study is funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

In this paper, we are zeroing in on results from student focus group sessions and teacher and principal interviews at one study site, a rural high school. We present results over a four-year period from program commencement (2009) until our latest data cycle (June, 2012). Purposive sampling has been employed in choosing the study sites for the broader study, ensuring we investigate both newer and longer standing programs, settings that are both rural and urban, and programs taught by teachers of both genders with a range of years of experience and disciplinary backgrounds. The case studies are descriptive (offering rich accounts), interpretive (analyzing data in light of theory) and evaluative (determining educational outcomes and identifying educational potential and challenges) (Merriam, 1998).

The results presented here investigated: 1) how environmental education impacts secondary school students’ pro-environmental behaviours; 2) to what extent and in what ways  environmental knowledge informs social and environmental actions; and 3) which knowledge(s)impact(s)students’ attitudes to and relationships with and to the environment.

Study Site and Participants

Pseudonyms are used hereafter for both the school and all comments. The school has a population of 600 students and holds a mix of Caucasian, Metis, and Native Canadian students. The curricular package consists of the following Ontario Ministry of Education courses: English; Cooperative Education; and Geography. The school adopted the Specialist High Skills Major – the Environment initiative in 2011.

According to the program website description, the program offers students the opportunity to receive course credits through a combination of traditional academic studies and practical outdoor skills, promoting community-building in the classroom and offering students an alternative perspective and format of learning. Throughout the program, students examine local and global environmental issues and develop a personal environmental ethic.  Julia is the primary teacher of the program and has five years of teaching experience, four of those with the ESP program which she developed upon her arrival at the school. Julia self identifies as a young white, woman, and as a passionate teacher whose pedagogy and program are still “in progress.”

Data Collection and Analysis

Data was collected through 8 pre- and post-program student focus group sessions, 4 post-program teacher interviews, and 2 principal interviews. The student focus group sessions involved 77 students in total, 39 boys and 38 girls, evenly divided across the 4 years. Each focus group session lasted approximately 1.25 hours. Interviews took between 35-50 minutes. Student focus group sessions and interviews were semi-structured with room for general conversation and consisted of questions about how students’ participation and the teacher’s teaching praxis impacted attitudes, knowledge(s), and actions regarding issues of social and environmental justice. The semi-structured nature of these interviews and focus group sessions allowed for the collection of data on issues of both long-standing and emerging concerns to us, and to make comparisons across years (Tierney & Dilley, 2001). Because meanings and answers arising from focus group interviews are socially rather than individually constructed (Berg, 2004), focus group sessions provided students with a forum to collectively reflect upon and articulate their experiences. As such, we argue that the resultant responses were particularly generative and sapient (Morgan, 2001). Teacher and principal interviews centred on questions about program successes and challenges and the ways in which the Ministry policy initiative (e.g. SHSM) impacted the program.

Data from these focus group sessions and interviews were deductively coded for conceptual themes and subthemes, combining the voices of students, teachers, and principals into a cogent narrative (Gubrium & Holstein, 2001; McMillan & Schumacher, 2001). The study underwent university and secondary school board ethical review.

Results

Four primary themes emerged in analysis and centred around the ways in which the program has evolved. These included: a) strong sense of community and group cohesion; b) the evolving mission/vision; c) the teacher adapting and growing in her pedagogical praxis; and d) an increase in activist leanings.

Strong Sense of Community and Group Cohesion

All reports across all years from both the student focus group sessions and interviews suggest that the program impacts students’ sense of community and sense of belonging given its cohort structure.  Martha (2012) (student) said, “The most valuable thing is the group cohesion, building a sense of community within the class.” From that same cohort, Tim talked about how challenges brought the group closer together, going on to say:

When we were going through things we would have group chats, which was good ‘cause I guess that’s one thing different than other classes is that if you have a problem with             someone you wouldn’t bring it up necessarily, but because [of the] group dynamics       [of this class], we [would] have a circle chat where you say ‘I feel this, instead of like           ‘you did this, you did this.’

In 2011, Eliza concluded, “Um I didn’t know a single person when I started this class so that was really really intimidating and I don’t know everyone just grew on me,” in speaking about the positive group dynamics. Janessa (2010) reported, “Spending three classes a day with the same people, you grow to depend on them.” Jill added, “We just all really relied on each other. We all got to really know each other through being so positive and spending so much time together.”

Focus group and interview reports include commentary about the role that community plays in students making connections between individual, community, and environmental responsibility. The teacher (Julia) believes, “Students learn to become a whole person, [and their] growth is more important – changes to environmental behaviour and environmental learning is a side effect, not necessarily the focus.” Julia (in 2010) reported,

It [program mission] would be to foster partnerships with communities, to educate             students about their environment so that they can make more educated decisions about      their actions to teach through experience, and get them out of their desks a little bit more.

Students also experienced this, reporting, “rather than focusing on specific changes to environmental behaviour, [there is] more focus on developing character, critical thinking and creating awareness” (Brett). The principal talked about how students who do not necessarily “fit” with/in the traditional classroom structure find a pro-social and pro-learning environment in the ESP.

The Evolving Mission/Vision

The mission and vision of the program has evolved over the four-year study span. That evolution relates to the above theme. During her interview in the first year, the teacher was explicit that building community and promoting pro-social behaviours were the program goals: “Community is the base, the most important [goal], group cohesion has to take place before anything else does.” In 2011, Julia asserted, “ I’m totally focused on their character development, their leadership, what they have as individuals learned rather than focusing on environmental issues,” going on to say that students integrate that on their own. This year (2012), Julia (teacher) stated,

What is emphasized is dictated by the students and what they need, where they want to   take the course. Community, leadership, the environment – all have different weight           depending on the cohort. This class was I would say more environmental than last year’s          class but not as much as the year before and way more than my first year.

The principal reported that Julia has progressively learned how to better put the mission and vision into practice. Data analysis also indicated that students are reporting more significant pro-environmental behavioural change, and more often, with each passing year. Examples of this include early reports (2009) of increased recycling and decreased water use to the latest cohort of students (2012) now using terms like “green-washing” and “food security” in their reports about program impact. “Um I think that one of the unwritten teachings of this program was definitely growing up {Laughs} uh like developing a better sense of who you are and how your actions and what you say and what you do affect everyone else” (Eliza, 2011). In 2011, Sam said that, “Everything that we learned was to do with like you know the outdoors and the environment and leadership.” In 2010, Mac said, “some of the teachers think that we are just fun and games.” Grant said learning consisted of, “like traditional ecological [knowledges] and more of a native point of view as well.” Matt said, “I expected this course to be outdoorsyesque, and I guess it is, but I didn’t expect it to be as good as it was. I didn’t know [Julia] was as knowledgeable in the woods and it has way, way surpassed my expectations.” Other students from that same year expressed how they learned more from the ESP program than they had in any other class. Claudia concluded, “I found it really hard, and hard in a good way. I find I need to be pushed to do well and [haven’t had that] in other classes previous to this.”

Early in program development, Krista (2010) reported that the program was about “developing a better sense of who you are and how your actions and what you say and what you do affect everyone else and about personal growth.” This past year (2012) about 2/3 of the students, significantly more so than in previous program years, talked about the environment being at the centre of the curriculum. Julia chuckled in the interview, saying that she “gets it” better now, stating that the overall program goal is environmental justice.

Julia (2010) talked about how the Specialist High Skills Major provided not only funding but an opportunity to (re)vision after the first year, placing an emphasis on the value of reflection and critical thinking in working toward becoming a specialist and receiving some practical preparation (i.e. certifications). In 2011, Mallory said that the SHSM“was just hard for me ’cause I had like so much that I just kind of forgot about everything and so there’s a lot of procrastination that went on.” Julia went on to report about changes to the program after the first year, stating,

There is more of an emphasis on diversity, especially the first nations, metis and inuit         cultures because of this new [Ministry] English course [“Contemporary Aboriginal        Voices”] coming in and being a part of it because of the kind of bursaries that are          available for students and because of this unique cultural area that we are in with the           number of metis students is unbelievable.

The principal (Naomi) reported in 2012 that,

I think the recognition at the school board level [is beneficial]. I thought it would just be a            nice program for our kids, but its, it has been highlighted a number of times, we have the          greatest number of kids graduating with their Specialist High Skills Major, stamped on         their diplomas because of this program so that has been really beneficial and highlighting     us as a viable school. I know that [Julia] has become a resource for the other teachers in          the board that are running these programs.

Naomi went on to talk about how the funding for the SHSM and the funding the school receives for offering “Contemporary Aboriginal Voices” has helped to keep the program viable during a time of overall “cuts.”

The Teacher Adapting and Growing in Her Pedagogical Praxis

Julia said that figuring out what kind of teacher she wants to be has played a role in the mission/vision shift. She continues to struggle with balancing her own involvement and handing over responsibility to students, saying, “Letting students drive their own journey, bowing out a little as a teacher so students can drive [the] class.” The students this year (2012) stated, “We have heard from other students about previous years and we think she went through a process to ‘get it right’ this year.” These student comments resonate with reports from first year program students. Bill (2009) reported, “I just feel unprepared for English next year because we didn’t really do what we were supposed to… we did not follow the curriculum and I’ll pay for that when I’m trying to get a job when I get older.” Claude said, “Whenever we tried to say something to her that is against her thoughts we usually just get in trouble.” Stan added, “Well the times that I’ve gotten in trouble she sends us to the hall so she doesn’t have to talk to us as a group so everyone else sees what’s happening to you…. it’s horrible.” Bridgette (2009) shared, “We didn’t learn anything about conservation or about native oppression,” [as she said we would]. Clare added, “I don’t see what native oppression has to do with us as well as tar sands in Alberta or forestry and clear cutting… it just doesn’t make sense” [what she is teaching].

Contrastingly, in 2011, Barb said, “The way we do our school work it’s different than other classes…it’s more of an adult setting rather than being teenagers…. She (teacher, Julia) understands where we’re coming from like better than other teachers.” In that same year, Julia herself reported, “I think using a positive leadership style as a teacher [has made a difference this year] and letting them have more choice….taking on the role of teacher and not friend but coach and trying to role model the right behaviours.” In talking about the students, she said,

And this particular class (2011) liked to call themselves in the beginning, ‘The Difference’             ’cause they really wanted to make a difference. Of course they were having trouble even         handing in their assignments so it was really difficult for me to facilitate them making a           difference.

Maya (2012) described it is a calmer learning environment compared to other classes, adding, “We do get our work done, but it’s more fun.” Grant (2012) said, [the program] is “actually like a pretty precious thing.” Thomas talked about having learned as students and teacher from previous years’ mistakes and challenges. Maya said, “I think she was really happy because we were like the class that worked.” 3/4 of the students across all years talked about the structure and impact of reflective journaling and Julia talked about her more deliberate use of this overtime, confessing that aspects of that assignment still fell short of its full potential. Students expressed disappointment that more and timely feedback was not provided in their journals.

By year 2011, Julia asserted, “I hope that I taught them in some way or another to be good to the planet.” According to the principal, “Julia has gotten good at setting expectations and setting the ideal stage for experience but then letting students take on experience, good or bad, and learning from it.”

An Increase in Activist Leanings

In the past two years, students talked about how the program promoted personal change and led them to environmental activism, suggesting an increase in pro-environmental behaviours since the time of program commencement. This year (2012), with the program at risk due to budget cuts, students petitioned the Board through a letter writing campaign and students in that cohort self-identified as “little activists” (Bob, Judy, Cassandra, Mark). For Anne, “Seeing guest speakers as activists, learning from their example [made me] want to follow their example.” Jeff said, “Seeing the efforts of getting involved in environmental law or protesting trees being cut, seeing how they effect change, [made me] want to follow in their [community members] footsteps.” Martha, Brett, and Claire (2011) commented that they wanted to be “the changers.” Claire said, “You’re trying to take everything you learned in this course and you’re trying to apply it everywhere. ‘Cause we all, I know we all want to be better in every way, especially with the environment. We all want to be those people that [effect] change.” Mark (2011) reported:

And I’ve never had any drive in any of my classes ever before and when I came into this class and everything that was being taught to me, everything that was happening, everything about the        environment and local issues and like the coffee trade or what have you, really opened my eyes and it really changed me in a way that I, I needed to excel at this so I could educate my peers on, so personal change is a big part of it.

Eliza (2011) said, “I’d rather like buy a pair of shoes that I know aren’t being made out of child labour.” Mallory reported, “We did our environmental footprint thing and mine was pretty high so I noticed that I like use more energy. So I’ve like cut down on my shower time.” In 2010, Gretta reported, “Vanessa is really big on the whole fair trade thing, she owns a lot of fair trade clothing and she’s got shoes that look like Converse but are actually fair trade and yah she’s pretty hard core about that.” Claudia shared, “I know that one kid in the class Brett, after we watched the video Food Inc. he went vegetarian for a month and he’s still trying to do it but it’s hard.” She added, “I definitely want to try that 100 mile diet… that Food Inc. documentary really got me.”

Bob said, “I used to use my ATV like every day and I finally realized that I shouldn’t be doing that (2010).” “I (Mark, 2010) pretty much changed my family around turning off lights around them.” Grace (2009) also talked about the program influence on both her and on her family, stating, “I convinced my mum to plant a vegetable garden and I also I did an essay on genetically modified stuff and now she buys organic everything and organic soymilk because she’s a health nut now.” She went on to say, “[The program] gave me some perspective on the lack of morals that major corporations have.”

Pip (2012) concluded, “Well, before I never realized how bad like just using a simple Kleenex, like what it’s actually made from and how that forest is being destroyed for one single purpose.” From that same cohort, students reported an increase in recycling and use of the green bin [compost], buying more locally-grown food, walking or biking instead of driving, a growing-knowledge of greenwashing, and the impacts of population growth on the environment. Robbie summarized, “I believe that it’s like more possible to take actions on environmental things that aren’t good, like standing up for [what] you believe in.”

Julia [teacher] in her 2011 interview stated about the changing mission, “[more] environmental focus. Character education is [how] the course is being known by. ..the reason the students are taking it but they get all the other stuff and a lot of them like get into environmental job and ranger program stuff.”  Julia also talked extensively about the Ontario Ministry of Education Specialist High Skills Major – the Environment (SHSM) initiative, stating, “we are absolutely embracing this specialist high skills major.” Julia talked about the importance of offering students certifications as a component of this initiative and about the financial support it provided for program development and cost effectiveness. The principal shared her observation that the students are “connecting personal change with environmental change” more and more. In 2011, Karl reported, “It’s like we have like new environmental ethic, which I will use, we also have a leadership ethic, which I definitely use, I use on an everyday basis.”

Discussion

Strong sense of community is foundational to group development (Mitten, 1999). In our study, it was clear that the formation of a pro-social group was key to environmental learning and action resonant with relational social justice theorists. Stemming from the ideal of reciprocity, relational social justice theorists emphasize that the key to developing the kind of relationships that are capable of working toward justice, are those in which individuals recognize and accept differences among and between individuals (Fraser, 2003; Young, 1990).  We hear evidence of this in the study results when students spoke about the importance of building community and turning initial feelings of intimidation into trusting ones. Certain years coalesced into a cohort of self-identified pro-environmental “difference-makers” (2011) or “changers” (2012) and activists as a result of these reciprocal relationships and the group trust that developed. According to Quimby and Angelique (2011), typical promoters of pro-environmental action include shifting social norms and a community of people taking action. In my study, being a group member, having a sense of belonging, being in a pro-social community, and hearing community members speak about pro-environmental change set the stage for students to engage in environmental action themselves.

Results from previous studies resonate with my study results, indicating that providing students with knowledge about the environment does indeed impact pro-environmental behaviours (Hsu, 2004; Kasapoglu & Turan, 2008). Alongside Kasapoglu and Turan, we are intrigued by the distinction between what they refer to as “general,” “economy,” and “domestic” environmental attitudes and behaviours. Pro-environmental behaviours run the gamut from notebook saving, caring for plants and trees, using a tissue, and turning off the lights when leaving a room (Kasapoglu & Turan). We see examples of these same behavioural changes throughout my study results.

In another study of observed environmental behavioural changes in university roommates, Chao and Lam (2011) examined what they referred to as “responsible” environmental behaviour and described five common types of reported changes including shutting down the computer and turning off the table lamp before leaving a room, avoiding free plastic bags from grocery stores, sorting garbage for recycling, and collecting small plastic bags for reuse. These types of “domestic” behaviours are cited most often in the relevant literature, which also resonates with my study results. Thus, in our continuing research into these programs, we intend to turn our attention to what kinds of knowledges and experiences might lead to more emancipatory actions.

The results of this study also indicated that some of the most impactful teaching – those teachings that compelled students to act pro-environmentally – resulted from guest lecturers who modeled and delivered messages that spurred students to wanting to be activists themselves. The role of the teacher was also impactful as she adapted and evolved her own pedagogical praxis and thereby refined the program mission and vision. It is well documented that a teacher’s beliefs and values impact curriculum (Cotton, 2006; Brown & McIntyre, 1993). In our study, Julia (teacher) and the principal (Naomi) both reported how the program mission/vision evolved as Julia’s own beliefs and values about the program were refined and clarified, in part, through teaching the ESP for those four years. Teachers new to teaching (as was the case here) are engaged in active experimentation and pedagogical growth and development as they teach. This growth and development is evidenced in students’ reports that Julia “got it right” in year four and in Julia’s own comments about “getting it.”

Julia’s commitment to continue to link action and practice is noteworthy. Freeland (2009) encourages pedagogues to merge the “thinking” orientation of theory and the “doing” emphasis of professional studies to enhance student learning (Freeland, 2009). Experiential approaches include simulations, case studies, media-based resources and field trips as components of this form of pedagogy (Breunig, 2008). Teachers may wish to consider student processes and outcomes more closely in determining what methodological approach will further students’ environmental knowledges and lead to pro-environmental behaviours.

Julia, for example, talked about her own growth and development related to delivering the Ministry curriculum in a non-traditional format and the design of assignments, with journals being one aspect of that discussion. Journals are often used as a component of experiential and environmental programs as a means to provide opportunities for students to reflect upon their experiences (Hammond, 2002). Journals can be an effective medium for facilitating reflection but are not necessarily and certainly not automatically so (Bennion & Olson, 2002; Hutson et. al, 2012). Their deliberate use as a pedagogical tool and form of assessment merits further consideration generally and in light of our study results. Students indicated that they did not always receive timely and insightful feedback in their journals and Julia (teacher) herself conceded that she could be more deliberate in the use of journals, both as a reflective tool and as a way to impel students to be explicit about their pro-social and pro-environmental intentions, perhaps inciting them to further action.

Interesting within my study results is the focus on the Specialist High Skills Major – the Environment, particularly as it relates to supportive funding for the program. There is a paucity of research related to the ways in which environmental educational policy impacts curricular initiatives. One study tracked the efforts of educators at nine different research sites within the United States, funded by a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), to develop and implement innovative interdisciplinary curriculum on the relationship of the environment and human health (Martina, Hursh, & Markowitz, 2009). The NIEHS concluded that the interdisciplinary nature of learning about environmental health would improve students’ learning across several subject areas. However, these goals were undermined by state polices linking standardized tests with student promotion and graduation, and the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) resulting in school funding reductions, resonant with the impacts of the aforementioned deprioritization of environmental-oriented curriculum in Canada during this same era.

In a UK based symposium, environmental educators gathered together to discuss school-based environmental education and its potential as a vehicle for the promotion, understanding and implementation of sustainable development. According to that group, an important goal for education for sustainable development is to move education itself towards more participatory practices and political empowerment (Barraza, Duque-Aristiza’bal, & Rebolledo, 2003). Yet, no measure of this has been done. How to use environmental education research to inform policy and to understand the impacts of how educational policy impacts program efficacy remains an area of interest – one that has not yet been well-addressed, particularly as it relates to environmental education and sustainability.

Further research should explore those aspects of program delivery (e.g. teacher values and pedagogy) that most impact domestic and emancipatory behaviours as well as more individualistic and systemic ones. Working through/with/in these various factors in environmental education research is warranted as we continue to seek to identify outcomes and use these as a deliberate means to inform environmental education pedagogy (i.e. ESP program development) and policy.

In conclusion, I believe that as a researcher it is important to acknowledge my own subjectivity and positionality in conducting this research and how I impact the research process and results (Pivnick, 2003). Has the program shifted in part as a result of our asking questions about the mission/vision and program goals? In our querying, have we overtly or inadvertently influenced the program? With the teacher knowing our epistemologies and activist leanings, does she respond in a certain manner? We are guessing so, and this needs to be further problematized as we continue to engage in this work.

References

Allison, P. & Pomeroy, E. (2000). How shall we “know?” Epistemological concerns in

research in experiential education. The Journal of Experiential Education, 23(2),

91-98.

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PDF: RippleJSESpring2013

Sustainability Education and Environmental Nihilism: Transforming Suburbia through Experiential Learning

Darien Ripple, Chandler Gilbert Community College

Abstract: This paper will focus on a qualitative research project that occurred in the fall of 2011 at Chandler Gilbert Community College, which set out to better understand the learning process of experiential education by observing the comments and actions of students interacting in nature-based learning.  The research study is based on the premise that students who develop a moral awareness of nature will better understand the core conceptual components of environmental sustainability.  The main objective of this research project was to assess the transformational learning of students enrolled in PHI-216 Environmental Ethics courses who engaged in experiential learning to better understand environmental sustainability.

The intent of this paper is to first establish clear and plausible theories associated with experiential learning and transformational education, noting how theoretical methods can be incorporated into higher education.  A theoretical base will be used to explore: 1) conditions of modernity, 2) ideas associated with nature-based learning, and 3) to formulate an experiential learning model to be incorporated into course curriculum. This paper will then analyze data collected during the case study.

Keywords: environmental sustainability, sustainability, ethics, experiential education

Theoretical Foundations

The theories of Anthony Giddens were reviewed to establish a method of observation and documentation of students involved in a learning process under conditions of modernity (Giddens, 1986, 1991, 2009).  Giddens suggests there exists deeply embedded structural properties and principles in the modern world that influence motivation and potential for action (Giddens, 1986).  For example, individuals in a globalized world some times lack the ability to find meaningful purpose, which can lead to an existential crisis hindering any type of motivation to be a responsible citizen (Giddens, 1991).  This phenomenon can be found in the average community college student that contends with multiple human activities in any given day such as work, family, and social activities (Shor, 1987).  There are a myriad of competing priorities and values that a community college student copes with leaving little room for exploring abstract ideas of sustainability.

In respect to this particular inquiry into sustainability education, the challenge of environmental nihilism becomes a factor when observing the learning process at a suburban community college because of influences associated with modernity like consumerism, narcissism, and egoism – all of which can render the natural environment meaningless.  Students that are not actively engaged in the natural world will have difficulties finding a concern for the environment.  Sustainability education is thus one step removed from a student’s sense of being.

When acknowledging environmental nihilism as a plausible condition of the modern world it becomes necessary to explore ideas and theories that warrant the incorporation of nature based learning into curriculum (Ehrenfeld, 2008; Larson, 2011; Louv, 2006, 2011; Tood & Todd, 1993).  One must also review progressive trends in higher education to establish a viable learning model (Brookfield & Holst, 2011; Kamenetz, 2010; Orr, 2011).  Nature based learning explores multiple intelligences in an attempt to create a sense of place within the natural world (Gardner, 2006; Louv, 2006).

Nature based learning is a form of experiential learning because it seeks to create personal experiences intended to initiate inquiry and understanding of the natural world. Experiential learning encourages students to personally explore and reflect on information, ideas, and theories that parallel hands on learning intended to trigger the ability of students to conceptualize course material (Beard & Wilson, 2002; Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985; Cowan, 1998).  Hands-on experience with the natural world becomes essential to understanding an abstract subject like environmental sustainability, which may at first appear to be absent from a student’s everyday life.

Experiential Learning and Environmental Ethics

Chandler Gilbert Community College (CGCC) is located in a suburb outside of Phoenix, Arizona. The once farming community has transformed into housing developments and shopping malls.  Rapid urban sprawl in the area during the past two decades has lead to a current enrollment of around 18,000 students.    In the fall of 2011, I implemented an experiential learning model in two sections of PHI216 Environmental Ethics involving fifty students ranging in age between 17-35 years old with an average age of 20.6 years old.

I adapted Kolb’s model of experiential learning, which emphasizes creating connections between abstract conceptualization and active experimentation to a fifteen-week schedule (Kolb, 1984; Moon, 2004).  The piloted experiential learning model involved a technique referred to as sequence and reinforcement (Vella, 2002).  The process begins with the student engaging in a basic hands-on activity that serves as a platform to solve more complex problems.  The technique attempts to establish a learning continuum that reinforces previous learned skills and ideas.

The sequencing consisted of five learning cycles which included: 1) the formation of a land ethic, 2) evaluating moral dilemmas associated with food sources, 3) observing the morality of public policy, 4) formulating a sustainable action plan, and 5) the creation of an individual experiential learning activity.  In each of the learning cycles, students were asked to analyze assigned readings, while drawing upon other intelligences associated with an assigned experiential learning activity.  For example learning cycle one focused on establishing a land ethic.  Students read A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Leopold, 1949) by Aldo Leopold, discuss chapters, visit the Gilbert Riparian Preserve, and then reflect on the experience in relation to the reading.  Learning cycle one establishes a base of knowledge that is then transferred into learning cycle two.  The topic of environmental sustainability serves as a sequencing thread progressing into each cycle. The combination of concrete stimulus, analysis and self-reflection allowed students to reevaluate environmental sustainability presented in the course.

Figure 1 A student visiting the Gilbert Riparian Preserve

Applied Research

In order to analyze the ability of students to understanding environmental sustainability I implemented a multi-level qualitative research approach that collected data from four different sources: 1) student surveys, 2) focus groups, 3) individual student journals and 4) a grounded participant observation (Creswell, 2003).  I engaged in a concurrent nested model that simultaneously collected data from the different questions at a variety of levels.  The following two research goals and questions were analyzed and will be addressed in this paper:

Goal 1 – Understand the process of experiential learning in relation to adult learning.

