Biodiversity Contests': Indigenously Informed and Transformed Environmental Education

Abstract

The 'biodiversity contest' is an educational innovation designed to uncover the plant diversity knowledge of children. This article, based on the experiences of the winners of 31 such contests, seeks to identify the methods through which children learn from their elders and the beliefs that the elders communicate to them. While elders develop in children knowledge about plants, they do not communicate a belief in active conservation. Though elders have a culturally determined preference for boys as apprentices, they do accommodate the education of girls. Systematic instruction, demonstration, questioning to test knowledge and memory, encouraging observation, and supervised practice, are methods the elders use during an extended apprenticeship. The contests have helped recognize the knowledge that children have acquired outside the school, and have helped teachers introduce curricular relevance.

Becoming A Traditional Medicinal Plant Healer: Divergent Views of Practicing and Young Healers on Traditional Medicinal Plant Knowledge Skills in India

“…Five of these (interest towards plants, identification of plants, harvesting of plants, processing for making final herbal products, and knowledge of rare plants), are foundational skills and were given more importance by established healers than other skills. This research supports findings of earlier studies and reiterates the importance of foundational skills of identification and harvesting of medicinal plants (Chand & Shukla 2003, Lozada et al 2006, Zarger 2000. The skills of application and consultation were considered as important TMK skills in an earlier study by Haarumaya (2003a).…”

“…These methods correspond generally with the eight-stage learning sequence model presented by Ruddle and Chesterfield (1977), where the learner moves from familiarization (developing interest about plants) to equal partner with instructors (assistance in actual practice and self-practicing). An earlier study by Chand and Shukla (2003) also confirmed that the choice of methods by elder Indian healers depended on the nature of skill to be taught and gender of learners. This gendered nature of TMK transmission highlights a direction for further research, namely, to examine the relationships between the choice of learning methods and the gender of learners in other forms of TEK knowledge, such as subsistence skills.…”

“…While interest towards plants might have developed in earlier years (e.g., at the age between 5-7 years (Chand & Shukla 2003), this research established that the young prospective healers were chosen as learners by older healers only after the age of 14, when their formal school-based training of language began. As well, in the rural tribal Indian context, where access to, and opportunities for, secondary school education are limited to residential schools, the education from vertical learning sources (community elders, family members or relatives) becomes more difficult since students have to leave home to go to school.…”

“…For instance, in a study by Zarger (2000) Chand and Shukla (2003), who identified some critical TMK skills such as: i) identification of plants with detailed attention to their morphological features; ii) medicinal uses of plants; iii) administering the treatment to patients; and iv) development of 'utility perspective', i.e. practical understanding of the use of plant materials.…”

Nepenthes as Tourism Flagship Species: the Conservation Strategies in Dayak Seberuang Settlements Area

“…This condition is affected by weak of awareness from young generation about traditional values. It also caused by high impact of modernization with lack guidance from elders [30,31]. Over all, total score of internal factors is 4.107 which in strong level (Table 3).…”