This paper was written as my final paper for my Understanding Learning course in Fall 2020. The assignment was called “Theoretical Framework” and serves as an in depth description of my educational philosophy.
The purpose of education is something I have spent a lot of time thinking about in my career and as I began this program for Natural Sciences and Environmental Education. When I read the Tbilisi Declaration (UNESCO & UNEP, 1978) in my first classes, the goals of environmental education became clear. The goals and objects set forth by the Tbilisi Declaration align well with my beliefs about the value, importance, and purpose of environmental education. The document makes explicit that environmental education must teach learners not only about the environment, but about the “economic, social, political, and ecological interdependence in urban and rural areas” (UNESCO & UNEP, 1978). This holistic goal for environment education sets the field up to address environmental justice issues and has obvious connections to ecofeminism, Indigenous education, and decolonial approaches to education. While many environmental education scholars have failed to fold these philosophies and methods into the literature and practices (Root, 2010), the Tbilisi Declaration’s goals and objectives still undergird the field; efforts to increase justice, equity, and inclusion and to decolonize are considered “mission critical” by the North American Association of Environmental Education (NAAEE, n.d.).
Another important document, Complex environmental systems: Pathway to the future (NSF AC-ERE, 2005) provides additional suggestions for environmental education. Among these suggestions are recommendations to increase participation of underrepresented communities, to use informal education to teach the public about the environment, to highlight the interdisciplinarity of environmental science, and to incorporate environmental science “into traditional courses to encourage students’ enthusiasm about science and recognition of the interconnectedness across traditional disciplines.” (Potter, 2009).
The suggestions of this document add depth to my beliefs about environmental education, and education in general. Put in simple terms, my core belief about education is that education should encourage learners’ enthusiasm and curiosity about the world. Educators, then, should engage with their students and help them find the questions that inspire them to seek answers. Finally, education is about understanding our world, including the natural environment, our social and cultural environments, and our inner thoughts and feelings. These things don’t exist separate from each other, and can’t be understood in isolation. Education must be approached holistically – incorporating issues, methods, and philosophies from a variety of disciplines into every lesson. This includes addressing unpleasant histories and present realities, particularly as a colonized culture. Encouraging curiosity and critical thinking skills are imperative in addressing these topics and helping educators and learners alike deconstruct and disrupt modernist discourses.
Sustainability and Environmental Education
Modernist discourses include those of individualism, rationalism, consumerism, anthropocentrism, and ethnocentrism. These discourses threaten the sustainability of ecological systems and the lives that depend upon them (Martusewicz, Edmundson, & Lupinacci, 2011). Two documents that address sustainability of education with relation, however implied, to these discourses are the United Nation Sustainability Development Goal Four: Education (United Nations, n.d.) and Education for a sustainable future, benchmarks: For individual and social learning (Cloud, 2017). Within the U.N.’s goal for quality education, environmental education can connect most meaningfully with objective 4.7. This objective takes ideas about educating for environmental and sustainability awareness from the Tbilisi Declaration and the NSF AC-ERE report and expands them further to promote “a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.” (United Nations, n.d.). It’s important that environmental education also incorporate the objective 4.a: “Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all” (United Nations, n.d.) as the populations here, notably disabled and genderqueer or -nonconforming people, are not highlighted in much of the decolonization, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and environmental education literature.
Cloud (2017) describes a number of ways of thinking that contribute to sustainable education. Environmental education excels at encouraging many of these thought processes. The field allows modeling of potential futures (future thinking), looking at the world in new ways (lateral thinking), self-reflective and -directed questioning of the world and its interconnectedness (critical thinking, systems thinking, and questioning), and creates a connection to place (regenerative design thinking).
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, Environmental Education, and Trust
Connection to place is one of the core facets of environmental education. It’s a goal of educators to create a connection to place, and an indicator of how engaged a person will be in environmental education. Engagement is an important goal for environmental education (McKinnon & Vos, 2015). Not only do educators want learners to engage with the lessons -what teacher doesn’t?- but they want to encourage continued engagement with the environment.
This need for connection to place emphasizes the need for decolonized and culturally sustaining methods of teaching. If the presumed connection to place for a learner is one based in coloniality, a learner outside the dominant culture will engage neither with the lesson, the educator, nor the place. “An educator cannot sustain something in their curriculum or pedagogy, …love it, nurture it, appreciate the humanity it represents, when that thing is continually rendered impermissible, Other, to them.” (Paris & Alim, 2017). Nor can a learner love, nurture, or appreciate something -or somewhere- that is rendered Other to them.
A culturally sustaining pedagogy in environmental education seeks to find the connection that learners of all backgrounds already have to place. It asks what learners already know about a place and how the environment connects to other aspects of their lives. This type of pedagogy can build trust between learner and educator, which is shown to be a more important component to creating continued engagement than content knowledge (Baram-Tsabari & Osborne, 2015; Feinstein, 2015; McKinnon & Vos, 2015). Employing a culturally sustaining pedagogy, building trust, and creating a space of mutual learning between educator and student are overlapping approaches that environmental education needs to increase its relevance to people across communities and to create a more environmentally engaged public.
References
Baram-Tsabari, A., & Osborne, J. (2015). Bridging science education and science communication research. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 52(2), 135–144. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21202
Cloud, J. P. (2017). Education for A Sustainable Future, Benchmarks: For Individual and Social Learning. Journal for Sustainable Education, 61(4), 1–66. https://doi.org/10.7459/lt/9.1.02
Feinstein, N. W. (2015). Education, communication, and science in the public sphere. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 52(2), 145–163. https://doi.org/https://doi-org/10.1002/tea.21192
Martusewicz, R., Edmundson, J., & Lupinacci, J. (2011). Ecojustice education: toward diverse, democratic, and sustainable communities. New York: Routledge.
McKinnon, M., & Vos, J. (2015). Engagement as a Threshold Concept for Science Education and Science Communication. International Journal of Science Education, Part B: Communication and Public Engagement, 5(4), 297–318. https://doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2014.986770
NAAEE. (n.d.). 2020-2023 strategic framework: Education we need for the world we want. North American Association of Environmental Education. Retrieved from https://cdn.naaee.org/sites/default/files/naaee_strategy_framework.pdf
NSF Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education (AC-ERE). (2005). Complex environmental systems: Pathway to the future [Report]. National Science Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.nsf.gov/ere/ereweb/ac-ere/acere_pathways.pdf
Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. NewYork: Teachers College Press.
Potter, G. (2009). Environmental education for the 21st century: Where do we go now? Journal of Environmental Education, 41(1), 22-32. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958960903209975
Root, E. (2010). This land is our land? this land is your land: The decolonizing journeys of white outdoor environmental educators. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 15, 103–119.
United Nations. (n.d.). Education. Sustainable Development Goals. Retrieved December 7, 2020, from https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/education/
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) & United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). (1978). The Tbilisi declaration. Connect, 111(1), 1–8.
Margaret Janz - Hermit Warbler 