Question – How does student interaction with nature facilitate the learning             process?

Goal 2 – Understand the process of transformational learning in relation to             experiential     learning.

Question – What aspects of nature-based learning transform student perceptions of             sustainability?

Goal I

I focused on student surveys, individual student journals, and grounded participant observation to analyze goal one.  I concentrated on two particular questions in the surveys.  I first analyzed the pre-survey and post survey responses to the question, “How often do you engage in activities in the natural world – Ex. Hiking?”  In the pre-survey 62% of students responded to engaging in nature often, whereas in the post-survey 83% answered often or more often than before the course.  Some students in the post-survey qualified their answers by noting the course influenced their desires to be in nature. A nineteen-year-old male responded, “increasingly more, I am beginning to fall in love with the outdoors and hiking again.”

The second question I analyzed was the post survey question, “Did the experiential learning assignments help you better understand environmental sustainability? Why or why not?” The answer “Yes” was given by 92% of the students.  Almost all students clarified their view of experiential learning by including following up statements such as, created greater sense of place, makes connections with course readings, gave a sense of accomplishment, was hands on and leads to further inquiry.  One particular twenty-one-year-old female responded, “Yes, it made me actually see nature for myself. It got my attention and experiencing my hike was something that could not be taught in a classroom setting. It is hard to explain how amazing nature is without having it in front of you in real life.”  The student’s answer, which was consistent with the views of other students, expresses the importance of getting out of the traditional classroom and experiencing nature.  The responses suggested that students were making connections to their experiences in relation to course materials.

Figure 2 Students working in the CGCC Environmental Technology Center Gardens

Student journals that reflected on the learning process provided a solid base of evidence warranting the value of experiential learning.  A rich example that demonstrates the effectiveness of experiential learning comes from a twenty-five-year-old female reflecting on her individually designed experiential assignment to explore the Tonto Natural Bridge:

I noticed a sign across the highway from the park stating there was a landfill nearby. I was very intrigued that there would be such a place within close quarters to a riparian area. I have since searched for answers, but instead have been led to additional questions. I became interested in locations and dimensions of landfills, in addition to hazards and potential consequences of the environment within it’s immediate vicinity.

The student was not content with just exploring nature.  She now began to wonder about humans infringing on the natural world, becoming aware of the realities of waste in a consumer society.  The student could have easily just reported on her experience at the natural bridge but instead became intrinsically interested in seeking further knowledge about waste management.

.

Figure 3 Student exploring Tonto Natural Bridge

Finally, I was able to note first-hand the merits of experiential learning by engaging in grounded participant observation.  In collaborative problem solving actives, I noted the ability of students to multi-task, self-organize and articulate their ideas in formal presentations.  The day of gardening (cycle two) was one of the most insightful activities to observe because, almost all of the students had never worked in a garden, yet they quickly began migrating to activities that they found interesting.  In addition, I observed naturally occurring collaborations around necessary tasks like moving compost to garden beds, making stone walkways, and even pulling weeds.

Goal II

For Goal Two I focused on the conditions associated with nature-based learning that transform student perceptions of sustainability by incorporating all four methods of data collection.  In reference to student surveys, I focused on two questions that were presented in pre and post surveys.  The question that provided perplexing results in reference to the complete study was, “Do you think that the preservation of the planet is an important concern?”  In the pre-survey 98% of the students responded yes whereas only 89% said the same in the post-survey.  The post-survey result in isolation might appear puzzling given that after fourteen weeks a few students responded to being less concerned with the preservation of the planet.  Although in context to the results of the second observed question, the prior question is better understood.

The second observed question for goal two was, “Is environmental sustainability a concept that you think about in your everyday life?”  In this question only 50% stated yes in the pre-survey, whereas the answer doubled to 100% in the post-survey.  When observing both questions together, and from data collected in the focus groups (which will be discussed later in the paper) it appears that the students became better informed about the state of the planet as well in their understanding of sustainability.  This new-found knowledge may have lead some students to become pessimistic about the future state of the planet.

The student journals also provided insight into transformational learning by focusing on language depicting possible triggering mechanisms associated with experiential learning.  Student journals provided connections between experiential learning experiences and the understanding of course material.  Students used such words and phrases as, purpose, doing, application, takes on meaning, experience, hands on, and real work to note that experiential learning provided a connection to course material.  A contextual example comes from a thirty-two-year-old male commenting on experiential learning, “hands on learning is always (in my experience) more beneficial at forging a connection and providing direct understanding of a topic. In this case, being in the environment certainly opened my eyes to issues here in the valley and on campus as well.”

I implemented the World Cafe collaborative learning process to serve as an informal focus group design (Brown & Isaacs, 2005).  The process rotates students from one small group to another during ten-minute intervals over a half hour time frame.  The World Café occurred on the first, seventh, and fourteenth week of the course.  The students were asked to focus on their personal experiences with sustainable or unsustainable behavior and reflect on how to define sustainability.  The concept that experiential learning enhances the ability of students to understanding of environmental sustainability was reinforced by data collected in focus groups.

In the first World Café, students depicted sustainability as being little more than recycling and not using water bottles.  The students were unable to provide clear examples and could not articulate a definition of sustainability.  By the seventh week, students were able to articulate clear examples and provide definitions of sustainability that reflect ideas associated with current academic articles.  In the seventh week students were making the following claims in the World Café, we need to think more about long-term consequences; rather then short-term profits, and sustainability refers not just to our present generation, but future ones as well.  Students were acknowledging the need for having a land ethic and sense of place, and being more aware of consequences. Students in the fourteenth week of the course demonstrated an understanding of the topic by defining sustainability as a paradigm shift of every individual to have better moral obligations for the next generations and over all ecological health.  Students were able to articulate a moral responsibility to the planet.

Finally in regards to grounded participation observation, I was able to observe students engaging in critical thinking activities to solve actual environmental concerns in their community.  In separate learning cycles the students worked on projects that put theory into practice.  In learning cycle three students analyzed the cities of Gilbert and Chandler through the lens of chapter sixteen in Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Diamond, 2006).  Diamond points out twelve concerns of urban areas such as natural habitats, population growth and freshwater.  Students were assigned into four groups and asked to investigate how the concerns relate to one of the two cities.  The process involved five class periods to research, analyze data, provide a formal group presentation using power point, video and/or prezi, and submit an individual reflection.  A nineteen-year-old male noted in a journal assignment associated with the learning cycle:

In reflection it was eye-opening to see examples of the environmental problems discussed in “Collapse” in our own home city, and state. I have learned that our iconic desert landscape is under attack, and drastic action needed to be taken in protecting it. In addition, studying my topic in particular I saw a clear correlation with Diamonds claim that a failure for a society to perceive a problem, and the failure of Arizonians to perceive a problem when they introduced these species. For instances the Red Borne grass was introduced to feed cattle, and now has grown uncontrollably and is responsible for hundreds of desert fires.

The reflection demonstrates the student was able to take abstract ideas from course material and provide concrete examples in his own community.

Figure 4 A group presentation

Learning cycle three was followed up with a project that analyzed the sustainability of Candler Gilbert Community College in reference to ideas present by Lester Brown in Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Brown, 2009).  In the same assigned groups, students surveyed the campus in order to note sustainable and unsustainable practices and to create a plan to make the campus more sustainable.  This group project occurred over three class periods concluding with a formal presentation and individual reflection.  In both learning cycles I was able to observe students demonstrating the ability to self-organize, analyze, engage in research and articulate ideas in formal presentations.

Figure 5 CGCC Environmental Technology Center Gardens, fall 2011

Impact of Research

Grades and student retention were not the main focus of this study, although I was very amazed to discover that both improved from the previous year.  In the fall of 2010 there was a retention rate of 66% with 56% of the students earning a grade of “C”, of which 36% received an “A”.  In comparison to the fall of 2011 (both years began with the same number of students) when retention was 94% with 86% of the students earning a grade of “C”, and of which 52% received an “A”.  This point is not to imply that there is a direct correlation between grades and learning.  But, the findings are relevant to a political climate in higher education that is obsessed with accountability.

Overall, this paper demonstrates that a properly planned experiential model allows students the ability to overcome a tendency towards environmental nihilism, while developing as independent adult learners who transformed in their understanding of sustainability.  In the words of an eighteen year old female reflecting on the course:

I gained greater understanding of why one should care about their impact on the environment. I learned about how nature regulates itself and every little part is important to the big picture. I also am aware now of the impact humans are having on it and how we should reevaluate how we live our lives to be more sustainable rather than what is comfortable.

In this reflection the student demonstrates a moral awareness of her relationship to nature.

Over the fifteen-week course, students began adopting terms such as, forethought, accountability, and continued education into their vocabulary, while coming up with practical solutions for environmental problems.  As summarized by five students in the final focus group, sustainability is “being consciously aware of individual and community choices to conserve resources and the environment to ensure the education and well being of future generations”. Ultimately, this paper ought warrant a discussion regarding the importance of experiential learning at the community college level, while rethinking how environmental ethics is taught in higher education.

Figure 6 CGCC Environmental Technology Center Gardens, fall 2012

Reference List

Beard, Colin, & Wilson, John P. (2002). Experiential learning: A best practices handbook for educators and trainers (Second ed.). Philadelphia: Kogan Page.

Boud, David, Keogh, Rosemary, & Walker, David. (1985). Promoting reflection in learning: A model. In David Boud, Rosemary Keogh & David Walker (Eds.), Reflection:Turning experience into learning. New York: Nichols Publishing Company.

Brookfield, Stephen D., & Holst, John D. (2011). Radicalizing learning: Adult education for a just world. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Brown, Lester. (2009). Plan b 4.0: Mobilizing to save civilization. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Cowan, John. (1998). On becoming an innovative university teacher: Reflection in action. Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Creswell, John W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (Second ed.). Thousand  Oaks: Sage Publications.

Diamond, Jared. (2006). Collapse: How societies choose to fall or succeed. New York: Penguin Books.

Ehrenfeld, John R. (2008). Sustainability by design: A subversive strategy for transforming our consumer culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Gardner, Howard. (2006). Multiple intelligences: New horizons. New York: Basic Books.

Giddens, Anthony. (1986). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kamenetz, Anya. (2010). DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the coming transformation of higher education. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing.

Kolb, David A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Larson, Brendon. (2011). Metaphors for environmental sustainability: Redefining our relationships with nature (Vol. Yale Press). New Haven.

Leopold, Aldo. (1949). A Sand County almanac and sketches here and there. New York: Oxford University Press.

Louv, Richard. (2006). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Louv, Richard. (2011). The nature principle: Human restoration and the end of nature-deficit disorder. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books.

Moon, Jennifer A. (2004). A handbook of reflective and experiential learning: Theory and practice. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

Orr, David. (2011). Hope is an imperative: The essential David Orr. Washington: Island Press.

Shor, Ira. (1987). Critical teaching and everyday life. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Tood, Nancy Jack, & Todd, John. (1993). From eco-cities to living machines: Principles of ecological design. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.

Vella, Jane. (2002). Learning to listen, learning to teach: The power of dialogue in educating adults. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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PDF: Slovin&BrooksJSESpring2013

Stages and Breakthroughs: An Illustration of the Story-to-Song Method

Marieke Slovin

Malcolm Brooks

Abstract:  Story-to-Song (STS) is a collaborative musical process in which a participant and a musical guide work together to create a song from the participant’s spoken story. Within this process can be found stages that progressively transform a written text into a song with a melody, verses, chorus, groove, and chord progression. The authors, who have worked as both musical guides and participants, explore this method in a scholarly realm in order to deconstruct the stages for composing a song. Through a creative deconstruction of this method, they have gained insight into how to create a sustainable, collaborative partnership.

Keywords: autoethnographic songwriting, interactive interviewing, sustainability, collaboration, story, song, arts-based research

Stages and Breakthroughs: An Illustration of the Story-to-Song Method

Collaborative partnership provides a model for sustainable leadership and for showing individuals within a community—be it geographic, academic, or professional—a way of working together. This article reveals some of the conflicts that new partners may face. It exposes the inner struggles as well as the musical differences that arise as two musicians—a woman and a man—create music through a method they call Story-to-Song. Most important, this paper illustrates how collaborators can transcend conflict and differences of opinion through dialogue and creativity in the realm of social inquiry and arts-based research.

Story-to-Song (STS) is a musical process wherein a participant works with a guiding composer to create a song from a story. STS is a method of lifting song from story, as well as an in-depth interview from one person to another that explores the human experience and the vicissitudes of life. The final product is a song that gives voice to an event from the participant’s life, which can be shared with the participant’s community.

A song written in the STS tradition may take many sessions of work between guide and participant. Within the STS process, there are definitive stages that allow participant and guiding composer to move from story telling to story singing. During each stage, emotion and meaning are bestowed upon the words of the story through the discovery and creation of a melody, a musical key, a chord progression, rhythm, groove, and arrangement of lyrics taken directly from the story itself. There are also moments when the participant, guiding composer, or both may have difficulty moving forward—moments the researchers deem being stuck—followed by moments when a shift occurs that allows for continued movement within that stage or on to the next stage—a breakthrough.

The stages identified thus far include:

1. Participant shares a story, which is captured verbatim by guide.

2. Promising melodic germs, along with rhythm and groove, are revealed from a recording of participant singing text.
3. Chorus structure is developed.
4. Verse structure is developed.

5. Verses and chorus are arranged in a way that captures essence of story.

6. Run through of verses and choruses

7. Chords and strumming pattern

8. Performable work of music for voice and accompaniment

The following reflections are commentaries on the individual stages in the songwriting process as each researcher experienced them during an STS session. These passages are excerpts from longer pieces that explore each of the stages in this process. In her reflection, Marieke explores her experiences working with participant Wren Logan, a fellow member of her cohort in the Prescott College Ph.D. program. Marieke reflects on her experiences during Stage 4 of the STS method, when she explored possibilities for the verse structure for Wren’s story about identity and cultural challenges faced by a young mother. Malcolm’s reflection focuses on an STS session working with Marieke as participant. He describes a situation during an STS session working on Stage 3—developing the chorus—in which he railed against Marieke’s wish to sing a particular note in a chorus. While each reflection offers insight into only individual stages in the overall method, there is much that can be learned and revealed from deconstructing these experiences.

Marieke Slovin—Of Lyrics, Verse Structure, and Inner Voices

The process of reworking and revising Wren’s song has been happening sporadically over the past few weeks. It is especially challenging with the three of us—Wren, Malcolm, and I—living in different places and all busy with life, the building of houses, children, and so on. In spite of such challenges, I have been inspired and awed by the beauty of the words and meaning behind this song. It has been particularly moving to see how we three have created a true sense of community and commitment to this project, though none of us is being reimbursed monetarily or in any tangible way for our efforts.

Of note, I want to elucidate on an inner voice that has been revealed in me over the course of this project. I have begun to hear and feel a strong and quite demanding voice from within, insisting on particular lyrics in the shaping of this song. I have found that each time I immerse myself in STS, I discover a number of these voices, ranging from an inner critic, who seeks to dispel any confidence that would allow me to move forward in the musical process, to a confident singer, who thwarts the efforts of my research partner’s inner voices in an attempt to ensure that certain melodies, notes, or chord progressions endure in the creation of a song.

Reinharz (1997) describes each of these inner voices as a “self” (p. 3). Researchers “both bring the self to the field and create the self in the field” (p. 3). She describes these selves as affecting her “ability to conduct research” (p. 4). She also writes of their ability “to shape and obstruct the relationships that the researcher can form and hence the knowledge that can be obtained” (p. 4). Similarly, I have experienced the barriers created by the voice of my inner critic, thwarting my musical efforts and success until I experience a breakthrough that quiets the critic for a time. I seem to experience an ongoing battle between my own inner selves with each STS experience. Perhaps, these inner voices I describe have existed for decades. However, I have only become aware of them to the point of giving them identities and character traits through participation in STS.

We made quite a bit of progress in shaping the song after Wren sent a series of verses she had created via email. The words she chose were haunting and beautiful. I spent a couple of hours sitting with them and looking for ways to create individual verses that, when sung together, would reveal the meanings in Wren’s story—namely, the struggle for a woman to maintain her sanity and self of sense in the wake of becoming a mother, particularly with the challenges of cultural pressures.

I sang different lines over and over. As I sang them, I found that I was offered musical gifts that allowed for what Malcolm and I call a musical breakthrough. This concept of a breakthrough is essentially a magical moment when the feeling of being stuck musically is suddenly eliminated by a thought or idea for a melodic germ, lyric or chord choice, rhythm, speed, or other musical element. This notion of a breakthrough is really a musical watershed, a moment when you realize that the song is revealing itself, that everything is going to be all right musically in the end, and that you have permission to carry on and move forward.

In STS, both participant and guide combine efforts to discover a song from spoken text. As my research partner Malcolm has explained, the song is already out there, waiting to be discovered. Pieces of the song are revealed in stages if the participant and guide are open and respectful to the experience of receiving them. The composer has to work at finding the song but does not have control over when and how the parts of the song will be offered. There is a certain level of respect, chance, and paying attention in the process of finding pieces of the song as they are revealed. The composer can only do so much to help move the process along (M. Brooks, personal communication, October 23, 2011).

Berkes (2008) describes a similar belief in the hunting tradition of the Cree in northern Canada. The Cree believe that a hunter must first respect an animal he or she hunts. A successful hunt results only after the animal decides to offer itself to the hunter. Berkes (2008) writes:

The hunter always speaks as if the human is the passive partner in this relationship. If the animal decides to make himself available, the hunter is successful. The hunter has no power over the game; the animals have the last say as to whether they will be caught. The hunter has to show respect to the animals because the hunter is dependent on game. The game is not there for the taking. There is no guarantee of a kill. The game must be pursued. (p. 99)

The result of a successful hunt is irreversible. In composing, there is also a sense of irreversibility and inevitability, for when a musical breakthrough occurs, there is no going back. The musical gift, however small, makes it nearly impossible to remember or to even conceive of ever having played or sang the song differently. An example of this phenomenon can be found in two emails from Wren to me. In the first one, she requested that I sing higher notes for the line leaving was a severing. Moments later, she wrote a second email saying that she realized that I had already sung the notes higher in a recording I had previously sent her. She thought that perhaps the fact that she had already heard me sing the higher notes was the reason she desired to hear them sung this way. She could not recall if she had her idea of singing higher notes prior to listening to my recording. The question arises as to whether the idea been planted in her mind because she had the innate sense that it should be so or as a result of hearing me singing it that way and then couldn’t remember or imagine it being sung any differently.

Another example of a breakthrough appears in a song I worked on collaboratively with Malcolm called Size Doesn’t Matter. Following the STS method and working iteratively, I sang the chorus multiple times. One time I sang the line It’s only how you feel slightly differently from previous times but in such a way that Malcolm exclaimed, “That is it. We can never go back to the earlier version” (M. Brooks, personal communication, November 28, 2011).

A number of these breakthrough moments occurred in the carving out of Wren’s Canyon Song. I choose the term “carving out” because I truly felt that the song was present in Wren’s words the entire time. I had but to carve and sculpt to find the exact words that would help to give voice to her experience with the most feeling and poetry. Since words, chords, and melody are all that an audience who is not familiar with Wren or her story will hear, they must be chosen to fit together so as to channel the emotion and meaning in the song successfully. I am including the song structure in its entirety below so that my subsequent references to individual lyrics and phrases have context.

There’s a place in the desert

I’ve gone to for years

Every time I go visit

A journey to myself

It’s just a dry desert wash most of the year

When you start hiking, signs of life appear

Can I find the courage

To part with you, my love

And nurture my own spirit

You’re part of me, my love

Each day you bring joy to my life, little one

Leaving you is the hardest thing, I’ve ever done

Chorus:

(There are) Cottonwoods in the distance

Water in the wash

Birds are singin’ if you listen (there are)

Bright yellow and orange rocks

Saguaros are hanging on the cliffs and

Somehow

Everything sorts itself out right here

Somehow everything sorts itself out right here

One life for another

My body’s not my own

I carried you inside of me

For 9 long months all alone

Like a drug, I couldn’t get enough of your love

Your smiling face and your baby smell, my little one

I wasn’t sure just what to do (but I was)

Losing my mind

Peaceful nights disrupted

My own needs cast aside

People tryin’ to tell me how to love

What gives them the right to judge love?

Chorus

So leaving was a severing

Then the greatest joy

It was the first time I left my baby

The first time on my own

It was the first time I got my body back

In a year

The first time I’m returning

Here

Chorus

One example of a breakthrough occurred when I found myself replacing the words get hiking with visit at the end of the second line of the first verse. The line Every time I go hiking became Every time I go visit. I was uncomfortable having the word hiking twice in one verse. I also found that having the word visit and then hiking helped to establish the importance of two events taking place in that first—the meaning behind Wren traveling to this sacred place, as well as the transformation that occurred when she immersed herself in the canyon wilderness. A second breakthrough happened in replacing the words Then with When, as well as deleting the word and from last line of the first verse. The line Then you start hiking and signs of life appear became When you start hiking, signs of life appear.

These differences may seem small, but the deletion of even one small word can make a line feel even better to sing and make it easier to share the meaning with the audience with more forthrightness and clarity. It can also alter the meaning of the phrase ever so slightly but in meaningful ways, such as with the example above of changing get hiking to visit. There are times when more words can add more meaning and depth; however, I am finding that, in the case of songwriting and especially in song singing, less is more. Having fewer words allows time for the audience to take in meaning and digest everything happening in each moment of the song, of which there is a lot—rhythm, melody, chords, and lyrics. The full meaning is revealed when individual lyrics are tied together in a single line, then tied together with all of the lines of a verse, then connected from verse to chorus, and then connected to all the verses and choruses. One word change may seem small and unworthy of much attention; however, when you have only a few words in a verse and even fewer in a single chorus, as well as only two to four minutes of time to share the power of the human experience, the pressure is great to do justice to that story without saying too much, without making the song so long and verbose that it grows cumbersome to listen to, and without changing the rhythm, speed, and word choices so much that the meaning of the song strays from what the storyteller intended.

Another example of a musical gift appears in the line Birds are singing if you listen. When I first began working with the words in this phrase, I felt awkward singing trees thicken. Moreover, even though the words made sense in the context of the spoken story, I was concerned that they would not succeed in creating a comprehensible image for a person listening to the song without the complete story in hand. There was also a part of me that delighted in the idea of hearing birds singing in the canyon and wanted to bring them back into the song. I had let go when the line disappeared earlier in the songwriting process, but I could not resist seeing how it felt to put them back in. I did a run-through of the song and tried singing the chorus slightly different each time it came around in the song. By the end, the line if you listen had revealed itself after the beginning part birds are singing. Eureka! A breakthrough moment had occurred once again. It felt so wonderful to sing this line. It also seemed to fit cerebrally with the idea of going to a place to awaken the sense of your most inner self by awakening your senses. What better way to truly be who you are than by paying such close attention to where you are?

Then there are the “let’s just try singing it this way” moments. These are simply experiments to try to hone down the words to the point where they feel absolutely wonderful to sing. They require paying very close attention to details—what feels better and sounds better? What feels and sounds round, clean, and polished? When is it appropriate to sound polished? In the case of the Canyon Song, I sought a polished feel and sound and shifted the word this to a in the very first line of the song. The line There’s this place in the desert became There’s a place in the desert. The third to last line also received this change. It’s just a dry desert wash most of the year.

Explaining why this feels better and why I care at all about such a tiny change is actually quite challenging. Malcolm believes that it demonstrates that I am a true singer and writer. All I can say is that when I tried singing it with even that subtle change, it felt better and clearer. It was easier to sing There’s a rather than two words beginning with th. It also seemed to lend more importance to the place, which held such sacred meaning for Wren that she chose to travel there at least once every year to restore her sense of self and equilibrium. Calling it this place seemed to diminish the significance of the canyon over all the other canyons in Arizona where she could go hiking.

There were also examples of moments when my inner singer simply felt good singing particular words, cutting out others, or dropping a syllable from a two-syllable word to make it a one-syllable word. Journey into myself became Journey to myself. No matter how hard I tried, my inner singer just would not sing the in. Since this small change did not seem to alter the meaning of the line in any great way, I felt comfortable with the shift. The shift in meaning actually became even stronger in illustrating that, in traveling to the canyon, Wren was actually going to find herself—her own identity, as revealed most strongly when she spent time immersed in a desert wilderness. That is pretty powerful, especially when thinking about our many inner selves and how different situations, people, and events reveal different elements of who we are.

Then there were the serendipitous moments—happy accidents—which were even more interesting. For example, I felt very strongly about the words my love at the end of the judgment line, and I even sang both words in the recording. However, when I went back and listened to the recording, I noticed that I had sung the word my so low that it had not quite registered, leaving the word love as the sole focus of the preceding words What gives them the right to judge. The line and meaning of the line became even more powerful and chilling, and this improvement had occurred completely by accident.

In this emergent method of social research we have called Story-to-Song, Malcolm and I have used music to give voice to Wren’s experiences, as well as to offer her a means of expressing her struggle by sharing her song with family and friends. Tel-Or (2008) uses interview and written ethnography to illustrate a Jewish woman’s struggle as a mother and wife in the Hassidic tradition in Tel-Aviv, Israel. While I do not consider my relationship with Wren as a researcher seeking an understanding of Wren’s life experiences, the result of our work together has helped me to gain insight into what it means to be a mother and a woman with an individual identity, as well insight into the cultural stereotypes and stigma of how mothers should behave and the kinds of choices they should make. Tel-Or (2008) also writes of being concerned that she will not be able to engage in intimate conversation with her informant Hanna due to the strictness and secrecy dictated by Hassidic culture. Of interest here is that Wren initially expressed a reticence to participate in STS because she was far too nervous and afraid, yet when the opportunity to participate with only Malcolm and me in a private setting arose, she eagerly volunteered. She even spent hours writing up her story ahead of time, an action which points to the importance of the experience for her. I did not have to pursue her as a participant from whom to learn, because she asked Malcolm if we would work with her after he had mentioned that we were looking for a volunteer. It was also perhaps less difficult for Wren to share her experience within the mores of our culture than it was for Hanna in Israel. Additionally, Wren had already established a sympathetic relationship with Malcolm and me as members of a cohort in the Prescott College Ph.D. program in Sustainability Education.

Malcolm Brooks—The Mind and Body of a Musician

Working with Marieke has caused me re-evaluate the tidy research personalities that I had assigned to each of us. Denzin (1997) divides new social science writers into two categories: ethnographic realists and cultural phenomenologists (p. 201). The realists look outside themselves to find a topic of interest in the world, while the phenomenologists look inside themselves and find a topic to introduce to the world. I told Marieke that I saw myself as more of the former, an ethnographic realist who looks outside himself for a topic to explore. I recalled how I spent delightful hours at the Maine Folklife Center, reading through interviews of people who were born over a century ago. The details of their lives seemed like Christmas presents to me. I wanted to sing about the man who loved to snowshoe, the boy who found the raspberries after the fire, and the woman who loved to douse for water because she found dousing fun. Marieke, on the other hand, seemed to me to be more of a cultural phenomenologist. I believed that, when writing her blog Ranger M Goes to Alaska (2011), she chose to explore her inner experiences and to draw out the inner experiences of others.

During my research with Marieke, I have found myself exploring my own inner experiences and engaging in phenomenological inquiry because there was no other recourse. As uncomfortable and draining as it has been, I have had to look within myself to find explanations for why I feel a melody or lyric phrase merits some adjustment. Again and again, I find myself knowing something “in my body,” on a visceral rather than cerebral level. I have had to confront my reluctance to embrace this method of research that calls for exploration of the dark recessed of mind and body. I admit that I find comfort in the positivist view that there may be some sort of objective reality that I might explore outside of myself without questioning my own bias (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000).

Denzin (1997) helps me see the craft of ethnographic songwriting as valid anthropological research. Songs are performance texts, and performance texts “can undo the voyeuristic, gazing eye of the ethnographer, bringing audiences and performers into a jointly developed and shared field of experience” (p. 94). Creating these performance texts requires turning one’s attention inward. Far more disconcerting is the task of communicating all that I observe when I turn my attention inward. I can find no one, simple interior realm to explore and express. Rather, there are distinct realms of pitches, rhythms, and words.

Marieke calls these realms “‘scapes.” I think of them also as “sites.” Marcus (1998) refers to sites in terms of physical locations or social locations, but I think of a song as an object of study with multiple musical sites. For me, the site of the melody, with its structural rises and falls, is far different from the site of the rhythmic pulse—or “groove” as musicians call it—where a river of beats flows evenly. Lyrics and accompaniment form their own sites. Although I may not leave the room of a building when composing, I do travel somewhere distant with my attention. In a sense, I follow the established practice of the anthropologist’s traveling off somewhere to conduct research (Reed-Danahay, 1997).

In trying to teach Marieke how to transform a story into a song, I experienced the benefits of employing a dialogic hermeneutic model (Michrina & Richards, 1996). Instead of a one-way flow of information—in which I would speak and Marieke would listen—we maintained a conversation. After any statement I made, Marieke felt free to challenge and question me. This sort of interactive interviewing allowed for a natural interchange (Ellis, 2004) among two students and reduced hierarchical differences between expert and novice or between interviewer and participant (Ellis, 1997). From what I have experienced so far, this dialogic process seems to ferret out biases and help build a fuller, shared understanding of a topic (Michrina & Richards, 1996).

Dialogical method can be especially effective, though uncomfortable, when two researcher partners are man and woman. The discomfort that can arise is not limited to the gender divide. In one instance, Marieke’s challenge generated a conflict between my own mind and body. To this day, thinking of the conflict makes me squirm. This example deserves further attention because it is complex. It reveals how a composer may wrestle with opposing perspectives in his own mind. It also reveals how a male bias can cause a man to continue to resist a woman’s opinion, even after a man admits the woman is right.

Here is the story. It may be helpful to offer lyrical context before I reflect on specifics. Below are the lyrics that Marieke and I distilled from the story she told. I have placed a box to show the spot where I contested Marieke’s melody.

I have layers and layers of people from over the years.

I keep losing myself in their words. It’s all that I hear.

I have been inclined to let them cover my own voice.

I’ve got to shed those layers and be

Free in the moment, free.

Free in the moment, free.

One layer down and one layer shed,

One layer down and one layer shed,

Free in the moment.

I’ve got a friend in Alaska, he won’t let me hide.

He said, “Girl, you can wail, here’s how. We’re going outside”

He said, “Don’t be inclined to let them cover your own voice”

“You can shed those layers and be

Free in the moment, free.

Free in the moment, free.

One layer down and one layer shed,

One layer down and one layer shed

Free in the moment.

So I tried, my back was bent over.

I wanted to wail, but I couldn’t wail at all.

It was coming from up here, not down here.

He said, “Why don’t you try standing,”

“Maybe a little more.”

But I wasn’t gonna go there,

I wasn’t gonna let out

Till he said, “1 2 3 Scream!”

And I felt free in the moment, free.

Free in the moment, free.

I’ve got one layer down and one layer shed,

One layer down and one layer shed

Free in the moment

Might last a moment

May lose it but I’ll find it again

Cause I know, I know,

I can be free.

Early on in our compositional work together, I told Marieke that the chords to a song should contain most of the notes in the melody. If a melody rests on a particular note for several beats, then the accompanying chord should contain that note. Yet at one point in our search for a chorus melody, Marieke persisted in singing a note that was not found in the chord that I was playing on the guitar. I grew upset. I later realized that I had resisted Marieke’s choice of melodic note for three reasons—I felt that background singers would have difficulty finding and singing notes to complement Marieke’s note; I deemed it an unsophisticated compositional trick to use melodic notes outside of a chord in order to create tension; and I kept hearing in my mind a muddy combination of notes because I had mentally transposed Marieke’s E above middle C down one octave where I could comfortably sing it. I describe these three issues in detail in the following pages.

The Melody Stands Alone

While we were testing out possible melodic lines for the song Free in the Moment, Marieke would frequently sing a particular note that was not contained in the chord that I was playing on the guitar. This note, an E above Middle C, lasted three beats. Marieke was singing it over a B minor chord, a chord that does not contain an E. I had not insisted upon playing the B minor chord, but Marieke had said earlier that she liked it at that place in the song. I had provided her with an alternate chord that I could play—an A chord—which contained the note E in its structure. She had listened to the A chord and said that she preferred B minor.

Marieke did not know it, but she was threatening an identity that I had constructed for myself—that of a composer who could create melodies of such interest that they did not need chordal accompaniment. In years past, I had observed that the melodies of composers like Tchaikovsky and Bizet held emotional power without chordal support. These melodies created mood by their own pitch and rhythm structures. I had vowed to write melodies with that same quality. As part of forming my own image, I pictured myself as different from those composers who employed chord progressions to create a sense of movement and tension. To sing a note that was not contained in the structure of the accompanying chord was, in my view, to employ a cheap effect. For me to endorse Marieke’s singing a note outside of a chord was tantamount to my descending to the ranks of the lesser composers. I felt that a melody should be able to stand alone; it should be able to evoke a mood without chordal accompaniment.

Yet sustaining this E over a B minor chord created a tension between voice and guitar that Marieke evidently enjoyed. She did not seem to have any concern about casting herself as a greater or lesser composer. If a particular note felt good to her inner singer, she followed the feeling, along with her own sense of musical intuition. I did realize that this concern with seeing myself as a sophisticated composer was my own issue and chose not to mention it at that moment. Besides, there were other musical worries I had regarding Marieke’s choice of melodic note.

What of the Backup Singers in the Band?

I said to Marieke that backup singers would have trouble finding harmony notes if the melody contained this E that she persisted in singing. I have learned through experience that melodic notes outside of chords can make it difficult to arrange harmony parts. I did not make my protest in a casual, unconcerned way. In my body, I had taken on the role of background singer and I was expressing a physical discomfort. Furthermore, I was vicariously sensing the discomfort of two background singers, since background singers often work in pairs and sing two separate notes that combine with the lead singer’s note to form a full three-note chord.

Marieke replied that, from the perspective of a lead singer of this song, she could report that singing this E above Middle C—the one outside of the chord—felt so pleasurable that she was unconcerned about what notes the harmony singers would sing. Marieke is a compassionate soul, and I knew that she was exaggerating her insouciance to make her point with a bit of humor. All the same, her feeling in her body as a lead singer conflicted with my feeling in my body as a background singer. Both bodies were sure that they were right.

I decided that my worry over background singers’ possible discomfort was a small concern in light of Marieke’s enthusiasm for singing her E. I had also decided that my motto “great composers do not cheapen themselves by using chords to create tension” might be suspect and too wobbly to take a stand over. So I capitulated. The E over the B minor could stay.

A Question of Pitch

Marieke’s desire to sing the E continued to haunt me. Even though the argument had been settled, a voice inside me continued to resist the idea of Marieke’s singing that note. To allay these persistent misgivings, I searched for precedents and thought of another song in which the melody contains an E sung over a B minor chord. I recalled how John Lennon sings an E over a B minor chord during the first line of the chorus of Help (1965). The words Help me if you can are all sung on an E above middle C. I also recalled with some self-righteous satisfaction that the background singers make no attempt to find or sing notes to support the E while it is being sung over a B minor chord. The harmony parts enter only when the accompanying chords change to an E. After that point, with the instruments playing an E chord, and with the singer singing an E note, harmony parts are easy to find and sing. I do not know whether the Beatles tried and then discarded harmony parts, but I could observe that they had chosen to create a melody with E note over a B minor chord. Marieke now had the Beatles on her side. Both she and Lennon were singing the same pitch in the same register over the same minor chord. Why was I still resisting this idea?

I considered how Lennon executes the note. I realized that it lies in the upper end of his vocal range and so he must sing it with sufficient energy to reach the pitch. This E also lies high in the range, or tessitura, of the melody of the song Help. The majority of pitches in that song lie below this note. Then, I considered how Marieke executes the note. It lies in the middle of her vocal range. Marieke is able to sing the note with less energy and at a lower volume. Additionally, the E lies in the lower range, or tessitura, of the melody of Free in the Moment. The majority of the notes in the melody lie above this note.

I realized, then, that although both Marieke and Lennon were singing the same pitch over the same chord, there were differences in how the note was being sung and the function and position of the note within the melodic line. Lennon was sitting near the top of his vocal range at a high point in the melodic line. Marieke, on the other hand, was singing near the lower end of her vocal range at a lower point in the melodic line. Perhaps, by exploring these differences, I might find the source of my misgivings.

I considered how, when Marieke and I are working out a melody, we often test out each other’s melodic suggestions. Marieke might sing a phrase to see how it feels to her, and then I might sing that same phrase to see how it feels to me. My voice mirrors, or echoes rather, the notes that Marieke sings. Yet because Marieke is a woman and I am a man, I make an adjustment during this echoing process. My throat automatically matches the degree of tension in Marieke’s throat and, to do so, automatically sings her phrase one octave lower. I transpose the notes that Marieke sings to make adjustments for our difference in gender and vocal ranges.

Unless I make a conscious effort to do otherwise, my body assigns a higher priority to matching the tension in Marieke’s throat than it does to matching the pitch and octave of the note that Marieke sings. In the case of Marieke’s singing an E above Middle C over a B minor chord, I unconsciously transpose that E down one octave so as to match the degree of vocal tension in Marieke’s throat.

I make this downward note transposition so unconsciously and so often that I can imagine how the lower note feels in my throat without even singing it. I can even react to this imaginary singing and assess the imaginary comfort level of my throat. Furthermore, I can even imagine whether a note will be easy to hear in my mind during the moment before I am to sing it in a performance. Most important of all, I can imagine how it feels to sing this note within a cluster of other sounds that make up a chord.

Clusters of notes played in the higher register on the piano sound interesting, crisp, and clear. In other words, it is possible to hear and appreciate each individual note. Clusters of notes played in the lower register, however, tend to emit an indistinct, blurred sound that almost blends the notes together so it is difficult to identify any one note individually. One of the first things that a music student learns in music school is that a cluster of high notes, all close in pitch, can sound pleasing. On the other hand, a cluster of low notes, all close in pitch, can sound like mud. After a few years of arranging experience, even the thought of a cluster of low notes can prompt a wincing reflex. When I imagined singing Marieke’s E above middle C—and unconsciously and automatically transposed it down an octave—I heard and felt mud in my mind and body.

I realized that I resisted Marieke’s choice of a melodic note because I could not stop imagining my singing it one octave down and could not stop imagining a mud of low notes. I could not stop imagining the difficulty of sustaining the note accurately down there while a bass and guitar played notes on nearby pitches. This discomfort, imaginary to my mind but real to my body, caused me to resist Marieke’s idea.

Were Marieke a man singing the very same the pitch, I would not unconsciously transpose a note down an octave. I would hear and imagine the note as it truly sounds and not be disturbed by an imaginary muddy cluster of low notes. I see now that it is my own conception of a physical difference between a man and a woman that makes me react and transpose what Marieke sings into something that makes feels comfortable to a male voice. However, the result of the transposition is a loss on my part of the pleasing tension that Marieke feels when she sings a note in an upper register.

I recognize that there is even more to be examined here. While the man in me may be unsettled, there is also an 11-year-old boy in me who spontaneously reacts with delight when he hears Marieke sing her E against the guitar’s B minor chord. To this lad, free of knowledge of music theory and innocent of the voice change ahead of him when he reaches puberty, Marieke’s idea is simply “cool.” This 11-year old boy, I also notice, does not care whether that sophisticated, purist composer in me is miffed. The boy has yet to form any paradigms about whether chords should or should not be employed to create musical tension.

Other “selves,” so to speak, became more apparent to me through this dialogic research with Marieke. I encountered a self-proclaimed sophisticated composer, an 11-year old boy, a background singer, and a lead singer, but also a bass player self, a drummer self, a producer self, a listener self, and a dancer self. These selves held strong opinions about the directions of the composition. Their opinions often differed. Working with Marieke was bringing these opinionated selves out into the open. The term “composer” ceased to look so tidy.

Like Marieke, I had encountered the concept of multiple selves before, not as a mental disorder, but as a means of presenting oneself to research participants in a way that facilitates cooperation. Reinharz (1997) conducted an analysis of the multiple selves she uncovered in her field notes during her work in a kibbutz in Israel. She found 20 different ways that she referred to herself in her notes. She categorized these references into selves that helped her perceive how she presented herself to the community and how the community’s responses were affected by her choice of self. Reinharz may have been negotiating with an outside world while I was negotiating with an inner world, but the approach was the same: a different self would appear when needed. Reinharz’s work reassured me since she had uncovered 20 selves within her. That is a big band. I felt grateful that my band of selves seemed to have fewer members. How ironic that one small detail of one melodic pitch would stir up feelings about my very identity—or identities.

Conclusion

These commentaries have provided a window into phenomenological and interpersonal events that transpire during the STS process. They have also revealed the value of interactive interviewing interspersed with individual reflection. Of interest is the fact that these excerpts were written independently and when shared, both researchers were astonished by what the other had experienced and expressed.

A research design has begun to emerge through this work. We have discovered that there is a dialogical process that occurs during actual musical exploration, as well as during discussions between two researchers and between a participant and a guiding composer.

Musical collaboration has shown itself to be multilayered and complex. Change and adaptability may be required if sustainability is to be achieved. Adjustments may need to occur not only in actions, but also in thought. Partners may find themselves managing their own personalities, such as balancing the opinions of an “inner critic” with those of a “confident singer.” Additionally, partners may find that their collective understanding is affected by physical differences, such as the difference between a female and male vocal range. When two people create together, the output may be musical and serendipitous personal growth.

References

Berkes, F. (2008). Sacred ecology: Traditional ecological knowledge and resource management (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Brooks, M. (2011, November 28). Personal communication.

Denzin, N. (1997). Interpretive ethnography: Ethnographic practices for the 21st century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.

Ellis, C., Kiesinger, C., & Tillman-Healy, L. (1997). Interactive interviewing: Talking about emotional experience. In R. Hertz (Ed.), Reflexivity and voice (pp. 119-149). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Lennon, J., & McCartney, P. (2011, December 7). Help [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0MVn4gxJs

Marcus, G. (1998). Ethnography through thick and thin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Michrina, B. & Richards, C. (1996). Person to person: Fieldwork, dialogue, and the hermeneutic method. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Reinharz, S. (1997). Who am I? the need for a variety of selves in the field. In R. Hertz (Ed.), Reflexivity and voice (pp. 3-20). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Slovin, M. (2011, December 5). Retrieved from http://rangerm.wordpress.com/

Tel-Or, S. (2008). Do you really know how they make love? The limits on intimacy with ethnographic informants. In R. Hertz (Ed.), Reflexivity and voice (pp. 169-189). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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PDF: NixonEtalWinter2013 

Abstract

Experiential learning, and more specifically, service learning (SL) can serve as an ideal mechanism to support sustainability education. In particular, because of its emphasis on collaboration between students, faculty, and the community partner(s) and on social change and civic engagement, SL provides an excellent vehicle to address issues related to social justice. In this article, we document a unique SL partnership at San José State University—CommUniverCity. CommUniverCity’s primary mission is to build social capital and empower residents in an underserved community near the university. Each year, students, faculty and residents invest more than 21,000 hours in service to the community. Because of its unique mission, sustainability-related projects lie at the heart of what CommUniverCity does. We analyze student surveys from more than 30 classes engaged in SL projects during 2012 across a wide range of disciplines. All projects address at least one, and often multiple “Es” of sustainability. Our findings indicate that students find value in the SL experience, not only in terms of better understanding of the course subject matter, but also in terms of their understanding of “community” and the larger issue of social justice and equity.

Keywords: service learning; experiential learning; higher education; community empowerment; social justice; social capital; sustainability

Introduction

The core tenet of experiential learning—that of learning through direct experience—has been encouraged in our educational system for decades. Service learning (SL) is one form of experiential education that engages students in service with the community. Unlike other forms of experiential education, SL emphasizes collaboration between students, faculty, and the community partner(s) and also focuses on lasting social change and a more engaged civic sector (Seifer, 1998). It can be an ideal mechanism to support sustainability education, particularly aspects of sustainability related to equity and social justice.

The integration of sustainability into the curriculum and actions of higher education institutes in the U.S. is not new, although it is a growing trend (Rowe, 2007). In addition, the inclusion of real-world, experiential learning opportunities in sustainability curriculum is encouraged.

Imagine what might happen if students were regularly assigned actual sustainability problems that were brought to higher education by cities, businesses, non-profit organizations, and other institutions. If classroom exercises produced workable contributions to solutions, students would understand they can have a positive impact on the world through their academic learning. (Rowe, 2007, p. 324)

Brundiers, Wiek, and Redman (2010) present a case study from Arizona State University on how real-world learning opportunities can assist students with learning key sustainability competencies. According to the authors, SL is particularly effective at addressing sustainability aspects related to social innovation and change. This article documents a unique service learning partnership at San José State University that has, as its primary mission, to build social capital and empower community members in an underserved neighborhood surrounding the campus.

CommUniverCity: A Service Learning Partnership to Build Social Capital

CommUniverCity is a unique partnership for service, learning, and empowerment between three vital, and equal, partners: the community, a group of underserved, low-income, predominantly minority neighborhoods in Central San José; San José State University (SJSU); and the City of San José.

Table 1 presents the demographic and socio-economic composition of the community component of CommUniverCity compared to the City of San Jose and Santa Clara County. The CommUniverCity community comprises eight separate “neighborhoods” in downtown San José, within a distance of approximately 1 mile of SJSU. The neighborhoods represent about 10% of the total city population and are quite different in terms of their demographic and socio-economic composition; a majority of residents are Hispanic, median household income is about $20,000 less than the citywide median value (nearly $30,000 less than the County), and the overall level of formal education attainment is also lower than the City or County.

Table 1 Comparison of Demographic and Socio-economic Characteristics, 2010

CommUniverCity began in 2005 with a primary mission to build community by engaging residents and students in service learning projects that meet neighborhood-driven goals.¹ Service learning projects are in the following areas (Fig. 1):

1. Education: enrich and expand educational opportunities for research and youth, encouraging a “College-Going” culture through the community.
2. Community Health: support all aspects of the neighborhood that contribute to healthy environments and lifestyles.
3. Neighborhood Environment: Foster a physically safe and socially connected, empowered community.

Figure 1 Service learning project areas

While service-learning partnerships exist elsewhere, several factors set CommUniverCity apart. First, CommUniverCity emphasizes a single geographical area, Central San José.² This fosters a greater cumulative impact compared to scattered, independent projects, which tend to be quite common in other service learning programs. This geographic concentration also supports another important component: interdisciplinary cooperation and learning. Having a large number of projects in a variety of disciplines promotes cross-fertilization between faculty and students from across campus. Another key factor is the long-term commitment to the community. CommUniverCity originally started with a five-year commitment from the university. This has been extended and there are no foreseeable plans to curtail the university’s support. A city administrator in San José during the initial program development commented, “Most service-learning projects are like one-night stands, but what we’re hoping for here is more like a marriage—or at least a long-term affair.” Two final factors that contribute to CommUniverCity’s uniqueness are the role of community residents and a goal to build social capital in the community. Service learning projects tend to be faculty-driven, although sometimes in consultation with the community. For CommUniverCity, the community sets project priorities and then faculty and classes are identified to work on the projects. The goal to build social capital in the community was not undertaken lightly (Christensen & Jackson, 2009). At a minimum, all projects must directly involve members of the neighborhood and, more broadly, foster positive relationships within the community.

Each year, more than 1,400 SJSU students work collaboratively within excess of 5,600 neighborhood residents on projects designed to meet neighborhood-driven goals. On average, the faculty, students, and residents collectively invest more than 21,000 hours in the community. Since 2005, CommUniverCity has invested over 150,000 hours of service towards community development efforts in the neighborhoods, valued at over $3M. The types of project vary widely but all fall within one of the three areas of focus. All projects contribute to the overarching goal of building social capital. Given its emphasis on a long-term commitment and on positive change in the neighborhood, an evaluation of the impact of the projects on resident attitudes is important. One ongoing project since CommUniverCity’s establishment is an annual survey of residents to assess opinions related to how well it is meeting established goals. Figure 2 shows the change in percentage of residents in Five Wounds/Brookwood Terrace (the original neighborhood of focus for CommUniverCity) rating their neighborhood living conditions as “good” over a five-year period. As you can see from the map, overall residents’ opinions on living conditions in their neighborhood improved during the time period. Of course, from these results, it is impossible to ascertain that CommUniverCity was the cause of the change in attitude. However, they do suggest some type of relationship between its involvement in the community and improved resident attitudes toward the neighborhood.

Figure 2 Change in neighborhood perception, 2005

Figure 2 Change in neighborhood perception, 2009

Fostering Social Justice Through Service Learning

Projects related to sustainability have been at the heart of CommUniverCity’s work since its establishment in 2005. Signature sustainability projects include Garden to Table, a neighborhood agriculture project, and Pathways to Active and Healthy Living, a project that addresses environmental and land use policy changes that increase walkability and connectivity in the neighborhood, thus encouraging active lifestyles and discouraging reliance on the automobile. Moreover, issues related to social justice and equity tend to be at the forefront of what CommUniverCity does. Most of the projects aim to develop a “college-going culture” by engaging SJSU students to support the academic success of school children, which in turn enhances their future career and lifelong earning potential and therefore their opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty. SJSU students mirror the diversity of the neighborhoods surrounding the campus, and they become a model for neighborhood children and their parents to chart a trajectory towards higher education.

While a primary goal for CommUniverCity is to build social capital in the community by working on neighborhood driven projects, the impact of the work on students and student learning is essential. It is, after all, a service learning partnership. Students engaged in service learning projects with CommUniverCity all complete a pre- and post-course survey. The purpose of the survey is to develop a better understanding of the current state of civic engagement among students at SJSU, to evaluate the potential impact of a CommUniverCity service learning project on a student’s likelihood to become more civically engaged, and to assess the impact of the project on a student’s learning. For the purposes of this article, we focus our analysis on projects that took place during 2012. Table 2 presents a selection of service learning projects including the SJSU department involved, a brief description of the project, and an indication of the sustainability component (the 3 Es—economics, environment, equity) that the project addresses.

In 2012, more than 30 classes engaged in CommUniverCity service learning projects. Academic disciplines ranged widely and included Art, Business, Communication Studies, Education, Engineering, English, Hospitality, Recreation & Tourism Management, Justice Studies, Nutrition & Food Sciences, Mexican American Studies, Political Science, Sociology, Kinesiology, Social Work, and Urban & Regional Planning—every College at SJSU was represented. Because of the three neighborhood-driven goals and CommUniverCity’s overall mission to build social capital in the community, all projects address at least one of the three Es of sustainability—economics, environment, equity.

In general, we see no statistically significant difference in students’ commitment to civic engagement after participating in a CommUniverCity SL course. However, our survey results suggest that SJSU students have a fairly strong commitment even before participating. More than 80% of students surveyed (both in the pre- and post-course surveys) agreed with the statement, “Individuals have a responsibility to help solve our social problems.” In addition, approximately two-thirds (Fall 2012) to three-quarters (Spring 2012) of students agreed with the statement that they “plan to become involved in my community” during the pre-course survey with no statistically significant difference in levels of agreement during the post-course survey. In fact, approximately three-quarters of respondents indicated that they had previously engaged civically during the previous year, either through involved with a community organization, political organization, or similar civic/political activity. These results are not particularly surprising given SJSU’s recent emphasis on community-based learning (see, e.g. Briggs, n.d.) and mission to promote responsible citizenship (San José State University, 2011).­

On the post-course survey, students are asked to identify how much the CommUniverCity project contributed to their learning in the class. A total of 327 students responded. Almost half of the students (43%) stated that the project contributed “a great deal” or “quite a bit” to their learning, while only one-fifth (21%) indicated “very little” or “not at all.” In fact, only 7% of students felt that the service-learning project did not contribute to their learning in the course.

Most of the survey questions were open-ended. It is here where we begin to develop a better understanding of how participating in a service learning project through CommUniverCity, regardless of academic discipline, really deepens a student’s understanding of “community” and the larger issue of social justice and equity.

Several students commented on the value they received from working on a real-world project and seeing a concrete impact from their work:

The most rewarding and enjoyable aspect was having the opportunity to make a difference with local residents. They mentioned how disenchanted they previously were with the planning process, but, for the first time, they now feel listened to. I loved interacting with such a diverse group of residents, all with different backgrounds and concerns. [Urban & Regional Planning Student, Spring 2012]

I think the most enjoyable part was going out to hear the community’s wants and needs. They had a lot to say and it seemed like they have the power to voice their opinion but feel like it’s a loss. It was moving to see them so troubled by it and how much a community is affected by the place they live. [Political Science Student, Fall 2012]

I learned that we are able to serve in many different ways…It may seem small to us…but being there talking to the parents of our future generations is a huge deal to the community. [Counselor Education Student, Fall 2012]

Another outcome of participating in the service-learning project was the stated desire among many of the students to become more involved with their own community:

I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to…work in my community and I hope to contribute doing so in the near future. [Mexican American Studies Student, Spring 2012]

I really have a desire to work with my community. [Justice Studies Student, Spring 2012]

I should get more involved in the community I live in. I don’t want to be the guy that didn’t contribute to making my community better. [Political Science Student, Fall 2012]

Merging the University with…community service is a wonderful way to open the eyes of young adults to the importance of being involved in the community. [Nutrition & Food Sciences, Spring 2012]

These responses provided a preliminary glimpse into what research suggests is a long-term benefit of service learning experiences—increased civic engagement (Astin et al., 2006).

Students were asked to identify the most challenging aspect of working on the CommUniverCity project. Given the large percentage of working students and commuter students at SJSU, it wasn’t surprising that several students commented on the amount of time required for the SL project and the difficulties of collaborating with other students outside of class and off-campus:

Carving out the time to spend on the project was the hardest aspect. I do not live in the area, work full time, and go to school full time so trying to find the extra time for the project was very difficult. [Urban & Regional Planning Student, Fall 2012]

Trying to balance out my hours with school, work, and commuting. [Education Student, Spring 2012]

Another concern voiced by students in several of the SL projects related to the challenge associated with the language barrier and working with the local community. For many residents in the CommUniverCity neighborhood, Spanish was the primary (and often, only) language spoken. This posed a unique challenge for SL courses where the emphasis was on building social capital and engaging with community members.

The language barrier, at times I felt confident in my Spanish, at times I did not. [Counselor Education Student, Fall 2012]

Preparing for the event. We presented to a Spanish speaking organization, so preparing the presentation was challenging since we were trying to do it in Spanish. [Business Student, Fall 2012]

The most challenging part of the project was the fact that [the community members] did not speak English. [Business Student, Spring 2012]

Conclusion

The impact of campus-community SL partnerships on service-learners, the community, and local government partners was manifold. Students learned directly from the residents’ deep understanding of their neighborhood, the community benefits when students put their specialized skills and knowledge in action to address community priorities, and community-based and local government agencies greatly leveraged their work in the communities they serve.

SL partnerships also serve as a vehicle for disciplines across the board to engage directly in sustainability in ways that both have a positive impact on students’ engagement with learning, and also generate tangible physical and social change in the community. When carefully balancing the three cornerstones of equity, economics and the environment, sustainability can provide a unifying framework that brings together wildly diverse aspects of community change. Thus, the goals of promoting long lasting, deep learning among students and advancing community priorities under a comprehensive framework can be met by integrating community-based experiential learning in sustainability education.

Our experience in CommUniverCity indicates that, for SL sustainability partnerships to thrive and be sustained over time, two key conditions must be in place:

1. A long-term outlook. In central San Jose, it has taken over 7 years for evidence of community change to begin emerging. It takes time for partners to develop some trust that everyone will stay with the relationship despite obstacles or difficulties that will surely arise.

1. A strong commitment to sustaining cross-sector and interdisciplinary partnerships. Sustainability, particularly in the context of neighborhood change, is not the domain of a single discipline or sector, as it entails work of great complexity. In CommUniverCity’s case, a strong multi-sector commitment that engages academia, local government, the nonprofit sector, businesses, and grassroots organizations has been instrumental in sustaining this effort over time. However, maintaining close multisector and interdisciplinary ties is not without challenges, emerging from shifting and at times conflicting priorities, and greatly different institutional and disciplinary cultures. Working out of a shared context, stakeholders are constantly reminded that institutional power is both a resource and a challenge.

While the promises of SL partnerships in sustainability are abundant, there were also challenges along the way, particularly for institutions of higher education such as SJSU with a significant number of working students, where the substantial commitment of time and attention that authentic, impactful community work entails may clash with students’ family and work responsibilities. Faculty and students must also be prepared to navigate the challenges of interacting with highly diverse communities in their own terms (by, for instance, accommodating diverse language abilities and needs such as childcare and demanding schedules).

Ultimately, however, these are challenges worth meeting. Through sustained, active engagement, SL sustainability partnerships have the potential of transforming the individuals who participate, partner organizations, and the communities in which they operate.

Endnotes

[1] An excellent history of CommUniverCity can be found in Christensen & Jackson, 2009.

2 In fact, for the first five years, CommUniverCity focused exclusively in one neighborhood within Central San José, Five Wounds/Brookwood Terrace.

Bibliography

Astin, A. W., L. J. Vogelgesang, K. Misa, J. Anderson, N. Denson, U. Jayakumar, V. Saenz, & E. Yamamura. (2006). Understanding the Effects of Service-Learning: A Study of Students and Faculty. Higher Education Research Institute, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.

Briggs, J. (n.d.). Longitudinal Analysis: Comparing SJSU to Other Institutions Using NSSE Data, Essential Learning Outcomes, and High-Impact Practices from 2002-2011. Office of Institutional Research, San José State University.

Brundiers, K., A. Wiek, & C. L. Redman. (2010). Real-world learning opportunities in sustainability: From classroom into the real world. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 11(4): 308-324.

Christensen, T. & M. Jackson. (2009). CommUniverCity: Building a partnership for service and learning. In Civic Service: Service-learning with State and Local Government Partners, eds. D. P. Redlawsk, T. Rice and Associates. (San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

Rowe, D. (2007). Education for a sustainable Future. Science, 317(5836): 323-324.

San José State University. (2011). Mission. Available at: http://www.sjsu.edu/about_sjsu/mission/ (accessed January 24, 2013).

Seifer, S.D. (1998). Service-learning: Community-campus partnership for health professions education. Academic Medicine, 73(3): 273-277.

U.S. Census Bureau. Census 2010, Profile of General Population and Housing Characteristics. Generated by Hilary Nixon, using American FactFinder; http://factfinder2.census.gov (accessed January 10, 2013).

Hilary Nixon – photo

Dayana Salazar – photo

CommUniverCity Logo – article photo

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PDF:  TreasterJSESpring2013

Ear-Witnessing in the Galapagos Islands: The case for Experiential Learning Abroad

Joseph B. Treaster, University of Miami

Keywords:  Galapagos, experiential learning, study abroad, University of Miami, The Miami Planet, acoustic ecology

We were in the Galapagos Islands and Professor Colby Leider was talking about storytelling. He’s an expert on sound. And for him, storytelling means collecting sounds with a tape recorder – the rustle of leaves, the hissing and spitting of a tortoise, footsteps on the side of a volcano, sometimes bits of conversation – and editing them into a musical narrative.

Professor Leider is a big guy – 6-foot-7-inches and 230 pounds – and he was standing there in a yellow T-shirt and blousy bush trousers, trying to inspire 17 students from the University of Miami.  He is the director of music engineering at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. His specialty is acoustic ecology, the relationship between people and the sounds in their environment, and he has done a lot of research in the Florida Everglades.

“Sound can convey many things that other media cannot,” Professor Leider told the students.

Professor Leider, who studied music at Dartmouth College and got his PhD at Princeton University, was my partner in an experiential learning project of the University of Miami in the Galapagos Islands, a cluster of  about a dozen volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean, near the Equator, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador. Charles Darwin did his early work on evolution in the Galapagos and the islands were now protected, at least in principle, as a World Heritage Site of the United Nations.  We called our six-credit, two-week-long multi-media course, “The Galapagos Islands: Environment, Culture and the Music of Darwin.”  Professor Leider was dealing with sound and the environment.  I had joined the University of Miami faculty as the Knight Chair in Cross-Cultural Communication after years as a reporter and foreign correspondent for The New York Times and I had been specializing in environmental and cultural issues. I was teaching about the environment and culture of the Galapagos and about research and writing. It was all storytelling.

In the Galapagos, which have been a part of Ecuador since 1832, we had an ideal setting: raw, wild, sparsely settled islands with plants and animals found nowhere else.  About 30,000 people live in the islands, drawn mostly from mainland Ecuador by dreams of earning a better living. They work as fishermen and farmers and, more and more, as tenders of the increasing waves of eco tourists. What we had here was an environmental and cultural laboratory.

Professor Leider talked about capturing sounds that conveyed a sense of place. He had been inspired by Ansel Adams, the renowned landscape photographer. “Ansel Adams captured a sense of place with photography,” Professor Leider said. “You can do that with sound.”

And, of course, you can do it with words, we told the students. And then we showed them how to do it.

We designed our program to give students a chance to embrace the Galapagos and to let the Galapagos embrace them, to sharpen their critical thinking and their ability to see things, to make them better writers and researchers and to introduce them to storytelling with words and pictures and recorded sounds. The students carried spiral notebooks as writer’s journals and little black H2n Zoom recorders with highly sensitive, built-in microphones. They wrote at least 500 words a day in their journals on what they saw and heard and felt. They took down facts and comments and scribbled out the beginnings of stories. They learned to edit their recordings and to shape them into music.  Professor Leider showed them how to listen better, how to become an “ear witness.”

“An ear witness,” he told them, “can perceive aspects of the environment that a purely eye witness cannot.”

We used The Miami Planet, the University of Miami’s online environmental publication that I founded and edited, as the laboratory and showcase for the students’ work – writing, photography, videography and sound recordings. The students and Professor Leider edited the sounds they gathered into a one-hour music CD.

We let the Galapagos be our classroom and we let our experiences be our teachers.  The learning came in field trips to lagoons and mangrove-lined beaches, on a more than 10-mile hike up a volcano, on small boats to nearby islands, in treks around the islands and at places where the people of the Galapagos gathered and worked.  We swam with sea lions and penguins, edged up close to blue-footed boobies and watched giant land tortoises making their way along a grassy migratory path on one of the larger islands. The students lived in small hotels run by families and had lunch and dinner at little restaurants run by other families.

Rush hour in downtown Puerto Villamil

What we did in the Galapagos can be done in most of the world. The key is to get students out of their comfortable surroundings and into a new environment and culture and then put them in situations where much of the learning seems to flow naturally. I’ve used some of the same techniques and principles for a summer abroad program in Stockholm – an elegant, old world capital that could hardly be more different from the Galapagos.

There is a lot of room for growth in university courses using experiential learning, especially overseas.  Most universities in the United States offer some form of summer abroad and semester-long study abroad programs with experiential learning.  But most students do not participate.  The overseas programs are not always effectively marketed and may seem expensive when, in fact, travel, housing and meals can cost less than a tourist trip – as in the case of our Galapagos program.  Tuition for summer abroad and semester abroad courses is the same as for classes taken at home campuses in the United States. The summer programs are compact and intense and provide an overseas experience for students who can’t be away from their university for a whole semester.

The effect on our students has been enormous. “Immersing myself in a fresh, unknown environment helped me get a broader perspective on who I am and what I am about,” said Ben Tiberio, a sophomore music student. For Sarah Raccuglia, a junior in psychology from New Jersey, our Galapagos program was “the most physically active, mentally inspiring and spiritually enhancing experience I have ever had.”

On that morning in the Galapagos, Professor Leider was illustrating his talk on storytelling with slides projected from his MacBook Pro laptop onto a flimsy pull-down screen in an echo chamber of a classroom. The lecture was, “Introduction to Digital Audio and Sound Recording.”

He was up against a lot of distractions.  The classroom was a little concrete-block building behind the Isabela Oceanographic Institute, our headquarters in the Galapagos.  It was all hard surfaces: stucco walls, long, Formica-topped tables, tiled floors.  Students sat at the tables in straight-backed chairs and when they shifted their bodies the steel legs of their chairs screeched on the hard floor.

Outside the big screened windows, palm fronds and flowering tropical shrubs fluttered in a light breeze.  We were in the town of Puerto Villamil on Isabela Island, the largest of the Galapagos Islands.  About 3,000 people live in Puerto Villamil. The air was cool, inviting, not even close to the baking heat you might expect at the Equator.  The chill of the Pacific’s Humboldt or Peru Current air conditioned the islands.

The main street in Puerto Villamil, Isabela, Galapagos Islands

A few hundred yards from Professor Leider’s classroom, the ocean was pushing the foaming, tail-ends of broken waves across a sandy beach. Crumpled heaps of black, centuries-old and hard volcanic lava rose in low, ink splotch patches on the beach.  On most mornings, colonies of prehistoric-looking marine iguanas camped on the coarse rock, taking the warmth of the sun. They were black with white flecks and the rocks were black with white flecks. Perfect camouflage.  Black frigate birds and brown pelicans skimmed low, searching the translucent sea for their next snack.

Marie Iguana

Paradise was just outside the classroom. And that was one of our first lessons as faculty. If we were going to connect with the students and get the most out of the Galapagos, we were going to have to get out of that concrete box. We’d been thinking along those lines as we planned the course and we could see immediately that we had been right.

The first year in the Galapagos, 2011, I worked alone. And I saw immediately that the program would be more effective with more faculty.  In 2012,  I was joined by Professor Leider and two other professors, Dr. Kristine Burns, an acoustic ecology specialist formerly at Florida International University in Miami, and Professor Yves Colon, a professor of reporting and writing at the University of Miami who had years of experience as a reporter and foreign correspondent at the Miami Herald. Professor Leider and Professor Burns were husband and wife and they brought their children, Liam, 10, and Livya, 7. The children went everywhere with us. Those of us who were a little older learned from watching them learn.

My original courses on researching and writing about the environment and culture morphed into a multi-media collaboration between the School of Communication and the School of Music – a first for both schools. The team approach provided an experience that was available nowhere else. We attracted students from both the School of Communication and the School of Music and from disciplines across the entire university.

I got started in experiential learning because the University of Miami wanted to develop a program in the Galapagos. I had worked throughout Latin America and had experience in the Galapagos and I was invited to be one of the start-up professors.  Johann Besserer, a German-born graduate of the University of Miami, had established the Isabela Oceanic Institute and he worked closely with the university.

It seemed obvious to me that the Galapagos had a lot to teach us all. I decided in planning my first classes that our method would be hands-on, total immersion. I was an experienced journalist and a beginning academic. It was only after I had taught my first classes in the Galapagos that I discovered my approach was known as experiential teaching. Of course I was following in the steps of John Dewey and generations of others who had demonstrated that some of the most powerful learning comes from doing.

University of Miami students on a bicycle field trip stop to record the sounds of a young giant Galapagos land tortoise

All of us read Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” and his journal entries on the Galapagos in the “Voyage of the Beagle,” his memoir of the five-year-long voyage that took him from England through the Galapagos and around the world beginning in 1831.  Those readings primed us for what we would find. Then we used our eyes and ears. We listened to Galapagos National Park Rangers, who earn their rank and pay according to their knowledge of the flora and fauna and to their language skills, and to the fishermen, school teachers and health clinic attendants, shop keepers and the clerks and managers and elected officials of the small municipal governments who have made their homes in the Galapagos. We looked and talked and I was often able to add perspective.  Some  nights, we would go back to the Isabela Oceanographic Institute’s little library and fill in the details with readings from works by scientists and researchers who had devoted themselves to studying the Galapagos.

Our students adapted without much fuss to circumstances that, for most of them, were far from anything they’d ever seen.  They worked on their writing and on the business of interviewing and Professor Leider gave them drills with their tape recorders and asked them to capture sounds as they moved around the Galapagos.

On the island of Isabela, where we spent most of our time, the faculty stayed in unadorned rooms above the offices of the oceanographic institute. There was a breezy terrace with a view of the sea outside the rooms on the second floor and bulky armchairs and we often worked there with the students in the cool evenings. A lot of it was one-on-one. We’d spend an hour, two hours maybe, strategizing on interviewing or squeezing the flab and the imprecision out of their writing.  Professor Leider and Professor Burns had set up a sound laboratory on the ground floor of the institute and students would drop in at almost any time.

At first, we envisioned the collaboration as a seamless sharing of teaching and raw experiences. We gave separate lectures and had separate editing sessions with the students, but we emphasized that storytelling was the overarching theme and that our goal was to combine sound and the written word to create stories that would be stronger than those with only words or only sounds.  We were all in this together, we told the students.

But the students didn’t believe us. They saw our program as separate pieces rather than a program of two parts.  To show that we really were working together with a single objective, Professor Leider and I decided to give our lectures together as a team.  And we combined all our other work. The writing faculty would edit Professor Leider’s writing assignments as well as our own and we would work together in publishing the students’ work on The Miami Planet and on the production of the one-hour music CD.

Originally students got their introduction to acoustic ecology and our research and writing assignments when we arrived in the Galapagos.  Now the students start practicing with their tape recorders and do their first Galapagos research and interviews before they leave Miami.

In the first summer, we used photos of the writers to illustrate their work on The Miami Planet.  Now we will be publishing the students’ writing with photos and videos that they’ve made. Inserting audio links into The Miami Planet articles is another innovation. The idea is to provide a full multi-media experience for the students and The Planet’s global audience.

We have added several days of service learning to our curriculum. Students pick places to work in Puerto Villamil.  One workplace is the town’s health clinic. We plan to help out at the municipal offices, in the schools, at a water treatment center and perhaps at a tortoise-breeding center.

From the beginning, we asked our students to write a reflective essay on their time in the Galapagos. We think, as other researchers have found, that reflection has significantly deepened our students’ experiential learning and we’re expanding this writing and discussion.

The students produced great work.  Michael Whitney, a junior in the School of Education, wrote a profile of a man who had abandoned a good job tasting shrimp for an export company to become an English teacher for children who had grown up speaking Spanish. Maxwell Gailey, a freshman music student, wrote about two researchers at the University of Miami’s marine science school who were surveying the mangroves of the Galapagos in connection with climate change.  Lindsay Walker, a sophomore in marine affairs interviewed a 93-year-old former inmate to tell the story of a penal colony that Ecuador ran in the Galapagos until 1959.  Corinne Nobili, a junior in advertising and theater, wrote about a woman who had moved from the mainland and opened a beauty parlor.  Many of the students were writing articles for the first time and none of them had experience with recording sound.

They came away from the Galapagos with considerable understanding of one of the world’s environmental treasures and of life in a developing country and with new skills in gathering information, more confidence in their writing and a new awareness of sound and how it affects us and our environment. Natalie Pena, a senior in broadcasting and creative writing, said she had gotten “a new, better tuned set of ears.”

Christian Suglia, a freshman in psychology and electronic media, said “the accelerated classes forced me to improve my writing very fast.”  He said he was independent before the trip, but that studying in the Galapagos made him more independent. “I got a semester’s worth of education in two weeks,” he said, “had the time of my life and made some really good friends.”

The students were mostly urban, well-off young people. The journey to the Galapagos showed them a simpler way of living.  “You realize how much excess people in the United States have,” said Megan Dettmer, a freshman in public relations from near Trenton, N.J. She said the work with sound reinforced her interest in theater production, but that the desperately beautiful beaches of the Galapagos had made her wonder if she really wanted to stick with her plan to move to Seattle after college.

Gailey, one of the music students and the son of a professor in the School of Medicine, said he “picked up on the idiosyncrasies – the pace of life, the way people interact – things that couldn’t be picked up from reading a book.”

Professor Colby Leider photographing marina iguanas with University of Miami students

Melissa Gemore, a junior in sociology from New Jersey, said she learned a lot about the people and the wildlife of the Galapagos and discovered a culture that was “much different from what I am used to.” She found the big tortoises, marine iguanas, sea lions, penguins and flamingos  “oddly tame” and was surprised that she was able to get close enough to almost touch them. Somehow, she said, she immediately felt like a part of the family she stayed with. Her writing improved and she began listening in a different way.  She had gotten just what experiential learning had intended to give her. “Even though this was a school trip,” she said, “it didn’t feel like it.”

You can see our students’ work in The Miami Planet’s Galapagos Diary at http://www.themiamiplanet.org/category/diaries/galapagos-diary/

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PDF: MarkRitchieJSESpring2013

Sustainability Education, Experiential Learning, and Social Justice: Designing Community Based Courses in the Global South

Mark A. Ritchie

International Sustainable Development Studies Institute

Abstract: Understanding how we live (culture) and its impact on where we live (ecology) is one of the key issues facing sustainability and sustainability education. The International Sustainable Development Studies has developed a study abroad program for American college and university students in Thailand, “People, Ecology and Development” to address these issues through experiential studies of sustainability.  Courses each semester focus on understanding the broader challenges of sustainable development through experiential studies of specific landscapes and cultures in the villages, mountains, coasts and islands throughout Thailand. This paper examines the key components of ISDSI’s programs, and provides a framework for understanding how these principles can be used to teach about sustainability within the broader context of issues of social justice and global learning more generally.  Key components of the ISDSI approach include: community based learning — working with local communities to design courses that reflect community needs, knowledge and struggles; place-based learning — examining both the culture and ecology of specific locations, watersheds, bioregions, island archipelagos, etc.; experiential learning — learning through direct examination of and participation in the cultural practices (lifeways, norms, etc.) and study of ecological components (forests, coral reefs, etc.); and expedition based — learning during focused expeditions through the landscapes being studied, usually human powered (backpacking through remote mountain forests, sea kayaking between islands, etc.).

Keywords: sustainability, experiential education, place-based learning, study abroad

Understanding how we live (culture) and its impact on where we live (ecology) is one of the key issues facing sustainability and sustainability education. The International Sustainable Development Studies Institute (ISDSI) was designed to address these issues through experiential studies of sustainability.  To this end ISDSI developed a study abroad program for American college and university students in Thailand, “People, Ecology and Development.”  Taught in four month-long blocks, courses each semester focus on understanding the broader challenges of sustainable development through experiential studies of specific landscapes and cultures in the villages, mountains, coasts and islands throughout Thailand.

Working with marginalized communities in the Global South can present significant challenges — how to address inherent disparities in power and knowledge, and how, especially in a hierarchical society like Thailand, to ensure that local communities are not exploited for education, but rather are empowered through education. To do this, ISDSI has developed “community based courses” where local communities are involved in the development and teaching of each course — so that the courses themselves are empowering communities.  As community members tell their stories and teach American students about their community, culture, ecologies and lifeways, we intentionally invert the usual knowledge/power hierarchy in these sorts of exchanges. Rather than students from the Global North coming to “help” communities in the Global South (with all of the attendant problems), communities in the Global South instead teach students from the Global North about their solutions to sustainability and provide inspiration and concrete ideas for students in the Global North to carry home to their own communities of origin.

This paper examines the key components of ISDSI’s programs, and provides a framework for understanding how these principles can be used to teach about sustainability within the broader context of issues of social justice and global learning more generally.

Key components of the ISDSI approach to sustainability education include:

• Community based learning — working with local communities to design courses that reflect community needs, knowledge and struggles.
• Place-based learning — examining both the culture and ecology of specific locations, watersheds, bioregions, island archipelagos, etc.
• Experiential learning — learning through direct examination of and participation in the cultural practices (lifeways, norms, etc.) and study of ecological components (forests, coral reefs, etc.).
• Expedition based learning — learning during focused expeditions through the landscapes being studied, usually human powered (backpacking through remote mountain forests, sea kayaking between islands, etc.).

ISDSI also offers students service learning internships, where students have a chance to work under a local non-profit/NGO or community organization after spending a semester living with and learning from marginalized people.

Experiential learning and sustainability

Teaching about sustainability can be challenging. Natural ecological systems are complex, and examining how they interact with complex social and economic systems requires understanding both social and natural sciences.

“Rather than being clear, simple and unambiguous, the concepts involved in ESD [education for sustainable development] are complex.  Their complexity stems from the intricate and complicated interactions of natural and human systems.  The challenge to educators is to derive messages that illustrate such complexity, without overwhelming or confusing the learner.” (McKeown, p. 30, 2002)

This inherent complexity is much easier to understand if illustrated with real world examples, allowing learners to see and experience the complexity of a forest ecosystem, and how local communities manage community forests and rotational farming systems to enhance and build the resiliency of these ecosystems.  Understanding this sort of complexity is critical to understanding sustainability, but is often difficult to do in a traditional classroom setting.

“The need to teach students to appreciate and understand complexity, all agreed, is critically important but also constitutes a major challenge, as students must be able not only to grasp a diversity of disciplines and perspectives, but also to integrate them.  The integration process in turn requires an understanding of certain guiding principles and techniques.  In many cases, the inability to integrate disciplines is embedded in the structure and culture of the academic institution itself.” (Manning, p. 16, 1999)

Experiential learning — learning by doing with reflection — presents the educator with a tool that can both engage the learner with complicated material, and help illustrate the complexity of real world ecological and human systems.

“We can loosely define experiential education as “learning by doing with reflection.”  This philosophy is based on the belief that people learn best by direct and purposeful contact with their learning experiences.  Simply put, the best way to learn about problem solving is not to read about it in a book, but to actively practice solving problems in a “hands-on” setting.  Such learning experiences are realistic: physically active, cognitively meaningful, and affectively engaging.” (Priest and Gass, p. 17, 1997)

There is a long tradition of experiential learning in outdoor and wilderness settings, in teaching trade craft, and other hands-on settings.  By combining experiential learning with grounding foundational seminars in the theory and practice of sustainable development, ISDSI courses combing the strengths of a traditional academic setting (seminars focused on theory and literature review) with hands-on learning in the field (experiential learning about culture and ecology).

“What might such experiences do? …they would remove the abstractness and secondhand learning that corrupts knowledge at its source.  Natural objects have a concrete reality that the abstractions of textbooks and lectures do not and cannot have.” (Orr, p. 96, 1994)

Adding to this “concrete reality” of natural systems, ISDSI programs are cross-cultural — students are American college and university students, and are on a study-abroad program in Thailand. This enhances our ability to teach them experientially about ecology, culture and social justice issues, since it removes the familiar blinders that may be present when studying in a same-culture context.

“Placing participants into an unfamiliar learning environment can foster the development of a variety of beneficial dynamics.  Such environments are often valuable because they present such a stark contrast to learners’ familiar environments, often allowing participants to see old behavior patterns in a new light with a richer perspective as well as permitting participants to notice behavior patterns that they may have overlooked in familiar settings.” (Priest and Gass, p. 20, 1997)

Experiential learning in a cross-cultural environment also helps with a fundamental principle of experiential learning — intrinsic rewards.

“Create situations where the consequences (positive or negative) are natural outcomes from the clients’ actions (e.g., delivered by the environment), rather than artificial ones (e.g., from the leader).” (Priest and Gass, p.24, 1997)

Learning to speak a new language allows you not only to successfully negotiate in a market for fresh fruit, but also allows you to learn directly from community members who are engaged in organic farming, mangrove conservation, and other sustainable endeavors.

As argued by McKeown, education for sustainability needs to be locally and culturally relevant — so taking students out of a familiar home-culture setting and helping them understand a new cultural and ecological context allows them to both broaden their understanding of specific cultural and ecological topics, and sustainability more generally.

“ESD [education for sustainability] carries with it the inherent idea of implementing programs that are locally relevant and culturally appropriate.  All sustainable development programs including ESD must take into consideration the local environmental, economic, and societal conditions.  As a result, ESD will take many forms around the world.” (McKeown, p. 13, 2002)

Place based and expedition learning

As argued by Louv (2008, 2011) and others, the current generation of students is increasingly cut off from the natural world and often unaware of basic ecological and place-based knowledge of home communities. When we ask placed-based questions, students often cannot answer — What watershed is your home in?  Which species of birds are residents, and which are migratory? What are the most common forest trees? Likewise, students often lack knowledge about their home economies and human systems — What contributes most to the local economy? What are the most common jobs? What challenges do small farmers and small business owners face in your community?

Ironically, perhaps, helping students become better place-based learners can often be best achieved in an unfamiliar environment.  A new place is interesting, and through guided inquiry and reflection students can learn about its local culture and ecology and carry that learning back to their home-place. There, they can then make similar inquiries and learn more about where they come from themselves.

Arguing for place-based education, Orr asserts that place-based learning in the natural world will both reconnect students to natural ecosystems, as well as expand their understanding of the world more generally. Extended time — expeditions — into specific places and ecologies can then help to develop exactly the multidisciplinary understanding that is necessary in education for sustainability.

“…[A] course on a nearby river might require students to live on the river for a time, swim in it, canoe it, watch it in its various seasons, study its wildlife and aquatic animals, listen to it, and talk to people who live along it.  A river become…”a microcosm of the world” and a doorway to wider knowledge.  Each student might research a particular aspect of the river, say, its history, evolution, art, chemistry, ecology, literature, or the politics and law that govern its use.  Collectively, a picture of the river might begin to emerge that would be more than the sum of the individual projects.  I am not proposing just a weekend field trip but a longer period of time to allow the senses to soak in the experience as sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and feel until something like profound respect, or more, begins to take root.” (Orr, p. 96, 1994)

What Orr is describing is an expedition into a specific place (in this case a river) where both the ecology (natural systems) and the culture (human systems) are studied.  By spending extended time in these sorts of places, the inherent complexities and interactions within and between these systems can be learned. Furthermore, the result of well-designed experiential place-based courses is a better understanding not just of the place and context under study, but also of a broader set of skills for further learning about the world and challenging multidisciplinary problems.

“[I]t would give students stronger reasons to want to learn those things that require the knowledge of various disciplines… [and] it would teach the art of careful field observation and the study of place.” (Orr, p. 96, 1994)

Components of the People, Ecology and Development program

Community based learning

At ISDSI, “community based learning” refers to developing courses in partnership with local communities.  Drawing on the work of Robert Chambers (1992) and others in participatory rural development research, the goal of community based learning is to help a community discover more about itself, and then effectively communicate that to outsiders — in our case American study-abroad students.  This process of self-discovery can begin with community meetings, dialog, and discussion about what makes the community unique, what struggles it faces, and how it has dealt with those struggles.

In Trang, Southern Thailand, we work with a small Muslim fishing village that is involved in mangrove conservation and restoration.  The community had little experience working with outsiders, especially Westerners, and ISDSI instructors took time through a series of community meetings to talk with different sectors of the community (men, women, educators, fishermen, rubber tappers, merchants, etc.) to understand the community better, and also to help the community articulate what it felt was important. As there was already organized community action to conserve and restore mangroves, this naturally occurred through relationships within the community. With the general goal of learning about coastal resources and sustainability, the ISDSI instructor team worked with the community to help discover its own stories, and then through home stays, village meetings, guided experiential inquiry, and other activities, to help teach about its own history, struggles, and resource-base.

Community based learning does have goals (e.g., learning about mangrove ecology), and is not completely unstructured. However, the structure can vary and change depending on the current issues and concerns of the local community. By working in dialog with the community, ISDSI instructors ensure that the courses are relevant and also current with topics in academic study (e.g., marine resource depletion, etc.).

A challenging part of community-based courses is that there is, by design and necessity, a certain amount of giving up of control over the course. Even with generally agreed upon goals and field activities, community-based courses do not allow a high degree of control. Both the local community and the local ecology are variable.  Since the course is experiential, and in the case cited above, in a marine environment, wind, waves, tides, and other outside forces can impact what and how course topics are taught.  A key community instructor might be called away fishing, or a local leader might b unable to attend due to a community crisis or other issue. What makes it work (aside from a high tolerance for ambiguity) is a broad understanding of the community, and flexibility in teaching and learning assignments.

Finally, as pointed out by Robert Chambers and others involved in participatory development, this sort of community work is not empowering unless the communities have ownership and the right to say no. Especially in a hierarchical and indirect society like Thailand, it would be easy to impose a course and students on a community. However, by giving up control and allowing the community to own the course, it is then better able to articulate its own needs to government officials, donor agencies, and NGOs. Empowerment, then, happens through giving a community a chance to tell its own stories in its own ways. Later, when confronted with a conflict over resource management and new government regulations, for example, a community can better articulate how and why these cultural practices are sustainable and are restoring its resource base or how, with support, it might need to become more sustainable.

This is especially important with marginalized communities, as they often do not have a voice and are unable to tell their stories.  All of the communities that ISDSI works with are marginalized, either geographically (rural, mountain, coast, and island communities), economically (poor and/or subsistence based), ethnically (tribal, minority, etc.), or religiously. Giving voice to the voiceless is intrinsically empowering. As a local activist talking with a frustrated group of ISDSI students who wanted to “do something” about the problems of the poor explained, “Listening is powerful — yes the poor and powerless lack resources, but what they really lack is a voice.  Giving them that chance to tell their stories is giving them a voice.  And once you find your voice, you are able to find power.”

Place-based learning

Place-based learning, as referred to above by Orr, focuses on a specific location or ecosystem. The courses for ISDSI’s People, Ecology and Development program are all based on the intensive study of place. The course on sustainable food systems and agroecology is done on lowland farms in the Mae Taa valley south of Chiang Mai, as well as upland communities north of Chiang Mai in Fang district. Both places (Mae Taa and Fang) become “the textbook” as students learn about the watershed, what crops can and cannot be grown there, the history of the landscape, how ancient irrigation systems are built and maintained, and how the local communities have dealt with the problem of creating a sustainable life in the midst of pressure to turn to chemically based cash crops, rather than to continue sustainable farming techniques.

In our course on people and forests, the students travel between a group of ethnic minority Karen villages, and study the forest and their long cycle swidden farming systems. Under pressure from the national government to leave their ancestral home with the recent zoning as a national park, the Karen have generations of knowledge about the forests, streams, mountains, and fields. This place in the rugged mountains of Mae Hong Son is the classroom where students learn — going with host families to work the fields, hiking up through a conservation forest with village elders and local instructors, and living the rhythms of village life. The Karen have a strong conservation ethic and teach about how each aspect of traditional culture is designed to be sustainable, and about the challenges of maintaining that in the face of both external and internal pressure.

The course on the cultures and ecologies of the Andaman Sea focuses on two places — the small Muslim fishing village mentioned above, as well as an island archipelago, the home of the Urak Lawoi people. On the coast, the place-based study focuses on the mangroves, mud flats, and sea grass beds of the coastal zone. Activities include local instructors from the village teaching about mangrove ecology, sea grass studies of biodiversity, mud flat explorations with host families, as well as sea kayaking and skin diving in the mangroves. In the islands, activities include paddling between islands, diving on coral reefs, and learning about conservation ecology and the struggles of the Urak Lawoi transitioning from a semi-nomadic lifestyle to a settled lifestyle within a marine national part while facing a shrinking resource base.

In all of these settings (fields, forests, and oceans), landscape is the key component of place-based education. By combining scientific field studies of each ecosystem (transects of forests, biodiversity studies of reefs, etc.) with instruction from local community members, students can understand more about the specific place as well as how it has shaped the culture, and how human impacts and culture shape the landscape.

Because sustainability is concerned with the sustainable use of the resource base, place-based studies are especially effective in two ways.  First, they can demonstrate local use and impact of human culture on the resource base as well as restoration and sustainable use.  Second, placed in context, links can be made to broader biosphere level changes such as global warming and ocean acidification.  This brings a “concrete reality” to the readings and theory about sustainable development, and can help students understand how things actually look and work in context.

Experiential learning

Experiential learning, learning by doing with reflection, is challenging to do well.  While an experience alone can be meaningful, to create an excellent experiential learning course requires a lot of work to find appropriate time for reflection and writing, as well as field activities that are congruent with the overall focus of the course.

On ISDSI courses, the first week of the block is spent in Chiang Mai, focused on theory and background/context studies. Following this week, students spend the next three weeks on an expedition field course. During this phase, experiential learning occurs in a number of ways, both structured and unstructured.

Structured learning occurs through meetings with local community members to talk over and reflect on what students are learning, as well as to listen to the stories of the community and its concerns. Structured learning in the field can occur through both scientific field studies designed to help students understand ecological concepts and issues (e.g. a biodiversity survey of a reef or forest transect) as well as through community-led studies of issues such as mangrove conservation and restoration or forest ecology.

Unstructured or semi-structured experiential learning occurs during home stays and family days where students live and work alongside host families, farming, fishing, and otherwise learning what day-to-day life is like in the communities in which they are learning.

In all of these activities, the goals and objectives of the course are reinforced through essays, written reflections, field seminars, and a final exam.  The purpose of the writing and reflection is to help students make sense of the complexity they are experiencing, and to give them a chance to stop and reflect on what they have learned and on what questions they are still trying to answer.

All of the experiential learning activities carry with them the chance to learn by doing, make mistakes, improve the next time, develop comfort in learning and studying outside the classroom, and begin to make sense by drawing connections that are not obviously apparent from reading textbooks and articles or watching presentations about sustainability.

Expedition-based learning

Finally, ISDSI courses are expedition-based.  Our “Expedition Field Courses” are designed to have students travel through the landscape so that they are able to experience the fields, mountains, forests, and oceans first-hand. Human-powered travel where possible helps to slow down the pace of movement and more deeply connect students to the natural world they are studying.

For example, in the course focusing on the culture and ecologies of the Andaman Sea, students kayak between islands in the Adang Archipelago. This requires an understanding of the landscape, tides, currents, weather, sunrise, and sunset, as well as of the strength and endurance of the group and the daily academic goals. It also requires dialog with local Urak Lawoi instructors so that student leaders for each day understand how the currents flow on an ebb tide, when to leave the beach, and how the wind and waves react to an approaching storm.

By traveling through the landscape on their own power, students gain a much deeper understanding of the landscape and the ecosystem upon which their host communities depend. Poor planning can lead (and has led) to very long days as students struggle to paddle against a current — reinforcing the need for local knowledge and the leadership and expedition skills to read a tide chart and keep the group on schedule. As students develop expedition competency, however, they become more comfortable in the local environment and are better able to understand the life, stories, and struggles of the host communities. A village elder explaining the challenge of dealing with a storm at sea in a small boat has much greater relevance to a student who has paddled the same waters in a sea kayak and knows first-hand the islands and reefs being discussed.

Through expedition learning, students are also able to focus on a single topic at one time.  The block system of teaching is very well suited to experiential field-based expeditions; within a single landscape, while complex, each place and field study is related to the broader context of the landscape. This helps control the somewhat chaotic and complex nature of sustainability studies, as students can start to draw comparisons between different expeditions and to see the links between forest communities, coastal fishing villages, and lowland farmers. Different landscapes with similar problems, struggles, and concerns all focused around the broader issue of sustainable living.

Conclusion

Education for sustainability deals with some of the most challenging issues of our time — how to manage a world with a declining resource base and growing population and consumption demands.  These same pressures on resources, however, have been faced by marginalized populations, in some cases for generations. By learning from marginalized communities in the Global South, ISDSI courses seek to help students learn about how local communities are meeting the current challenges of sustainability, and how this might then be applied to their own home communities in the Global North.

We have found that the key to a successful educational program focused on sustainability is to make it community-based, experiential, place-based, and expeditionary — allowing for extended time in the communities and landscapes being studied. This allows time to build rapport with local communities and allows our students to step into the day-to-day lives of the communities they are living with and learning from.

As education for sustainability matures and develops, an increasing focus on the social justice issues inherent in the distribution of resources and the costs of development is critical. By engaging directly with the people and places where these resource constraints are already being felt, students and educators can gain insights into possible futures and problems, and possibilities for solving those problems. Learning from communities in the Global South requires respect, investment of time in building relationships, and giving up a certain amount of control.  The challenges are very much worth it, however, as it has proven to be extremely rewarding for the students, teachers and the communities involved.

References

Chambers, Robert. Rural Appraisal: Rapid, Relaxed and Participatory (IDS Discussion Paper),

Institute of Development Studies (December 1992).

Harvey, Mark. The National Outdoor Leadership School’s Wilderness Guide. New York: Simon

and Schuster, 1999.

Louv, Richard. The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit

            Disorder, Algonquin Books (May 10, 2011).

Louv, Richard. Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder,        Algonquin Books; Updated and Expanded edition (April 10, 2008).

Manning, Kristy. The Island Press Consortium on Environmental Teaching and Learning in

Higher Education: Insights from the White Oak Symposium,” January 1999, Center for

Resource Economics/Island Press.

McKeown, Rosalyn. Education for Sustainable Development Toolkit, July 2002, Energy,

Environment and Resource Center, University of Tennessee.

Priest, Simon and Michael Gass. Effective Leadership in Adventure Programming, University of

New Hampshire / Human Kinetics, IL, 1997.

Orr, David W. Earth In Mind: On Education, Environment And The Human Prospect,

Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1994.

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PDF: Vaugeois&MaherJSESpring2013

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PDF: RhadaPyatiandAprilMooreSpring2013

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Abstract: Even less well known than how non-formal education is woven into formal education is how classroom teachers and non-formal educators work together to plan and implement these kinds of partnerships in the classroom. This study sought to explore how to intentionally and effectively structure the partnership between a formal and non-formal educator. The results of the study indicated that formal and non-formal educators can support each other’s goals through systematic collaboration in a robust and dynamic partnership that necessitates working together both prior to and during the implementation of programs to define goals and iteratively gauge roles of each educator in the process. Suggestions are made for how both educators can be made aware of the commitment involved in an explicit collaboration, including materials needed, expected levels of communication, individual roles, assessment aims, and time needed for effective outcomes.

Keywords: non-formal science education,formal science education,environmental education,teacher partnerships

1. Introduction

As efforts are being made to engage students in science, non-formal and formal science education partnerships have been shown to 1) lead to conceptually rich and compelling science learning programs; 2) lead to the creation of learning communities that could develop practices, dispositions, and understandings that are of value across multiple institutional settings and boundaries, and 3) create more equity and access for children, and teachers of children, from high-poverty communities (Bevan et al., 2010). Research on non-formal and formal science education collaborations has revealed that they take significant time and energy, but are valuable experiences for both students and institutions. Prior research suggests there are numerous benefits of integrating non-formal learning within formal settings. Science attitudes and confidence (Kelly, 2000), scientific reasoning (Gerber, Cavallo, & Marek, 2001), and interest in science (Zoldosova & Prokop, 2006), have all been shown to increase due to non-formal science learning. Hofstein, Bybee, and Legro (1997) discuss the National Science Education Standards and how scientific literacy could be enhanced by partnerships between formal and non-formal science education. These suggestions call for a hybrid approach to teaching science, where non-formal science instruction enhances formal classroom instruction.

Hofstein and Rosenfeld (1996) assert, however, that while we have good reason to believe that non-formal learning experiences can enrich school science, “We know relatively little about how these experiences can best be integrated into the school curriculum (p.107).” Thus, more information is needed on how to effectively blend non-formal and formal learning experiences in order to significantly enhance the learning of science. After reviewing numerous non-formal and formal science education partnerships, Bevan et al. (2010) argue for more intentional and strategic partnerships, leading to collaborations that build on particular knowledge and strengths of different institutional types “to meet shared goals of making science learning more accessible and compelling to young people in our communities” (p.60). They contend:

We do not advocate strict alignment or lock-step agreement [for formal and non-formal    education], or for carving up the universe of science learning (“you do engagement and          we’ll do learning”). Rather, we propose that the best way forward is to intentionally establish systemic relationships between formal and informal institutions, with the   goal of creating greater coherence and access. (p.61)

Non-formal science education includes field trips, museums, parks, libraries, and programs facilitated in schools by non-formal educators (Rennie, 2007). According to the widely accepted definition, non-formal education is the learning that occurs in a formal learning environment (workshops, symposia, extracurricular courses and programs, etc.) but that is not formally recognized within a curriculum or syllabus framework. Non-formal science programs include learning that is often less directed and students are encouraged to make decisions on what is to be learned and seek help on the how or means of the learning activity. In contrast, formal learning includes settings where learners have little control over what or how they learn because of mandates by the state or school district.

In another vein, formal and non-formal educators likely bring different funds of knowledge (understandings, skills, and experiences,) that can mutually benefit a collaborative pedagogical effort. For example, non-formal educators often possess more extensive and in-depth experiences with a particular place and context and the specifics of environmental concepts as they play out in a given context, while formal educators often possess a more extensive understanding of their students’ past experiences and prior knowledge that can serve as an equally valuable learning resource (Kisiel, 2010).

The interdisciplinary nature of non-formal science education reflects the idea that science knowledge is intertwined with many different subject areas. It is a popular misconception that environmental educators are non-formal because they are usually not employed by a school and can hold a variety of job responsibilities within a community. One of these responsibilities is going into schools to offer short programs related to particular curricula – most often science or social studies. Environmental education (EE) can provide the context for the hybrid approach described by Hofstein et al. (1997) whereby non-formal education enhances formal science education. The Tbilisi Declaration of 1978 defined one of the goals of EE as fostering awareness about ecological interdependence through the acquisition of knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment, and skills to protect the environment (UNESCO-UNEP, 2005). Embedded within this goal is the standards-based curriculum of ecological concepts within science education, as well as instrumental affective factors often honed through non-formal EE. EE can play a versatile role in curriculum as it lends itself to interdisciplinary instruction and can facilitate connections between non-formal and formal classroom instruction. Tal (2004) notes the very nature of EE focuses on local, socio-scientific issues and affords the opportunity to build partnerships between schools and communities (p. 3).

Our study seeks to explore how to intentionally and effectively structure the partnership of a formal and non-formal educator. Even less well known than how non-formal education is woven into formal education is how classroom teachers and non-formal educators work together to plan and implement these kinds of partnerships in the classroom. It is this gap in the literature that our study addresses and in so doing, we assisted in and investigated the partnership between a fourth grade classroom teacher (Sarah) and an environmental community educator (Elizabeth) to implement an environmental stewardship program based on local ecology. In particular, we were interested in exploring the role each educator assumed in the partnership and the nature of the partnership in relation to the intended goals for the curriculum. Our research question asked “What were the respective goals and perceived roles of a classroom teacher and a non-formal educator in a collaboration to teach students about environmental stewardship?”

2. Literature Review

The following is a review of literature related to incidences where formal and non-formal educators communicated and collaborated. Though research regarding the collaborations between formal and non-formal educators is scant, some evidence does indicate the mutual benefit to partnerships in terms of enhancing pedagogical repertoires and bringing together of different funds of knowledge for the benefit of the students.

2.1 Formal and non-formal partnerships

Non-formal science instructional strategies can provide a variety of learning contexts that may or may not be utilized in the formal setting (Ruiz-Primo, 2006). Many classroom teachers unfortunately underutilize non-formal science teaching strategies. Rennie (2007) notes that the effectiveness of non-formal science education experiences often depends on how well they fit the school science curriculum. She also states that many non-formal science experiences, most notably school field trips, are often not integrated well or at all with work done in the classroom. She acknowledges the need for research that investigates teachers’ use and integration of “the wealth of resources available beyond the classroom door” (p. 155).

Given the assumption that teachers can learn a great deal from one another, one would assume that formal educators could learn a great deal from instructional strategies traditionally used by non-formal educators and vice versa. In fact, Kisiel (2010) found that the development of intersecting communities of practice between formal and non-formal science educators led to new perspectives and insights for both groups. In his study, classroom teachers re-examined their instruction and developed an appreciation for hands-on learning, while aquarium instructors better understood the challenges and benefits of working with students on a long-term basis.

Dori and Tal (2000) investigated the integration of formal and non-formal science pedagogies through a collaborative community project. Their instructional model included classroom instruction, parental involvement via out-of-class meetings and discussion sessions, field trips, and outside research conducted by the students. While the focus on their article was on assessment of formal and non-formal science programs, they found that the combination of formal and non-formal learning resulted in increased environmental attitudes and knowledge and provided an attractive learning format for students.

Regarding pedagogical differences, Astor-Jack, McCallie, and Balcerzak (2007) found that approaches to educator professional development (PD) differed according to the sponsoring institution. Institutions of higher education focused on research-based strategies, the needs of the teachers, cognitive approaches to teacher change, the views of their funding sources, and understood inquiry as both a research strategy and something that scientists engage in to do science. On the other hand, institutions of non-formal science education focused on the strength of materials and hands-on approaches to teaching science, the PD features that their institution found vital, increasing the comfort level of teachers when teaching science, and inquiry a means to engage students and teachers in learning science.

Astor-Jack et al.’s (2007) study demonstrated the dichotomy between formal and non-formal science educators, which may underscore the image that formal and non-formal approaches to science differ. Instructional strategies that incorporate both the formal and non-formal philosophies of teaching may benefit students, however the current dichotomous perspective may not allow for collaboration and mutual understanding between the two. Perhaps the issue lies within the diversity and complexity of non-formal science education, as it encompasses a variety of settings while research suggests that these settings are not equal in their abilities to support science learning outside of the classroom.

Many models of integrating non-formal with formal science education exist (DeWitt & Osborne, 2007; Hofstein, Bybee, & Legro, 1997; Orion, 1993). These models have been investigated for their effect on science knowledge, learning, and attitudes. The studies reviewed here suggest a teaching orientation that involves the combination of non-formal and formal science instruction promotes science learning (Hofstein et al., 1997) and the goals of scientific literacy as defined by the National Science Education Standards ([NSES], NRC, 1996). One of these goals is to “experience the richness and excitement of knowing about and understanding the natural world” (NRC, 1996). Smith-Sebasto and Carvern (2006), Dori and Tal (2000), and Stern, Powell, and Ardoin (2008) all found that the integration of non-formal and formal science met this goal as it increased positive attitudes toward science and the environment. For example, Smith-Sebasto and Cavern found that students who participated in residential environmental experience had a higher concern for the environmental when their teacher engaged them pre and post activities in the classroom, and Stern et al. (2008) found that a residential environmental education program increased students’ connection to nature.

3. Methodology

The following sections describe the participants, context, and research methods we used to explore the goals and perceptions of roles with Sarah and Elizabeth.

3.1 Participants

For the past eight years, Elizabeth had been the education director for a local solid waste management district. She held a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and had no formal pedagogical training in education. As a long-standing non-formal educator in the community, she was frequently petitioned by teachers to guest speak in their classrooms about issues concerning waste reduction through recycling and composting, ecological concepts related to the local community, and environmental stewardship. In her office at the solid waste management district, Elizabeth had many “tools” such as posters, games she had developed, and toys with which to engage elementary students in the concepts of environmental education.

Sarah, the formal fourth-grade teacher in our study, had more than 20 years of teaching experience across various elementary grade levels and held a Master’s degree in Education. She had taken no additional science content training since her original undergraduate degree and often described herself as limited in science knowledge. In fact, for several years, Sarah had allowed another fourth-grade to instruct the students on science while she taught them math- a subject with which she felt more comfortable. Sarah had invited Elizabeth to her class as a guest speaker on many occasions, enjoying exposing her students to the environmental science concepts about which Elizabeth taught them.

Both teachers had worked together many times in the past, but mainly in the form of Elizabeth coming into Sarah’s class to give a one day discrete lesson on a particular concept. Sarah would choose from among Elizabeth’s one-hour programs, attempting to give her students a broad array of concepts Elizabeth had to offer. Neither of them had been involved in an extensive teaching partnership as described below in this study, but both expressed interest in extending the offerings to Sarah’s classes to incorporate a sequenced program throughout the semester in which ecological concepts built upon each other to encourage students understanding of environmental stewardship.

To support the development of this partnership, both authors (science educators working at a local University, both of whom possess PhDs in science education and are former classroom teachers with a particular interest in non-formal and environmental education) worked with Elizabeth over the summer to co-plan a six-week unit for Sarah’s classroom (described below). Elizabeth had approached one of the authors at a environmental education conference earlier in the summer asking for assistance in ensuring her programs were well aligned with curriculum goals and wanting to incorporate some guided inquiry so as to encourage students to apply what they were learning in her programs in some sort of culminating project. Authors provided Elizabeth with advice and guidance throughout the design and also during the implementation of the instructional program and participated in debriefing sessions with both Elizabeth and Sarah after each class session to help make modifications to future lessons throughout the implementation of the unit.

3.2 Context

The school where this study took place was a K-12 Christian academy located on the periphery of a Midwest college town of approximately 70,000 people. Sarah taught a fourth grade class with 21 students: two Asian Americans, one African American, and 18 Caucasians. The majority of these students came from medium to high socioeconomic households located either in the rural surroundings of the school or directly in town.  Sarah was responsible for teaching most subjects throughout the day and one hour of instructional time was devoted entirely to science each day but usually was taught by another teacher in the school.

The unit we designed in collaboration with Elizabeth was composed of six instructional sessions on various topics related to fourth grade science standards about ecology, environmental education, inquiry, and the nature of science. Table 1 highlights the main goals, roles, and activities for the six continuous sessions. The unit was designed for implementation over a six-week period and resulted in a culminating project whereby students showcased what they had learned and what was most important to them in the five preceding programs. Students were asked to create a medium of their choosing (brochure, game, skit, poster, etc…) to illustrate the science concepts they learned and discuss what people should know regarding environmental stewardship. Parents and local media were invited to and attended the culminating projects.

Table 1.

Sequential program for environmental stewardship*

2 – Home and Community

Students gain sense of place and learn about healthy communities

Students understand life is all around us, life needs to be protected, healthy communities need a variety of natural habitats

• Requirements for life
• “Milky Way” poem
• Discuss history of development of land in their community
• Student draw their own backyard or “place”
• Students make suggestions for making their “place” healthier
• Read “Window” (by Jeannie Baker) book

3 – Household Hazardous Wastes (HHW)

Students identify source of everyday hazardous materials

• Students identify hazardous materials in their homes and backyards
• Discussion of HHW
• Toxic trash quiz
• Students create own non-toxic natural cleaning solutions (all-purpose cleaner and furniture polish)

4 – Perspectives on Trees

Students are exposed to multiple perspectives of an issue

Students understand the complexity of environmental issues

Students explore “rewilding” their yard

• Read “Growing Wild” (by Constance Perenyi) book
• “Tree Perspective” debate (three perspectives of development: none, partial, and full)
• Students rewild their yards
• Students brainstorm ideas for culminating projects

5 – Power of One

6 –  Culminating Projects

Students recognize the effect one person can have on protecting the planet

Students learn about recycling

Students share their content knowledge with others

• Song, “Who Made This Mess”
• Discussion about challenges to waste management
• Smart Shopper game (students choose environmentally friendly purchases)
• Kinesthetic exercise to learn how to recycle materials

• Parents and local media were invited to culminating project presentations

* Sessions begin with large scale (environment, ecosystem level) to smaller scale (personal level)

3.3 Research Methods

Our case study utilized a qualitative research approach (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003; Creswell, 2003) and was aligned with socio-constructivist perspectives on human interaction (Robson, 2002). Thus, the focus departed from taking face value of the verbal understandings of the participants in order to probe for and discover the actual ‘experience’ and the issues that emerged from the differences in those experiences. Patton (2002) stated that case studies are used when ‘‘one needs to understand some special people, particular problems, or unique situation in great depth…’’ (p. 54). We sought to understand how two teachers collaborated (or did not collaborate) in a formal-non-formal science education partnership and aimed to redraw generalizations within this area. The phenomenological orientation of our case study indicated our privileging of participants’ first-hand experience of the phenomenon (Merriam, 2009).

Considering this approach, we employed open-ended data collection methods that included video and audio recordings of the classroom instruction, debriefing sessions with both teachers following each day of instruction, researcher journals that documented our impressions of what we observed and our conversations with both educators, and a pre and a post semi-structured interview with each educator (four total). Interview questions included: (a) How do you view the collaboration between a non-formal and a formal educator? (b) What challenges are there to bridging formal and non-formal education? (c) What benefits are there to bridging formal and non-formal education?

We analyzed all data sources using an inductive approach commonly employed in qualitative research. Thus, we reviewed the data looking for emerging themes in relation to our research question, and in particular with respect to the participants perceived and implemented roles in the teaching partnership and the effect of their intended goals on the nature of this partnership. After reaching a point of saturation in identifying themes related to each of these objectives, we then looked for patterns related to these themes across multiple data sources. As a validity measure, we conducted member checks with both educators after developing our initial findings to ensure our interpretations were accurate and hone inferences drawn from our multiple data sources.

4. Findings

A number of themes emerged from the data related to how Elizabeth and Sarah viewed their roles in the partnership. Both educators appeared to have different goals, as well as different perceptions of their roles; as such, we identified several obstacles that complicated the partnership.

4.1 Different Goals

Sarah and Elizabeth’s goals for the series of programs related to environmental stewardship differed in many respects. Sarah supported environmental behavioral goals through the context of learning science that was supplemental to the curriculum, while Elizabeth focused solely on affective (i.e., behavioral and attitudinal) goals towards building environmental stewardship. Given her extended experience as an elementary teacher, Sarah had previously invited Elizabeth into her classroom a number of times prior to our study to enrich the curriculum and encourage students to consider their behavior with regard to their environment. In her pre-interview, she shared her prior experience with Elizabeth:

I think she gets them thinking about a lot of things that maybe they hadn’t thought about before, like recycling, taking care of the water, being careful it’s not contaminated. Kids think that it doesn’t really apply to them. She lets them know that there are things they can do and they become more aware of things and they can share it with their family. (pre-interview, January 2009)

Sarah’s perception of Elizabeth’s role in the classroom was about encouraging students to take action and to bring what they were learning back to their families to encourage more environmentally responsible actions. She saw Elizabeth as being a message-bearer of sorts regarding the importance of student awareness for local environmental health.

Sarah understood the value of EE but often referred to it as enrichment. For example, she made statements like, “I didn’t do a whole lot of before and after, I think I treated it more like an enrichment thing that they would look forward to and she’d come and present something and then we’d be on to the next thing” (pre-interview, January 2009). As such, Sarah initially saw Elizabeth’s programs as an enhancement to her classroom instruction and did not ask or expect Elizabeth to cover specific content. She clearly stated that she requested Elizabeth’s programs for enrichment purposes without planned or deliberate engagement in any in-depth follow-up activities with students. She viewed her students’ time with Elizabeth as a break from the regular routine and seemed to feel that the sessions were valuable enough to schedule an average of six hour-long sessions with Elizabeth per year, despite her view that the sessions were solely for enrichment purposes.

Over the course of the collaboration, however, Sarah’s view of Elizabeth’s role changed. While Sarah initially viewed the purpose of having Elizabeth in her class as a means of enriching the students’ learning of science, in her post interviews at the end of the six-week program series she revealed that her goals were not satisfactorily met. The importance of environmental science content increased from Sarah’s pre to post interview. Initially, she felt that the enrichment that Elizabeth provided was sufficient reason to schedule her programs; however, in her post interview she seemed dissatisfied with the lack of content covered. In discussing her goals for student learning, Sarah repeatedly noted the importance of having her students learn science content (or “facts”) with affective outcomes as an added value:

I don’t know, I’ve gone back and forth about this in my mind, and I don’t know, I mean, [the programs and culminating project] were like eight hours because I gave them a couple more hours, and I keep thinking in the project it didn’t come out that they learned very many facts. (post-interview, April 2009)

Sarah felt that the students’ culminating projects did not reveal adequate content knowledge learned during Elizabeth’s programs; however she was uncertain if this was due to a lack of actual content learning or to the lack of focus and support given to the students to create projects that demonstrated their understanding. We acknowledge that our presence and interest as researchers may have influenced how Sarah perceived the value of Elizabeth’s programs in her classroom. Because we inquired about her views on the curricular alignment of the programs, it is probable that Sarah came to see this as important to address. It is equally probable that the addition of the culminating project enabled Sarah to see for the first time in the program involvement what the students were actually learning and/or finding valuable from the programs.

As the education specialist of the local solid waste management district, Elizabeth’s job was to encourage responsible action with regard to community waste and protection of the environment. She expressed this in her pre-interview: “EE is a practical application and there are a lot of principals to life, and it is interdisciplinary…it supports behavior change” (pre-interview, January 2009). Prior to the implementation of the curriculum, Elizabeth, like Sarah, viewed her programs as an addition to the regular curriculum and not necessarily aligned with specific content standards. Though this study was initiated in part by Elizabeth’s desire to base her programs in state content standards, she perceived her goals to be centered on inspiring behavior change.

However, by the end of implementing this six-week unit, Elizabeth said she valued the importance of basing her programs in state content standards and in particular, she appreciated our guidance in making these connections within her existing programs.

I think it was really helpful to have you two here to go through those [standards], because I have looked at them before and they are so general to me that they didn’t mean much. But the food chain, the food web, I think that worked out really well, and after we had worked on it, and we inserted more stuff in that next session and elaborated on it, I think it worked out well, and I was pleased. (post-interview, April 2009)

Elizabeth was eager to incorporate more science content and felt that her programs successfully addressed state standards. She felt students were more engaged when she was teaching content. She also saw the potential in this leading to more requests from teachers to do her programs in their classrooms and seemed excited about including more content in her programs, although she was not completely confident in her own abilities to do so. She expressed the need for continued support from researchers, like us, who had experience with designing content-rich curriculum. It is important to note that Elizabeth’s embedding of content may have been done simply for legitimizing her place in a curriculum and not because she valued or understood science teaching or learning in a more nuanced way because of the experience.

Whatever the cause for both educators to come to place a greater emphasis on the incorporation of science content standards, the degree to which they viewed the programs as successful was notably different. Sarah clearly saw opportunities for vast improvements in the unit with regard to content. She saw potential within the revised programming framework to reinforce science content, but reflected on the need to provide more guidance to the students so that they could demonstrate their learning more so than merely their affective gains regarding environmental stewardship. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was pleased with the level of science content embedded within the unit and felt future programs could benefit from the addition of more science standards- an indication that being able to connect her lessons to standards on paper was adequate. While both educators’ goals evolved to include not only affective outcomes but also increased science content, the perception of the success of these goals differed greatly between the two participants.

4.2 Perception of Roles

Sarah and Elizabeth’s perceived roles in the unit also shifted before and after the six-week program. In effect, at the end of the unit, Sarah placed a higher value on her own involvement with the implementation of the unit, and Elizabeth perceived her role as more of a traditional teacher with regard to classroom management and teaching content.

Prior to Elizabeth’s programs, Sarah identified that she did not feel teaching science was her strong suit. Her students went to another classroom during their science hour; therefore Sarah did not feel it was her responsibility to teach science. As a result, Sarah said she did not know much about the content or the organization of the science curriculum:

The third grade teacher will come in and teach while I go over and teach the third graders social studies, just because science is her strong area and social studies is mine…so I know that the book is supposed to be aimed at the standards, both state and national, but I don’t know [about science content standards]. (pre-interview, January 2009)

Therefore, she left the responsibility of teaching science to her colleague and as stated above in the past did not expect Elizabeth to ‘cover’ science content with her programs, but saw her role as simply providing science enrichment. However, by the end of the six weeks, Sarah became more interested in thinking about ways Elizabeth’s programs could be more than just enrichment and instead actually designed to support students’ learning of particular environmental science content standards. Her perception of her own role in the process changed, which was evident from the following comment she made:

[If Elizabeth could provide] something that could give the kids feedback on [what they learned], if she made it up to go along with what she thought were key things that she had taught and left it with me, I would be glad to see that we reviewed a little bit. I could then see if they were picking up everything they were supposed to be picking up. (post-interview, April 2009)

Gradually, Sarah took on a more active role in the implementation of the unit.  When asked about this, she responded that part of the reason for this change was that she needed to hear what the students were learning so that she could reinforce concepts later. She attributed this partly to the program format that incorporated a culminating project to showcase what the students were learning:

Yeah, I think knowing that it was going to culminate in these projects, normally when she comes in, it’s just kind of a time that you set aside where she works with children, so knowing this is coming, you get a little more focused and engaged, like ‘what are they doing?’ (post-interview, April 2009)

Because the programs were leading up to a chance for students to display their content and/or affective gains, Sarah’s perception of her role as a science teacher made a distinct shift as she came to appreciate the need for her to take on a more active role of reinforcing concepts and probing students to investigate deeper into their questions regarding ecological concepts. Furthermore, knowing that parents and local media were invited to the culminating event, an additional pressure for students to perform was instrumental in her involvement.

Elizabeth’s perception of her own role also evolved throughout the study. She initially did not recognize the need to engage in classroom management strategies, noting that it was the classroom teacher’s responsibility to ensure students were paying attention and participating. However, from our classroom observations during the beginning sessions, we noted Elizabeth mostly lectured to the students and in turn the students often seemed disengaged. Therefore, during the debriefing sessions, we offered Elizabeth suggestions on how to engage students and grab their attention. Over the course of the program offerings, we began to see her employ the strategies we mentioned (e.g. probing questions, extensions to content elicited from the students about their daily lives, minimizing transition times, and basic management techniques). At the end of the implementation, Elizabeth said hearing these suggestions really helped her think about how best to present content to the students from session to session:

I learned to reinforce the concepts in each session,  [through] repeating [or] emphasizing the terminology. I also picked up disciplinary [strategies]. Although the teacher was usually right there and could just step in, I at least know [some different strategies] because every situation is different. (post-interview, April 2009)

Additionally, Elizabeth’s perception of her role to teach science content developed over the course of the study. While initially stating that her goal was to teach students about environmental stewardship, in her post-interview she suggested the importance of also including content standards in her programs. Although this shift was described above in terms of Elizabeth’s changing goals, this awareness of incorporating more standards in her programs illustrates a shift in her thinking that as a non-formal educator as well; specifically, that her role is not to just influence students’ affective domain but also to engage their cognitive domain. As mentioned above, Elizabeth believed including both foci in her programs may make them more desirable to other teachers, but furthermore, her quest to develop her skills as a classroom teacher by way of enhancing her classroom management and content delivery skills became increasingly evident.

By the end of the unit, Elizabeth stated that she needed to go into classrooms thinking about what content she can address in an already over-burdened curriculum. She acknowledged that teachers have varying expertise and comfort regarding science and saw her potential role as addressing content as a means to lessen the need for the classroom teacher to teach it all. In attempting to do so, she perceived this role as necessitating a more collaborative partnership with the classroom teacher with regard to both planning and implementation.

I learned that if I do it this way, the [classroom teacher] will maybe get more into it and maybe think of some other ways that they can do things in their classroom to perhaps extend the curriculum. (post-interview, April 2009)

From her experience working with Sarah in this study, it appears Elizabeth recognized the need to clearly state her needs and expectations to classroom teachers, as well as to take the time to listen to their expectations for increasing the value of her programs into their classrooms.

5. Discussion and Conclusions

Elizabeth and Sarah’s experience illustrates how perceptions of learning goals and individual roles in the partnership can evolve through a guided collaborative experience. For example, both Sarah and Elizabeth changed their perspectives and expectations of the programs to ascribe an increased importance of programs being aligned with state science standards. As noted above, prior research suggests that non-formal education can promote positive attitudes and confidence in science (Kelly, 2000), scientific reasoning (Gerber, Cavallo, & Marek, 2001), and interest in science, (Zoldosova & Prokop, 2006); however, scant research was found that indicated the extent to which science standards are generally covered by non-formal science programs. This remains an underexplored area, and we would like to continue our efforts in investigating the extent to which an increased content base actually enhances formal and non-formal partnerships as well as student outcomes.

This lack of research may suggest that there is no clear expectation with regard to coverage of science standards in non-formal education. Sarah felt that there were not enough “facts” learned during the programs, which suggests that her expectations rose from enrichment to an increased emphasis on reinforcement of science content. She seemed to think the time dedicated to Elizabeth’s programs was no longer “worth the sacrifice” if content was not adequately embedded. Elizabeth, on the other hand felt pleased with level of content covered in her programs after we collaboratively worked with her to format her programs to incorporate state content standards. She thought she was providing elementary teachers what they wanted and that her programs were an effective in teaching her newly formed goals of both environmental stewardship and science content.

The disparity between the educators’ perceptions of their goals indicated that more of an effort ought to be made to incorporate more pedagogical content knowledge within the training of non-formal science educators. Pedagogical content knowledge includes an understanding of what makes the learning of specific topics easy or difficult, as well as the conceptions and preconceptions that students of different ages and backgrounds bring with them to the learning of those most frequently taught topics and lessons (Shulman, 1986). Many museums, zoos, and science centers have educational outreach arms that understand and respond to local curricula (Stocklmayer, Rennie, & Gilbert, 2010). The non-formal sector must target outreach activities to the requirements of the curriculum and ensure that those involved in providing science outreach are suitably trained and qualified to do so. As Astor-Jack et al. (2007) indicated, professional development for non-formal educators often focuses on materials and the development of resources related to their area of expertise, though we suggest that an increased emphasis be placed on underscoring the aims of teachers regarding the delivery of standards-based content and classroom management best practices.

Therefore, we suggest organizations coordinate with schools to discuss the mission and goals of their respective institutions to support the joint achievement of desired outcomes. Elizabeth clearly stated that her goal was to increase environmental stewardship, while Sarah’s began to expect more science content in the programs. Perhaps there is a way to address both of these objectives simultaneously. The questions remains, however, how do institutions develop what Shulman (1986) described as specialized knowledge teachers have for knowing how to teach specific topics in various ways to different learners (i.e., pedagogical content knowledge)? This is another avenue to explore related to enhancing non-formal and formal partnerships.

Both educators’ perceptions of their roles in teaching the curriculum also evolved over the course of implementation. While initially thinking she should leave all instruction related to the science content standards to her third-grade teacher colleague, Sarah became aware as the program progressed how certain environmental concepts could perhaps be covered using Elizabeth’s curriculum, rather than it just being a supplement or enrichment program. Therefore, each week she gradually became more involved in the actual instruction of the curriculum, feeling accountable for helping the students with completing the culminating project as designated by the curricular design. By the end of the study, Sarah’s perception of Elizabeth’s role also changed as she noted that an emphasis on covering more science content Elizabeth’s programs could be a core piece of their overall science curriculum; however, she also noted that Elizabeth would need to make some modifications to her current programs to better meet these expectations.

Perhaps, a nexus point for the development of this type of collaboration lies in the inclusion of formative assessments throughout non-formal education that is conducted within classroom settings. Formative assessment is any pedagogical activity intended to scaffold learning and inform instructional decision-making. We draw on Ruiz-Primo and Furtak’s (2006, 2007) characterization of formative assessment, which they generally divided into two types; namely, formal, planned formative strategies and informal, interactive ones. Formal, planned formative assessment is designed in advance by the teacher and requires all students to respond to a prompt or complete an activity. The outcomes of student activity allows teachers to precisely gather data on each student’s learning and allows teachers to check student understanding at key points during instruction so as to thoughtfully plan the next steps in instruction. Informal, interactive formative assessment, on the other hand, is more improvisational in nature, is often linked to the instructional strategy or learning activity at hand, and allows the teacher to adapt instructional strategies immediately.

Due to the feedback loop associated with formative assessment, non-formal and formal educators would need to work together to collect, interpret, and modify instruction based on student feedback. This would not only provide students with the feedback needed to improve their learning of the content and affective gains, but also encourage the type of continual reflection we aimed for in this guided collaborative experience. With respect to this, research shows the kind of evaluation that goes on in non-formal programs is inconsistent and variable. Rennie (2007) stated, “despite the availability of good advice, most evaluation [of school-community partnerships] is usually limited to feedback sheets and headcounts of participants,” (p. 146) and that evaluation of non-formal programs is often influenced by the agenda of the funding agency. Alternatively, we suggest a more robust and dynamic partnership between formal and non-formal educators that would necessitate working together both prior to and during the implementation of programs to define goals and iteratively gauge roles of each educator in the process.

Our exploration of a partnership between a formal and a non-formal educator revealed that their perceptions of goals and roles differed. Therefore, the question remains: Should we find ways to promote collaboration to develop overlapping goals between formal and non-formal educators, or are their educational aims inherently different? Should non-formal programs be incorporated into classrooms as enrichment, especially in light of recent cuts to school budgets that remove opportunities for field trips? Is the impact they are making sufficient while concentrating on their unique goals? The results of our study indicate that formal and non-formal educators can support one another’s goals through systematic collaboration. However, future research needs to explore the impact of explicit collaborations that include direct attention to aligning goals for learning with specific content standards, affective outcomes, and clarifying teachers’ roles in this process. Both educators must be made aware of the commitment involved in an explicit collaboration, including materials needed, expected levels of communication, individual roles, assessment aims, and time needed for effective outcomes.

The main scholarly implication of our work is the need for educational researchers, both in non-formal and formal education, to attend to the collaborative dimensions of formal and non-formal partnerships. Previous research has focused primarily on the cognitive and affective outcomes of programing and the various challenges of embedding non-formal education within classroom settings. However, the maximize the benefit both to students and to partnering educators, the dynamics of these collaborations offers a chance for teachers to establish and sustain a social matrix within which meaningful discussions about goals and definition of roles becomes possible.

Despite its practical and scholarly significance, we would like to note various limitations of this study. Because of the limited scope of our case study focusing only on one collaboration, many relevant issues remained unaddressed in our exploratory analysis of formal and non-formal partnerships, including the extent to which the strategies reported in this study can be effectively and appropriately adopted by teachers to facilitate effective partnerships across varied education contexts and how teachers’ collaborative practices impact learning outcomes (e.g., students’ conceptual understandings of ecological concepts, affective views of environmental stewardship). Additional studies will be necessary to explore these aspects of formal and non-formal partnerships.

References

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associated with a residential environmental education experience on students’ attitudes toward the environment. Journal of Environmental Education, 37(4), 3-17.

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outcomes from participation in residential environmental education program. Journal of Environmental Education, 39(4), 31-43.

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Dr. Kristin Cook

Dr. Ingrid Weiland

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PDF: Gleason et al., Spring 2013

Abstract: This article presents a case study of a middle school project based on the experience of two teachers and an administrator.  The project gives 8th grade students an opportunity to make a difference in the world through a Sustainability Action Project.  In this article you will read the rationale behind this project. You will get an overview of and a timeline for its implementation over the course of a complete academic year.  We will provide you with some examples of projects as well as refer you to our school webpage where you can view these projects in more detail. Finally, we have included appendices of several of the materials we provide to our students.  We hope that you will clearly see what sets this learning experience apart from other sustainability projects, and that you will be able to adopt a similar project in your school.

Key Words: action plan for change; sustainability; project; middle school; collaboration

The Sustainability Action Project

This SAP project has really shown me that I can make a difference in the world even though I am only an 8^th grader at Greenhills.  Choosing three things I learned about was hard because I learned so much.  The things I learned will forever be with me. (Excerpt of Eighth Grade Student’s Reflection on SAP)

I. Rationale and Introduction

In our rapidly changing world, there has been a resurgence of skills being optimized by 21st century schools committed to preparing students to become agents of change in our global landscape. Collaboration, real world problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, digital literacy, and service learning are among some of the broad competencies, which schools are fostering within their students in the new millennium.  Schools committed to a student-centered mission must be willing to put these skills on the forefront as they consider creating a dynamic learning environment for today’s students to thrive.  There is no better time period for students to explore these skills and wear these hats than during the middle school years (grades 6 to 8).

It is understood that middle school is a wonderfully ripe time for young adolescents to take intellectual risks in an effort to discover new interests which, in turn, inform their identity.  The middle school child is best defined as a work-in-progress.  He or she is still in the midst of much rapid and complex development – academic, social, emotional, and physical.  The skillful middle school teacher innately understands that good instruction, which ultimately reaches all learners, must involve a differentiated approach that considers individual learning styles and interests.  Beyond this essential component, in developing a 21st century curriculum aimed at middle school, teachers know the role that relevance and student ownership must play in the classroom experience itself.  For some teachers, it is as simple as giving students an opportunity to make a choice in how they pursue a given task.  For others, it can be a complex and multi-layered assessment which bridges different content areas such as science, civics, public speaking, and technology.

In 2010, these understandings of middle school learners and 21st century skills were closely considered when conceiving of a dynamic and relevant project-based learning experience for our school’s eighth grade students.  What began as a brainstorm session between a middle school principal and a science teacher quickly turned into a proposal for a student-centered action project which would involve researching and collaborating in an effort to develop a learning experience to promote sustainability.  It was important to think about the project in a backwards manner, by first keeping focused on the skill outcomes.  We knew we had a strong desire for our students to gain specific competencies in critical thinking, communication, information literacy, problem-solving, and, importantly, collaboration.  Stretching beyond these measurable skills, we desired to create an experience for our students that would challenge them to choose a topic that mattered to them in which they could genuinely invest time and attention.  In the end, we hoped to strengthen our students’ sense of social responsibility by enabling them to learn that by taking an issue of interest through a long-term process, they would ultimately come to view themselves as change-makers.  By November of that same year, the Sustainability Action Project (SAP) was unveiled to students as a year-long project conducted within the 8th grade science curriculum.  This project is best seen as an evolving journey that builds students’ confidence and understanding about the increasingly essential topic of sustainability and how decisions made now will impact the future world.  There was a goal in sight for both teachers and students:  by May 2011, all 75 eighth graders would be ready to take the stage to present their research, their action project, and their process of discovery in front of an audience of parents and peers.  Our 8th Grade Capstone Showcase would become the grand finale and celebration of this project and the students’ middle school years.

II. Overview

Interest in global social causes around the world is surging.  While many schools today are responding through community service and grade-wide projects, this project gives individuals the power to influence change and solve problems.  In the SAP students think about solutions to real local and global issues that threaten sustainability.  Students individually or in small groups develop a plan around an issue they care about. Students engage in a process that expects them to research facts, develop a plan, execute their plan and then present their SAP to the greater community.

Near the beginning of the year, students are asked a question: “How will the world and the human race survive into the future?”  This is a broad question, which needs to be broken down to become more manageable and less overwhelming.  We seek to help our students answer this question with our Sustainability Action Project (SAP).  We ask students to consider what actions or practices they can do to promote sustainability in our world.  What do we mean by “sustainability”?  We answer this with the most widely referenced definition of sustainability, which says that sustainability is “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (World Commission on Environment and Development, the Brundtland Report, 1987)

As we commence the year’s SAP, we ask them, “On what issue, concerning sustainability, will you take action?”  As the students consider topics to confront a specific current issue, they learn that their project must address the three tenets or pillars of sustainability: ecology (or environment), social justice, and economy.  In light of recent global developments, students must also be called to consider a vision articulated by the Earth Charter proposing “a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.”

Sustainability is a difficult concept to translate to 8th grade students since their abstract thinking is still developing.  Initially, the “Social Pillar” is the one that most students have difficulty addressing in their projects.  However, over the course of the project they begin to see how all the pillars of sustainability are interrelated.  As students consider the recent conflicts around the world that are focused on equity and justice, they begin to understand how important it is that each decision we make must take into consideration all the pillars of sustainability.

The major goals and outcomes for the SAP are:

• to be able to explain how sustainability relates to their lives and their values.
• to understand how their actions impact issues of sustainability.
• to apply their understanding of sustainability by acting on an issue about which they are passionate.
• to explain how the pillars of sustainability are interrelated and are addressed in their project.
• to reflect on their capacity to advocate for and contribute to improvement locally, regionally, or globally.

Equally important, throughout the project students will develop their 21st century skills:

• to investigate the world beyond their immediate environment;
• to blog about discoveries;
• to collaborate with a team of classmates;
• to recognize their own and others’ perspectives;
• to communicate their ideas effectively to a diverse audience;
• to translate their ideas and findings into appropriate actions to improve the world by creating and executing an action project aimed at making a change.

III. Implementing the Sustainability Action Project

In this project students are given significant freedom in choosing their topic and action project.  Students are given timelines and periodic deadlines throughout the year to help them complete their project and prepare for the presentation evening in May.  The following is the timeline and the deadlines along with a brief explanation of what must be accomplished at each stage.

Timeline:

Part I – Considering a Topic for SAP (October)

In October, students choose topics and form small groups of like interest.  Students may choose to work alone.  Students are given orientation in how to search for a topic.  They are also instructed in basic research methods and directed to some preliminary web-based resources to use in their research and topic inquiry.  They summarize their topic choice and preliminary research in a one-page proposal.

Part II – Research and Writing Blogs (November – March) (See Appendix C)

From November through mid-January students refine their topic of interest.  They conduct research on the web seeking primary sources for their information.  They keep track of these sources in their bibliography.  They are also required to subscribe to at least three feeds from reliable sources.  The students record much of the learning gained through research in blog posts.  In early November the teacher guides students through the process of generating a blog.  Students are instructed in how to use tags, insert a picture, web links, documents, and how to publish the blog within our school’s internal, privacy-protected platform.  Students are then given class time (one Science 8 class period per week) in which to research their topic and write their blogs. From November through March, students are required to write a total of 10 blog entries and comment on peer’s blogs.  Through these blogs, students share what they have learned about the topic from their research.  They address various issues within their topic.  They summarize and share internet articles, website links, information from the feeds they follow and primary sources that they find.  Their published blogs are read by their classmates and particularly by their group mates, who are required to make substantive comments on their peers’ blogs.  These blogs, the comments and responses serve as a way to communicate with each other about their topic.  This is one way in which the groups collaborate on the project.

December: First Formal Progress Check (See Appendix B)

In December students complete a written status report in which they articulate their topic in detail.  They identify their resources and summarize how their project is addressing the three pillars of sustainability.  This written information has been critical in guiding the students toward the expected project goals.

Part III – Conducting the Action Project (January – April)

The students are given great liberty in terms of the form that their project takes. By late January, the groups must finalize their plan to conduct their action project.  An early start on the project is especially important if the project requires interaction with individuals or organizations outside of the school.

February/March: Second Progress Check (See Appendix D)

Students write out their timetable for completion of all aspects of their project. They divide up responsibility for each component of their action plan, including the presentation for the Capstone Evening.

Part IV – Developing the Presentation (March – May)

During this period the groups work on the actual presentation of their research and project. Some project presentations take the form of an “infomercial” for some educating their audience on the issues surrounding their topic.  Others develop videos of their project including interviews and a record of a community service activity.  Some presentations are simple PowerPoint reports of what they did. Students receive instruction and guidance about how to organize and deliver their presentations from a teacher of Introductory Public Speaking.

Part V – Presentation (May)

At the 8th grade Academic Capstone Showcase evening in May each group presents its final action project to an audience.  There is an evening program where most presentations take place simultaneously in various classrooms to voluntary audiences.  A program informs the attendees about which presentation is occurring when and where.  A few select presentations are made before the entire class and guests in the school theater.  The audience consists of classmates, students of other grades, parents, invited special guests and possibly local, state or government officials.

Part VI: Final Reflection (June)

Reflection is a pivotal action in learning.  Therefore, the final reflection essay is one of the most important parts of the SAP experience.  Specifically, students are asked to write one final report, a reflection on their experience and what they learned. Practically, we incorporated this reflection as part of the final exam for the year.  The students were asked to prepare an outline to respond to the following essay prompt in advance of class:

Identify three specific things that you learned through your SAP.  Be thorough and clear in your description of the three things.  Then, discuss one lifestyle change that you can/will make in response to one of the things you learned through your or someone else’s SAP.  In your discussion of this lifestyle change, address the three tenets/pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental, equity and justice).

IV. Examples of SAP

Each year our students create 24 plus SAP projects.  Topics address, alternative energy, plastic bottles, illiteracy, eco communities, gender equality, fracking and so much more.  Below are samples of 6 projects that represent a variety of local to global impact from last year.  To view the PowerPoint presentations, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

V.  Assessing the SAP

Student work and progress is assessed and monitored throughout the year.  The assessment is both formal and informal and includes two written progress checks and the final reflection.  There are four separate assessment rubrics, one for the blogging and comments on peers’ blogs, one for the resources used in writing the blogs, one for developing the action project and one for the actual project and presentation. See the appendix for these.

VI. Conclusion

The final written student reflections these past two years offered us significant insight into how effective and successful the projects were for the students.  They allowed the students to articulate what they learned at a personal level, the life changes that they take away from their experience.  Personally, the reading of these reflections was a powerful and rewarding experience for us.  Not only did they concretely show how our students were taking steps toward embodying part of our mission statement: “preparing responsible and thoughtful citizens of the world,” but they confirmed for us as teachers that engaging the students in a project at this level was a life transforming experience for them. (See Appendix F for sample student reflections)

We teachers annually reflect on the SAP.  Through careful observations, questions and comments throughout the year, we make adjustments to make this project one of the most meaningful experiences students take away from their middle school years.  We also acknowledge the wonderful work of our colleagues in the 6th and 7th grade years that provide our students with learning experiences that allow us to challenge our students at this level of engagement.

APPENDICES:

Appendix A: Student Handout – General Assignment Description:

Sustainability Action Project (SAP)

On what issue, dealing with sustainability, will you take action?

Welcome to the 8th grade Sustainability Action Project (SAP).  In this project you will be given an opportunity to understand the issues surrounding sustainability and sustainable development on a local, national, or global issue of your choice.  You will use your findings to determine whether the current way your issue is handled is sustainable.  You will then develop and conduct a real action project, which makes a change in this issue for sustainability in the world.

We will begin this journey by first seeking to define “Sustainability” and “Sustainable Development”. To date, the most widely quoted definition of “sustainable development” was first published in 1987.

“Sustainable Development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

-       from the World Commission on Environment and Development’s (the Brundtland

Commission) report Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).

Sustainability has three major aspects, called tenets/pillars known the three “E”s, Ecology, Economy and Equity.  The projects must address these three aspects: Economic stability, Environmental sustainability and Social sustainability.  As we consider the current conflicts around the world, the need for social sustainability that supports Equity and Justice, becomes even more urgent.  The Earth Charter proposes this vision of our world: “a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.”  (The Earth Charter Initiative (2000).“The Earth Charter.” Retrieved on: 2009-04-05.)

What are the needs of the present? What will be the needs of the future? If you were to list 5-10 needs that are important to you, would there be conflict among those needs?  How will you determine if your needs are more important than the needs of others and which needs are met?

Throughout this year as you conduct your project you will:

• learn about your topic through research,
• understand the issue from a sustainability perspective,
• ACT on it through your Sustainability Action Project!

The Sustainability Action Project will give each of you a chance to…

• explain how sustainability relates to their lives and their values.
• understand how your actions impact issues of sustainability.
• apply your understanding of sustainability by taking a stand on an issue about which you are passionate.
• explain how the pillars of sustainability are interrelated and are addressed in your project.
• reflect on your capacity to advocate for and contribute to improvement locally, regionally, or globally.

What skills will you develop as you work on your Sustainability Action Project?

You will:

• learn to investigate the world beyond your immediate environment
• write about discoveries through a blog
• collaborate with a team of classmates in brainstorming solutions
• Recognize your own and others perspectives
• Communicate your ideas effectively to a diverse audience
• Translate your ideas and findings into appropriate actions to improve the world

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

- Margaret Mead

General Overview of the Sustainability Action Project (SAP)

Part I – Understanding Sustainable Development (October)

• Each of you will choose an issue about which you are interested.  You will do some preliminary research on it, and you will submit a 1-page summary of the issue you wish to pursue.

Selecting a topic

• There are so many topics! Which one should you choose? One way to get an overview about just what’s out there is to go to a subject directory. These collections of topics are on WebPages or in Databases. Some good places to start on the web are:
• Google Topics
• Yahoo topics
• New York Times Topics
• Greenhills Databases:
• CQ Researcher
• InfoTrac Subject Guide

Part II – Class Time (November)

• Certain days during the month will be set aside for your work on the SAP.  You will research your topic and set the stage for the remainder of your SAP journey.  You will be introduced to blogging.  You will brainstorm ideas to develop an essential question that you want to answer about your issue.

Research:

• Identify the social, economic and scientific factors surrounding this issue
• Identify realistic steps that can be taken to create positive change regarding the issue.
• Identify how our governor Rick Snyder of Michigan and our government leaders in Washington D.C. could work to improve the status of your issue.

Websites:

·         Procon.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit whose mission is “Promoting education, critical thinking, and informed citizenship by presenting controversial issues in a straightforward, nonpartisan primarily pro-con format.”

·         Public Agenda.Com – For over a quarter of a century, Public Agenda has been providing unbiased  that bridges the gap between American leaders and what the public really thinks about issues ranging from education to foreign policy to immigration to religion and civility in American life. Nonpartisan and nonprofit, Public Agenda was founded by social scientist and author Daniel Yankelovich and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in 1975. Public Agenda’s two-fold mission is to help: American leaders better understand the public’s point of view.

·         Roll Call – Roll Call newspaper is widely regarded as the leading publication for Congressional news and information. . In addition to breaking news, readers get keen insight from such respected Washington analysts plus political coverage of Congressional elections in every state in the Union.

·         FirstGov – Search portal to navigate federal resources. Enables users to put in a term (e.g. ‘environment’) and access all departments in the government with publications about this issue.

·         The Note – This blog is used by ABC reporters as a mechanism to share their observations on issue as they arise. Much more candid than the ‘reported’ new, it’s a unique insight into issues and conflicts reporters are watching.

Database:

·         CQ Researcher – is the choice of researchers seeking original, comprehensive reporting and analysis on issues in the news. Published in print and online 44 times a year, the single-themed CQ Researcher report offers in-depth, non-biased coverage of political and social issues, with regular reports on topics in health, international affairs, education, the environment, technology and the U.S. economy.

Part III – Learning and Blogging (November –Mid February)

• Independent work: You will be working at home as well as at school, doing research and writing about it.   Most of your writing will take place on a blog that you will write from November until March (see Blog Schedule).  Your entries will be visible to your classmates and your Science teacher. One blog entry every other week about your SAP experience will be expected.
• Following the professional discussion: while conducting your research, you will identify and subscribe to at least three feeds from viable sources regarding your topic. Throughout the duration of the project, you will write about what you learn from these sources in the form of 8-10 blog posts to your personal blog. As part of your exploration you will be accessing more information and resources about your issue, creating links to websites and images.  Two of these posts should analyze the topic through an environmental lens, and two posts should examine the topic with an economic and sociological eye.
• Collaboration with your group: You will also be responsible for commenting on the blog postings of other members of your class as well as group members.

Part IV – Action Project (Mid February – May)

• From your research, through your blogging and continued learning, you will create an “action project” that will be shared and presented to an audience.  There will be many choices of action project types.  First, you must decide which type of project your group wants to conduct.  You will need to think about the best way to present your issue and your solution. Below is a list of some ideas for an action project.  You may come up with others.

○       defining a process for a proposal for change or consideration on legislative agenda

○       formal proposal and address to Congress, or State legislators

○       multimedia news investigative broadcast (or commercial) which explains the issue and your action (4-5 minutes)

○       action-oriented service project with picture or video (and not a bake sale)

○       interactive web page with links to images, video, and other resources

○       short film aimed at educating a student and adult audience (4-5 minutes)

○       visual art display or a mural design to be done at Greenhills

○       contact experts on your SAP topic and interview them, or invite them in to speak

○       a crafted model/artifact that represents an aspect of your issue with written explanation

○       designing a lesson to be taught at a local elementary school

○       presentation an either an all school or a middle school assembly

• It is important that the project your group chooses is something that everyone feels like they can “own” and play a role in designing.  Once a project approach is selected, the group must stick to its plan of acting upon it.  The more you seek to engage off campus contacts and people the more time you need to allow for the coordination with these people.   Note:  Every Friday time is built into our science schedule for you and your group to work on your action project here at school.  You are also invited to gather on your own at one another’s home to work on your project, but this is not a requirement. 

Part VI – Presentation (May)

• Each group will present its final action project to an audience.  The audience will contain your classmates, other middle school students, parents, invited special guests and possibly local, state or government officials.  Groups will present their projects at the 8^th grade Academic Capstone Festival in May.

Assessment of Sustainability Action Project (SAP)

Throughout the SAP process you will be given verbal and written feedback.  Feedback may come in the form of a brief check-in with your Science teacher to see how you are moving along through the process.  Another form of feedback may include a short comment on your blogs from your Science teacher.  Either way, you will be given various forms of feedback.

There will be four formal SAP assessments:

1        Individual work (blog entries) meeting required blog guidelines

2        Small group work (action project, collaboration, presentation)

3        Presentation at the Capstone Celebration in May

4        Final Reflection Statement

Appendix B: Progress Checks and Rubrics:

First Formal Progress Check Handout

TOPIC______________________________________

GROUP MEMBERS:

What specific research motivated you to choose your specific topic? Include specific input from each member in your group.

How does your topic address the three tenets/pillars of sustainability?

Equity and Justice

Environmental

QUESTIONS                                     IDEAS                                                            NEXT STEPS

Appendix C: Blog schedule

SAP Work Schedule

Appendix D: Outlining Action Plan Handout

SAP March 9, 2013 A, B, D, E and G Periods

Group Members: ____________________________________________________________                

Broad Category: ______________________________

WHERE YOU BEGAN:

You have investigated a community issue that recognizes global importance. Your issues address Sustainable Development‖ on a local, national, or global issue.  You are now at a point where you will channel your findings into a real action project aimed at you taking a stand and proposing a change in the world.

NEXT STEPS:

1.      Identify:  What information in researching topics motivated you to choose your specific topic? State what the specific input from each member in your group will be.

2.      Action Plan: Overall – State your idea in as much detail as possible.

3.     Detail: This should include a time line for specific steps.  For example: Deadlines for interviews, presentations to others (school – identify what school, grade level, classes, etc.), completion of writing and presenting a proposal, etc.  Include dates if possible.

*****If you are part of a group identify the specific roles and responsibilities of each member.

4.     Presentation method/type:  We will work on this in class on Fridays. You will be expected to include information (facts, data) that you have researched through your blogs.

Group Grading Rubric Components

• Content
• Significance
• Clearly addressed the three aspects of sustainability (economic, environmental, equity and justice)
• Presentation Quality
• Collaboration
• Clear articulation of the problem and your group’s action project
• Degree of local, national and global levels of application

Appendix E: Presentation Requirements Handout

SAP Power Point Requirements

General Presentation Suggestions:

A.  We recommend 10-15 slides.  If you have more it is ok, but not too many more.

B.  REMEMBER:  Bullet points serve as prompts so you can provide detail.  You do not want people to get lost in reading your slides.  You want them to listen to you.

C.  Make your slides bold, colorful, readable, but at the same time, NOT too distracting.  Colors should allow text to be readable.

D.  Animations should not be distracting.  For example: the transitions can be interesting but not time consuming, like dropping individual letters to spell out names, titles, etc.

E.  Include pictures, etc.

Presentation Content Requirements:

1.  Title Slide

- Topic/ Project Name

- Members Names

2. Why this topic?

-Talk about the process that enabled you to choose this topic as your passion.

3.  Information that you have researched.

4. How do the three tenet/pillars of sustainability: Environmental, Social (Equity and Justice) and Economic relate to your topic. Discuss each one using:

-Facts

-Statistics

-Graphs, etc.

-short videos

• Based on your research on your topic, why and what is the issue that needs to be addressed as you see it?

• Be sure to present PROS and CONS – both sides of the issue need to be presented even though you state your stance on the topic.

4.  Based on your topic research, what ACTION PLAN did you develop as it relates to your topic?

-Is it to raise awareness or to inform people about this topic?

-To teach younger folks?  Why? Where did you go?

- Raise money?  How?

-What were the results?

• Why or how will your plan help to make the issue you are addressing more sustainable for all people?

5.  What did you do to gain information about your plan? Did you meet with people of importance, experts in the field on your topic?

6.  What was your take away?  What impact, impression did this project have on you?

7.  BIBLIOGRAPHY – correctly formatted according to Noodle tools.

Appendix F: Sample excerpts of student reflections on the Sustainability Action Project

Below are a few examples of the SAP final reflections.  Each reflection was 2-3 pages in length.  Here are a few excerpts from the 75 reflections.  They all confirmed that this project was a very powerful experience for the students.  These segments are transcribed in their own words.

The Sustainability project has given me the opportunity to explore my academic potential.  I was able to dive deep into a topic that I am passionate about.  This project has allowed me to grow not only as a student but as a person because of all of the global issues that I have been exposed to.

During the SAP project, I learned many things.  Through my work in the Solar Energy Group, I learned just how much a few people can do when they put their mind to it.  By working with all of the 5^th grader in science classes at King Elementary, I realized how hard the job of a teacher is.  Kids can be crazy with energy, and by sitting in that classroom and teaching those kids, I gained respect for my teachers who do this every single day.  In addition, I learned much more about the energy crisis than I had known before.  Before SAP, I knew we were in an energy crisis but I didn’t know how severe and how quickly it will occur.  The fact that oil runs out in about 2050 is something that we need to be aware of.  If the next generation (my generation) can’t find better ways to power the world, it could be the end of everything……..After I learned about the looming crisis, I began trying to save as much energy as possible.  I use less water, I turn off lights I don’t need and expect my family does the same.

In the past month we put in a great amount of work on our Sustainability Action Project.  There were so many different kinds of projects, but they all transmitted the same message.  How to do activities that address issues surrounding equity, the economy and the environment.  What I found astounding through this whole process was how a few, or even one person can make an impact, no matter how big or small, on the world.  In the following I will examine a few SAP projects, I really liked and how they changed my perspective on the world.

The sustainability action project was very enriching for me and I took a lot out of it.  I had no idea how many issues affected people in Washtenaw County.   Students did a very good job of educating us not only about the issue but also about what we can do to help.

            This brings me to the first thing I learned.  When Chloe presented on hunger, I was struck by, how many children in Ann Arbor and the surrounding cities are affected by hunger.  Many homes in Washtenaw County struggle to put food on the table.  I have an interest in volunteering at the St. Andrew’s breakfast program because I want to keep people from being hungry.

            Another thing I learned as a result of my own research is the ease of getting local food through CSA, Community Supported Agriculture.  As a result of my SAP on local food, I am going to eat more food grown around Ann Arbor.  I am currently trying to convince my family to purchase a share of CSA.  By eating locally, I am being sustainable because by buying locally, I will increase demand and eventually more people will be able to get local food, because there will be increased demand.  By producing more food because of the demand, it will lower the price so more people can afford to buy fresh food.

When beginning this project, I wasn’t sure what topic I should choose.  There were so many options!  I chose solar energy as my SAP, because I did not know much about it.

            Another topic I learned about was composting.  This was Kelly’s SAP. One point that stuck with me was how easy it is to do…as a result my family has begun composting.  I am happy because I am helping the earth.  Composting is economical and environmentally sustainable and everyone can take part in this effort.  It saves building landfills that no one wants to live by.

 As for my lifestyle change, this experience made me think about helping my community and giving back to my community.  I have become a volunteer and go monthly to help out when they need help maintaining the gardens and planting the gardens at Growing Hope.

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PDF: Francis-MorganJSESpring2013

Review of Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education: Bringing Life to Schools and Schools to Life, by Dilafruz R. Williams and Jonathan Brown

Reviewed by Tricia Francis-Morgan

Keywords: learning gardens, place-based education, schools, sustainability education.

Two years ago I began work on a paper to examine the role of small-scale agriculture and school gardens in revitalizing local economies and local culture in the Caribbean.  My efforts to find a comprehensive theoretical framework for applying the concept of food growing to education seemed lacking until I came across Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education: Bringing Life to Schools and Schools to Life.   In Learning Gardens, Williams and Brown establish living soil in its literal and metaphorical contexts as an ecologically grounded framework for challenging the dominant mechanistic paradigm that characterizes modern educational systems and for supporting sustainability pedagogy. Through rich, sensory educative experiences with the soil of learning gardens students begin to understand and appreciate the complex interconnections between soil, plants, animals, and people thus facilitating solid steps toward sustainability.

Drawing upon the literal and metaphoric significance of soil, Williams and Brown have identified seven guiding principles that serve as an analytical framework for understanding how learning gardens provide an alternative, regenerative paradigm for ecologically grounded sustainability education.  As a unique ecological milieu, the soil of learning gardens facilitates the nexus of pedagogy with pedology by helping learners cultivate a sense of place, foster curiosity and wonder, discover rhythm and scale, value biocultural diversity, embrace practical experience, nurture interconnectedness, and awaken the senses.

Cultivating a Sense of Place

The concept of place in place-based education evokes a call for education to be committed to serving the social and ecological well-being of particular places and to make teaching and learning relevant to the needs of the communities in which learners live through active, experiential learning (Gruenewald & Smith, 2008; Smith  & Sobel, 2010; Sobel, 2004).   Soil conveys the unique characteristics of places in profoundly telling ways.  Williams and Brown contend that as students engage with the soil of their learning gardens they begin to develop intimate knowledge of their unique socioecological environment.  Feeling intimately connected to a place increases the likelihood that people will care for their unique places (Berry, 1990; Orr 1992).  “The uniqueness of place,” note Williams and Brown, “is embodied in the soils of diverse school gardens” (p. 58).

Fostering Curiosity and Wonder

In laying out his theory of experience and education, Dewey (1938) pointed out that a truly educative experience must “arouse curiosity” and “strengthen initiative” (p. 38).  Williams and Brown argue that active engagement with the soil of learning gardens offers rich opportunity for reorienting teaching and learning in modern educational systems from mechanized, lifeless, uneducative experiences to meaningful ones which foster curiosity and wonder.   As with life, the authors contend, the living soil of learning gardens abounds with questions.  How does decomposition happen?  Why do leaves change color?   Questions such as these invite wondering and stimulate keen observation.  Perhaps more importantly the authors note, when students are in search of answers to questions such as these, they develop habits of investigation and expression that facilitate their full and critical engagement with the world.

Discovering Rhythm and Scale

The living soil of school learning gardens facilitates life-honoring educational processes that are attuned to the natural rhythms and scales of all living things.   The authors remind us that modern educational systems, characterized by artificial and mechanistic modes of organization, promote forms of teaching and learning that are in stark contrast to the natural cadence of living systems.   Meaningful learning experiences with the soil of learning gardens disrupt the mechanistic discourse of modern day schooling and promote the creation of social systems that are mindful of the rhythm and scale of the natural systems that sustain all life.

Williams and Brown inform us that tactile engagement with living soil supports awareness of the natural tempo of life. Observing changes in growth in a garden that correspond to seasonal changes provides students with rich opportunities for authentic engagement with the natural rhythms of life.  In stark contrast to modern day conceptions of progress commonly evidenced in the present globalized growth economy, growth and development in sustainability education are not based on paradigms of linear progress but are viewed instead within the context of the recursive rhythms and scales that characterize nature.  The authors highlight important pedagogical implications presently of global significance that stem from examination of what happens when the normal rhythms of nature are disrupted.  Examples include students discussing the use of non-reproductive hybrid seeds, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers and the implications of such use on socio-ecological environments.

Valuing Biocultural Diversity  

The living soil of school learning gardens, note Williams and Brown, presents a rich milieu for observing the co-evolution and interdependence of ecological and cultural systems.   Meaningful engagement with the soil of learning gardens provides students with wonderful experiential opportunities for guiding them into sustainable living practices that help to foster biocultural diversity.  Gardening methods such as companion planting and multi-cropping promote vibrant biodiversity.  The authors also point out that learning gardens present students with opportunities to learn not only about growing food and the nutritional value of food but also the interdependence between food and social experience.

Embracing Practical Experience

Williams and Brown emphasize that physical engagement with life and life-sustaining processes is key for promoting sustainable living.  The authors mention two prominent educational theorists – Dewey and Gandhi – who both believed that truly educative experiences are experiential but who also cautioned that experiences need to be accompanied by critical reflection if they are to be educative.   Williams and Brown urge that practical experience of the kind presented by learning gardens should not be perceived as thoughtless activities with no connection to texts and previous experiences.  Well-designed learning garden experiences, they argue, allow for a truly connective education where synthesis between head, heart, and hands can be realized.       

Nurturing Interconnectedness

All life is based on a complex system of interconnectedness and interdependence.  This basic understanding which runs counter to core principles of modern industrialized economies is necessary for creating sustainable societies (Capra 1996, 2002).  For Williams and Brown, tending the living soil of school learning gardens presents students with an opportunity to discover the frequently obscured connections between soil, self, and society.  The authors discuss planting a Three Sisters Garden comprising corn, beans, and squash as a wonderful demonstration of companion planting and the mutually influential relationships between living things.

Awakening the Senses

Experiences are made more educative when all the senses are engaged. Williams and Brown contend that the living soil of school learning gardens provides rich opportunities for enlivening all the senses and for promoting educative experiences that are finely calibrated with the myriad interconnections of all life. They argue that engaging the full range of sensory experience in garden based experiential learning through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch promotes ecological awareness and ecological thinking.

For Williams and Brown, sensory educative experiences with the soil of learning gardens stand in stark contrast to the inauthentic and sterile life experiences many students now have in schools as a result of teaching and learning environments that are heavily mediated with technology.   In the age of “smart boards” and social media, heavy reliance on technology such as computers disconnects students from real engagement with life. The authors point out that this artificially constructed state of being is essentially a disconnection from our humanness – our sensory capacities.

Williams and Brown provide pedagogical examples of the kinds of rich experiential educative opportunities that learning gardens provide.  Sit spots involve children sitting in one place in a garden while fully engaging their senses with the wonders of the natural world around them as well as the reciprocity between themselves and their physical environment.  Constructing a cob bench also affords children meaningful opportunities for deep sensory engagement.  Children enjoy feeling sand, clay, and water beneath their feet as they use their feet to mix these materials together in preparation for constructing the bench.  Rich, sensory educative experiences such as these enable children to be finely attuned to the complexities of their socioecological environments.

I highly recommend Learning Gardens as a seminal contribution to sustainability education discourse and practice. The authors have outlined a cogent analytical framework for gardening-based education that provides a much-needed alternative to the mechanistic practices of modern educational systems.

References

Berry, W. (1990). What are people for? Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint.

Capra, F. (1996). The web of life: A new scientific understanding of life. New York, NY:

Anchor.

Capra, F. (2002). The hidden connections: Integrating the biological, cognitive, and social

      dimensions of  life into a science of sustainability. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Dewey, J. (1938/1997). Experience and education. New York, NY: Touchstone.

Gruenewald, D., & Smith, G. (Eds.). (2008). Place-based education in the global age: Local

      diversity. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Orr, D. W. (1992). Ecological literacy: Education and the transition to a postmodern world.

Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Smith, G. A., & Sobel, D. (Eds). (2010). Place and community based education in schools.        New York, NY: Routledge.

Sobel.D. (2004). Place-based education: Connecting classrooms and communities. Great

Barrington, MA: The Orion Society.

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PDF: Roger CossSpring2013

Abstract: Daniel Goleman, Lisa Bennett, and Zenobia Barlow, in their book Ecoliterate: How Educators are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence, share the stories of a new generation of educators and activists that are displaying the five practices of socially and emotionally engaged ecoliteracy: developing empathy for all forms of life; embracing sustainability as a community practice; making the invisible visible; anticipating unintended consequences; and understanding how nature sustains life. This book provides useful examples and serves as a guide for educators interested in developing a sustainability-focused learning environment for their students through the framework of ecoliteracy. The purpose of the following review is to first present the purpose, argument, and organization of Ecoliterate, and to then evaluate the claims and implications it presents for practitioners of sustainability education.

Keywords: ecoliteracy,ecology,ecological intelligence,sustainability education,systems thinking

In the book Ecoliterate: How Educators are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence, authors Daniel Goleman, Lisa Bennett, and Zenobia Barlow share stories of a new generation of educators and activists that are displaying the five practices of socially and emotionally engaged ecoliteracy:

• Developing empathy for all forms of life
• Embracing sustainability as a community practice
• Making the invisible visible
• Anticipating unintended consequences
• Understanding how nature sustains life

These stories are of teachers inspiring students into civic responsibility to address the problem of mountaintop coal mining in the Appalachian ecosystem; students taking ownership over their own communities by pushing for oil-free schools in post-Katrina New Orleans; educators moving students from empathy to action by restoring a local watershed in Northern California; and a Superintendent challenging the unequal food accessibility of students in Oakland, CA. This book provides useful examples and serves as a guide for educators interested in developing a sustainability-focused learning environment for their students through the framework of ecoliteracy. The purpose of the following review is to first present the purpose, argument, and organization of Ecoliterate, and to then evaluate the claims and implications it presents for educators interested in sustainability education.

Purpose

The purpose of Ecoliterate is to explore the framework of ecoliteracy through a series of case studies. These case studies are the stories of people tackling four crucial issues: coal mining, oil drilling, food usage, and water usage. The authors state that “our goal is simply to illustrate, through these four issues, how socially and emotionally engaged ecoliteracy leads to deeply meaningful, inspiring, and effective education” (p. 2) and that schooling contexts are “ideally situated” to tackle these issues (p. 3). Though the case studies and teacher guide in Ecoliterate assumes an ecoliteracy-minded audience, they frame ecoliteracy as essential for the kind of learning that meets the most crucial needs of the twenty-first century. Educators unfamiliar with the topic of ecoliteracy find in this book a model of learning that integrates student experience, reflection and action. The final section draws from these stories a collection of professional development strategies for educators to begin infusing curriculum with a sustainability perspective. These strategies empower educators with the ideas and tools needed for transforming their schooling and teaching contexts into ecoliterate communities.

The central problem the authors are addressing in Ecoliterate is that we “do not truly grasp how our everyday actions—our engagement in the systems of energy, agriculture, industry, commerce, and transportation on which we rely—can threaten the health and wellbeing of the Earth” (p. 4). They discuss a recent study that articulates nine life-support systems and thresholds on earth that are essential for human survival: climate change; rate of biodiversity loss; interference with the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean acidification; global freshwater use; change in land use; chemical pollution; and atmospheric aerosol loading (Rockström et al, 2009). This study describes a “safe zone” for each of these thresholds and that two of these—biodiversity and the nitrogen cycle—are currently beyond the acceptable boundary level needed for long-term sustainable living. Additionally, several more systems are expected to cross the acceptable threshold by mid-century. The authors argue that ecoliteracy is necessary for effectively addressing this problem. They note the challenge of awakening a “young person’s knowledge and empathy” towards the ecological impacts that humanity is making and how this challenge “can be met through the cultivation of socially and emotionally engaged ecoliteracy” (p. 5).

The authors define ecoliteracy as the integration of “emotional, social, and ecological intelligence” (p. 10). This builds on the previous work of Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences; Daniel Goleman’s social, emotional, and ecological intelligences; and the experiences of the Center for Ecoliteracy—a foundation out of Berkeley, CA dedicated to integrating sustainability into K-12 curricula. Ecoliteracy focuses on creating and sustaining “healthier relationships with other people and the planet” (p. 12).

Organization

Ecoliterate is organized into two main sections. In the first section, Stories from the Field, the authors present a series of case studies demonstrating how the five practices of ecoliteracy are being used to address the issues of coal mining, oil drilling, food usage, and water usage.

The authors first present the story of activists fighting against destructive mountaintop coal mining practices in the Appalachian Mountain ecosystem (Ch. 1). Several educators, writers and ex-coal miners demonstrate ecological leadership by occupying the Kentucky governor’s office to bring attention to the harmful practices coal mining has on local communities. Through this experience, one protester, Teri Blanton, reflects on several lessons she learned about ecological leadership: don’t communicate from a place of anger; reach people on the human level through stories; foster dialogue instead of debate; speak from the heart; and make ecological connections clear to others. It is through the second lesson—reaching people on the human level through stories—that Ecoliterate challenges its readers to reflect and act in the classroom.

The issue of mountaintop mining is explored again as a history teacher in South Carolina takes students on field trips to explore these practices firsthand (Ch. 2). Students see the before and after ecological impacts of mountaintop coal mining and are challenged to reflect on their experience. This challenges the students to action that spreads the message they have learned. Through these stories, the authors demonstrate the ecoliteracy practices of embracing sustainability as a community practice and of making the invisible visible.

The authors then explore the issue of oil drilling in the Coastal Plain of Alaska and the efforts of students in New Orleans to make their schools oil-free by 2015 (Chs. 3 & 4). The Gwich’in natives develop empathy for all forms of life as well as understand how nature sustains life in their fight to protect the Porcupine caribou that have been a crucial part of their way of life for millennia. However, oil drilling is an issue that has hit much closer to home—figuratively and literally. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 spurred students in New Orleans to challenge their school’s dependence on oil. This is a story of a group of students who call themselves the “Rethinkers” and are fighting to make their school oil-free by 2015. They fight through news conferences, student surveys, and presenting recommendations for improving school conditions. These students take humanity’s unintended consequences and model ecological literacy by creating strategies to help other schools achieve this goal as well, including measuring waste production, forming student groups to reduce waste, eliminating incandescent light bulbs, and recycling.

Next, the authors challenge the reader to rethink the “universal human connections to local bodies of water” (p. 75) and share the story of a Northern California teacher moving students from “empathy into action” (p. 77) as they restore a local watershed (Chs. 5 & 6). A simple student question, “what can we do to help endangered species?” transformed into a class project that resulted in the restoration of a local creek. In this project, students planted trees along the creek and met with local ranchers. As stated earlier, developing empathy for other forms of life challenges the false dichotomy between humans and all other forms of life. This is exactly what Oregon State professor Aaron Wolf is practicing as he raises global awareness of the “problems that arise from the need of a growing number of people to share a limited supply of water” (p. 72).

In the final set of stories, the authors demonstrate how inequities in children’s access to food significantly impact their education, health, and life expectancy (Chs. 7 & 8). Students and educators are challenging these inequities through the practice of ecoliteracy. A group of young adults in Anthony, New Mexico embrace sustainability as a community practice by creating the La Semilla Food Center in their efforts to bring “food justice and economic opportunity” (p. 90) to the local community. This center offers education programs on healthy food indigenous to the local community, and established a youth farm for teaching sustainable farming, permaculture, nutrition, culinary skills, and entrepreneurship.

Nutritional inequity is a critical issue for the growing population of the twenty-first century, which is why Tony Smith, a Superintendent in Oakland, CA, is challenging his local community to “support healthy, local foods in ways that nurture families, communities, and the environment for all students” (p. 108). This is part of his agenda to create the opportunities and resources for schools to provide for the students and families of their local communities.

In the second section, Professional Development Strategies (Chs. 9 & 10), the authors discuss ways for educators and their colleagues to transform curriculum to address the threat humanity’s everyday actions pose to a sustainable future. The first strategy is to form a learning circle that connects like-minded colleagues into a “learning community.” Teaching about sustainable community practice must be a community practice itself. Schools are uniquely situated contexts where this can happen. This learning circle focuses on personal reflections for unearthing and articulating personal values on the very issues being discussed with students; structured conversations for exploring and questioning these themes; collaborative lesson design for educators to think interdisciplinary, as well as across grade levels; and teaching rounds for reflecting and improving pedagogy. In addition to learning circles, the authors identify and discuss several other strategies for developing effective learning communities, including leadership, meeting times, establishing agendas, designing physical space, nourishment, etc. They present a clear framework for developing and implementing learning communities of any size amongst colleagues.

Implications

The central claim of Ecoliterate is that the five practices of socially and emotionally engaged ecoliteracy awaken young peoples’ “knowledge and empathy” toward humanity’s hazardous ecological impacts. As the stories presented throughout demonstrate, ecoliteracy means taking this awakening and acting upon it. This theme of action is central to Fritjof Capra’s definition of ecological literacy: “understanding the basic principles of ecology and being able to embody them in daily life” (1999, p. 2). For example, students in Chapter Two, after seeing destructive mountaintop mining practices and reflecting on this experience in class, published a paper about it in a local newspaper, while others cofounded an environmental club. The framework of experience-reflection-action is embedded throughout these stories.

In Section Two: Professional Development Strategies, the authors suggest structured conversation between those in the learning circles, collaboration on lesson design, and modeling teaching with colleagues for further reflection and improvement of pedagogy. However, if educators read this book with the intention of finding ready-made curricular materials and strategies, they will be disappointed. The authors do not argue for a one-size-fits-all model of pedagogy for administrators to force down upon educators, but rather places the development of curriculum into the hands of those in contact with the students themselves. Though they do acknowledge the “overwhelming pressure on educators to cover a myriad of topics with limited time and resources” (p. 113), they do not discuss in great detail the barriers teachers face in attempting to integrate a sustainability perspective into school curriculum, nor how to overcome them. Ecoliterate would benefit from a more sustained discussion of how to transform and infuse existing curricula with a sustainability perspective, and of the barriers to implementing such curricula.

With the surge of research on the role of education and schooling in response to global ecological issues over the past 20 years, educators are now in need of guides and examples for putting these conceptual frameworks into practice. Ecoliterate is situated in the broader conversation being held by educators and activists on the role of education in meeting the ecological problems of the twenty-first century. Scholars and educators such as David Orr, C.A. Bowers, Michael Stone, Rebecca Martusewicz, and many others are looking at how the problem of humanity’s “unsustainable actions” that Ecoliterate discusses are a conflict of values—values of economic and technological salvation rather than of ecological responsibility. Through the framework of ecoliteracy, students in these stories are learning to value all forms of life—human and non-human—and that all this life is interconnected across multiple levels.

It is for this purpose of building a like-minded community of colleagues that Ecoliterate deserves to sit in a prominent place on the desk of educators. The reader is provided not only with many clear examples of just how this understanding is manifested in the lives of educators, activists, and students, but also with examples and tools to begin building and shaping their own learning and teaching communities. It is not just another handbook on curriculum development, but a message of hope to educators who endeavor to transform their pedagogical influence to meet the critical needs of today.
References

Capra, F. (1999). Ecoliteracy: The challenge for education in the next century. Liverpool Schumacher Lectures. California: Center for Ecoliteracy.

Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Stuart III Chapin, F. F., Lambin, E., & Falkenmark, M. (2009). Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity. Ecology and Society, 14(2), 1–33.

Wilson, E. O. (1984). Biophilia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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PDF: SeisJSESpring2013

Review of Occupy education: living and learning sustainability by Tina Lynn Evans

Mark Seis, Fort Lewis College

Key words:  occupy education, sustainability, Tina Evans, critical social theory, global capitalism, higher education

Tina Evans’ Occupy Education is a theoretically sophisticated  work focusing on the topic of sustainable education.  This treatise is rich in exploration, not so much with respect to theoretical originality, but in eloquent synthesis of theoretical perspectives.  This book should be on the shelf of any educator professing an interest in the teaching of sustainability.

Evans’ project is to construct a critical social theory (CST) of sustainability, which emphasizes human agency in the production of social change.  While drawing upon Marxist insights, Polyanyi’s concept of reciprocity, Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, critical theory in general, and Marcuse in particular, Evans does not wish to see her work “pigeonholed as a Marxist or neo-Marxist analysis “ (9).   “My CST of sustainability recognizes that growth-oriented industrial economies, whether socialist or capitalist, are incompatible with sustainability” (9).  Evans’ book is a rigorous effort to steer the reader away from over simplistic calls for personal life changes in an effort to curtail radical planetary destruction rooted in industrial capitalist practices.  There are few things more distracting and frustrating than reading a book on how our planet is dying, which then concludes with 10 simple ways that you can end this destruction by changing a few personal behaviors.  Yes, personal changes collectively are not insignificant, but they do nothing to change the externalized material conditions that are perpetuating the destruction of our planet.   Identifying the forms of domination and understanding the interlocking systems of power that define global industrial capitalism are the central tenants of Evans’ CST of sustainability.  It is the in-depth understanding of the materialist structural forces of our ecological crisis that leads Evans to believe that our ecological crisis can be subdued through human agency and praxis.

To this end, the book is divided into three parts.  Part one, the first four chapters, is focused on developing Evans’ CST of sustainability. These four chapters provide the reader with a set of analytical tools to understand our ecological crisis historically, economically, politically, sociologically and even psychologically.  This section of the book is my favorite and is without doubt a clear demonstration of Evans’ ability to synthesize complex critical social theory and apply it to ecological sustainability literature. This trans-disciplinary approach is rare in most environmental sustainability literature aimed at diagnosing said crisis.

The first chapter in Part One is essentially a review and sorting of a wide breadth of critical social theory and ecological literature, where key theoretical concepts are identified for the purpose of denoting forms of structural and cultural domination discussed throughout Evans’ CST of sustainability.  In Chapter Two, Evans constructs a theory of sustainability praxis.  Because Evans grounds her work in CST, she presupposes the historical nature of social structure, therefore contending that “social formations are…open to change through human agency—that nothing in human history is absolute or immutable because all history is contingent upon past and future action” (47).  It is this awareness that allows for critical consciousness and human agency to act to change material structural conditions which frame being.  To paraphrase Marx, circumstances make humans as much as humans make circumstances.  This CST grounding differentiates Evans’ approach from many deep ecology and eco-psychology sustainability approaches, which advocate that sustainability is just a matter of changing the way we think about our relationship with our land base.   For Evans, the problem of sustainability is deeply rooted in structural material conditions and concomitant ideological factors.

Chapters three and four are provocative and provide the most interesting analysis of the book for me.  These two chapters are built on the far reaching systemic power of global corporate capitalism and its unsustainable nature as demonstrated by “fossil fuel depletion, ecological breakdown and the structural crisis of capitalism” (75).   Evans explores in these two chapters “how and why the economic and political possibilities of societies narrow as a result of late capitalist, neoliberal globalization so that, even should a nation or community wish to reverse or change course, the late capitalist system enforces continued political and economic dependency on the globalized economy” (75).   The deterministic nature of these two chapters is what Evans must overcome in order to make her theory of a CST of sustainability stick.  In short, she must reconcile the contradictory and deterministic nature of “enforced dependency” with the development of a sustainability oriented education and praxis.  The last two parts of this book address the application of human agency and praxis to dismantling “enforced dependency,” which, for Evans, remains the main cause of our ecological crisis.

Chapters five through seven, in Part Two of the book, develop a CST of sustainability focused on praxis and the implementation of human agency in changing destructive ecological practices to more sustainable behaviors.  This part of the book focuses on applied strategies for implementing a CST of sustainability, ranging from (re)inhabitation and (re)localization efforts, to decentralized political organizing, to creating sustainable food systems, to focusing on confronting imminent ecological crises like climate change and the end of oil.   These three chapters again exemplify Evans’ ability to synthesize a wide variety of literature focused on alternative practices aimed at the specific goal of dismantling the hegemonic functions of “forced dependency.”   Those who doubt that there is no will out there to resist the status quo need to pay close attention to these chapters.  Evans makes it very clear that there is no shortage of viable solutions to deal with our ecological crisis nor is there any shortage of prescriptions for confronting sustainability.

Part three, chapters eight and nine, focus exclusively on the application of critical pedagogy in creating sustainable practices.  Chapter eight is focused on using higher education as a vehicle for dialoguing on sustainability.  The chapter is slightly contradictory, and, as an educator, I can identify with the problem Evans is grappling with here.  On the one hand, educators want to view their institutions of higher learning as places of creative problem solving with the aim of improving our social world.  On the other, institutions of higher learning are entrenched bureaucratic apparatuses run by technocrats, whose primary concerns are student body count and standardizing pedagogy.  Challenging destructive worldviews and practices is not the primary aim of higher education, contrary to the idealist hopes that many of us, however naïve, may have had at some time in our academic careers.  When surveying the diverse disciplines comprising most colleges and universities, it seems doubtful that most academics perceive that we are even in a full-blown ecological crisis, let alone the same ecological problem so eloquently constructed by Evans.   Needless to say, Evans is not so naïve as to “hold any illusions about the difficulties inherent in reorienting the pedagogies of U.S. colleges and universities toward sustainability” (223).  This chapter is an effort to grapple with the significance of utilizing higher education as an agent of constructive social change despite its entrenched hegemonic function in maintaining the status quo—witness the title of Evans’ book Occupy Education.

Chapter nine is an actual example of how Evans implements her CST of sustainability in a classroom setting.  The chapter highlights the significance of grounding a course in an ecological and social problem and then seeking productive ways to engage students in active social change; the course is titled The End of Oil.  This chapter may be extremely helpful to many educators, attempting to make their classrooms actual communities of active engagement.   This is an excellent hands-on chapter on how to do as one professes.

I am personally always ambivalent after reading books of this ilk, which means it was an excellent book because it made for frustrating self-reflection.   My frustration stems from thinking of academia and higher education as a vehicle of critical social change.  After more than 20 years in academia, I have read many brilliant critiques of our economic, political, social and ecological woes and Occupy Education is no exception.  I have seen many of my students get excited about such critical works as well, only to have their enthusiasm silenced in other classes, where social and ecological problems are treated as simple matters, requiring a tweak here or there.   I have also seen many enthused graduates get quickly discouraged at their new places of employment by the same political and social bureaucratic structures that keep tight reins on any type of constructive change on college campuses, even something as simple as creating a policy to eliminate throw away plastic bottles.  There are many prescriptions for how to change the world, but in these very dire times our world is not changing fast enough to curtail the catastrophic ecological and social changes that are occurring.  Are education and normative social engagement enough to make our world livable and just?  If so, then why has a half-century of CST failed to make our universities bastions of social justice?  Paraphrasing the famous anarchist Emma Goldman, if voting changed anything it would be outlawed.  After more than 20 years in higher education, I have come to believe that if higher education could change anything, it too, would be outlawed.   This is not meant as an attack on this book, but rather a serious criticism of we academics who seek solace in the virtues of our “normative” critical pedagogy.  For years, many intellectuals wrote, read, and discussed the immoralities of slavery, but it was non-normative critical social engagement and action that severed the yoke of slavery.  The magnitude of our ecological crisis also requires non-normative critical social engagement and action, much of which lies outside the ivory towers and prison-like classrooms of academia.

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PDF: EvansJSESpring2013_1

Review of Compassionate Activism: An Exploration of Integral Social Care, by Mark Garavan

Tina Lynn Evans, Colorado Mountain College

Keywords:  Mark Garavan, Compassionate Activism, social praxis, critical social theory, integral social care, pedagogy, sustainability

Mark Garavan’s Compassionate Activism is highly relevant to comprehending and acting to transform the social roots of unsustainability in modern societies. As I have argued elsewhere (Evans, 2012), when we question and seek to address the crisis of unsustainability that permeates and degrades all facets of socio-ecology, we are called upon to address relationships of domination and exploitation that both embody and perpetuate social and environmental destruction. Garavan’s work promotes social praxis that explicitly seeks to eliminate oppression at both interpersonal and societal levels. Well-grounded in a wide-ranging body of relevant social theory and practical experience, Compassionate Activism highlights social care as a centrally important avenue for action toward a more just and sustainable society. Garavan focuses on both interpersonal and societal/structural relationships as key sites for social transformation. The integral social care Garavan advocates is open to all: professional providers of social care, educators, and family and community members everywhere.

Although Garavan does not claim his work is about sustainability per se, he explicitly situates integral social care as a critically important aspect of an overarching social project that entails the healing of individuals, society, and socio-ecological systems everywhere. In offering an accessible, well argued, and theoretically grounded approach to engaging in liberatory praxis, Garavan has authored a work that sustainability educators and practitioners will find both inspiring and eminently useful.

Garavan begins by arguing that people are fundamentally social beings who cannot survive or thrive without being cared for and caring for others. While the common sense logic of modern social and economic systems fosters the belief that we are atomized, fundamentally rational beings seeking fulfillment solely through material accumulation and consumption, Garvan counters that social care is part of the very fabric of being human. According to Garavan, our impulses and drives to engage in relationships of social care point to an intrinsic goodness within persons which forms a foundation upon which we might construct a more just, fulfilling, humane, and sustainable society.

Garavan draws on the theories of psychotherapist Carl Rogers (1967) and educator Paulo Freire (1970/2000) in developing the concepts of integral social care and compassionate activism. In the process, he also highlights direct applications of these concepts in both the professional realm and the day-to-day lives of people everywhere. According to Garavan, integral social care “is defined by its attention both to the interpersonal dynamics of authentic and liberating relationships and to the socio-political causes of social need” (p. 73). He draws on Rogers (1967) in arguing that the process of integral social care at the interpersonal level involves non-judgmental acceptance of the other and engagement in authentic dialog that assists the individual in defining and seeking his/her own development/transformation as a free subject in society. According to Garavan, compassionate activism describes “the spirit, values and praxis that should inform integral care” (p. 195). In practicing compassionate activism, Garavan insists that caregivers avoid fostering unequal, paternalistic relationships of care and instead conceptualize and practice social care as a mutualistic endeavor undertaken by equals — a relationship that deepens the humanity of both the caregiver and the recipient of care.