Contradictions in educational policy: implementing integrated problem‐based environmental health curriculum in a high stakes environment

Martina, Camille A.; Hursh, David; Markowitz, Dina G.

doi:10.1080/13504620902770337

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The social justice focus of the PAR project fostered environmental concerns and feelings of social responsibility. This result has also been observed in other applications of PAR in EE (Mordock & Krasny, 2001) and actionoriented environmental education (Martina et al, 2009). Students' self-reports additionally reveal that the project increased the environmental consciousness of those who were already concerned with environmental problems.…”

Section: Conceptual Awarenesssupporting

confidence: 74%

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Investigating the Benefits of Participatory Action Research for Environmental Education

Bywater

2014

Policy Futures in Education

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Environmental education (EE) continues to focus on enhancing people's ecological knowledge to encourage sustainable actions. This deficit approach presumes that once informed about environmental harms, people will work towards sustainable solutions for healthy societies. Yet research overwhelmingly demonstrates that knowledge of environmental problems is insufficient to spur pro-environmental behaviors. Traditional EE, therefore, has largely been unsuccessful at achieving its goals of engendering environmentally friendly practices and institutions. This article investigates the pedagogical efficacy of a participatory action research (PAR) project for enhancing environmental education in college courses. Qualitative evidence indicates that a PAR project incorporated into an Environmental Sociology course helped students understand how their everyday activities (in particular the consumption of bottled water) exacerbate poor human and environmental health, increased their environmental consciousness, and encouraged them to adopt pro-environmental behaviors and promote sustainability initiatives on campus. Based on these outcomes, the author recommends expanding educational policy to include a description of pedagogical methods such as PAR that successfully operationalize the goals of EE. Policy reforms should encourage educators to incorporate participatory, action-oriented learning opportunities that enable students to apply their knowledge to improve real-world environmental problems.

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Section: Conceptual Awarenesssupporting

confidence: 74%

“…As these types of reallife, problem-based learning activities are rare, students value the experience (Martina et al, 2009).…”

Section: Action Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the Benefits of Participatory Action Research for Environmental Education

Bywater

2014

Policy Futures in Education

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“…The tendency for educators and curriculum theorists to force SE concepts into disciplinary structures represents a challenge in the development of more complex models. By limiting learning opportunities to specific lines of disciplinary inquiry, students and faculty unwittingly reinforce anti-systemic thinking that is frequently cited as anathema to a rich understanding of sustainability concepts (Berry, 2005;Martina, Hursh, & Markowitz, 2009;Miller et al, 2008;Moore, 2005). This disciplinary simplification is problematic given the complexity involved in understanding, and living within, multifaceted socio-ecological systems (Bowers, 1993;Henderson & Duggan-Haas, 2014;Orr, 2004).…”

Section: Current Institutional Practice In Sustainability Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a consequent of the dominance of disciplinary thinking, a persistent recurring discourse in the SE literature is the unique nature of sustainability problems and the inability of individual disciplines to teach about them in a systems-oriented manner inclusive of the complexity inherent in these issues (Berry, 2005;Eagan, Cook, & Joeres, 2002;Eisen, Hall, Lee, & Zupko, 2009;Martina et al, 2009;Moore, 2005). Many SE researchers and practitioners take issue with the limited nature of disciplinary approaches and their subsequent practices, and thus point to the need to engage learners in more complicated learning experiences (Sharpe & Breunig, 2009).…”

Section: Current Institutional Practice In Sustainability Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Short of the radical restructuring of school structures, sustainability will continue to vex traditional educational systems, for "a pedagogy that does not set [disciplinary] boundaries, that does not normalize, and pathologize, is almost inconceivable" (Gore, 2001, p. 239). Many point to interdisciplinarity as a necessary condition of SE programs (Martina, Hursh, & Markowitz, 2009;Orr, 2004;Sterling, 2004), and others (Stephens, Hernandez, Roman, Graham & Scholz, 2008) suggest that the issues are so large and complex that transdisciplinarity might be a more appropriate pedagogical approach. This would involve radically rethinking many of the current practices and physical structures that shape educational systems.…”

Section: Current Institutional Practice In Sustainability Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘Not for everyone, but kind of amazing’: institutional friction and the nature of sustainability education

Henderson

2014

Environmental Education Research

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SynopsisSustainability has become a popular normative social and ecological goal to address conditions of unsustainability. Such terms are often definitionally and contextually vague, warranting research into forms of sustainability education as they actually exist in practice. This study ethnographically explored the theory and practice of sustainability education in an institutionalized setting, including its varied ecological, educational and infrastructural implications. It reports on a three-year institutional ethnography of an elite private school in the northeastern United States. The purpose of the research was to investigate the rootedness, emergence and subsequent embodiment of sustainability education infrastructure, including the physical and ideational construction of a 'living building' on the school's campus.Rooted in a critical realist philosophical approach toward nature, and using ecosystem complexity theory, ecological communication dynamics and political ecology as theoretical lenses, and phronetic case and abductive gestalt analyses as analytic tools, I detailed how the institution engaged in elite-driven change with social, cultural, political and material implications in their immediate and surrounding community. For example, the case study of an animal slaughter experience revealed how specific institutional frictions played out in the school's change process. By tracing particular frictions through the institutional change process, I illuminated the unique cultural and socio-material dimensions present as the institution shiftedoften controversially -to develop and accommodate the nascent sustainability education infrastructure.The emergent conception of sustainability education manifested as the downshifting of social, political and ecological responsibility to the local level and represented a larger trend in the neo-liberalization of environmentalism. I also showed how sustainability education represented a privileged, progressive, upper-class ecochic sensibility in this school and discussed implications relative to conditions of Green Capitalism and Late Industrialism. I observed the eco-chic phenomenon in the artisanal nature of food production, in mindfulness educational activities, in marketing green lifestyles to prospective parents and in the implementation and mystification of efficient green building technologies. Overall, I found that sustainability education involved a classed expectation of a virtuous future life, and this was

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Environmental Health as an Interdisciplinary Subject

Hursh

Martina

Trush

et al. 2011

SpringerBriefs in Environmental Science

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Contradictions in educational policy: implementing integrated problem‐based environmental health curriculum in a high stakes environment

Cited by 14 publications

References 4 publications

Investigating the Benefits of Participatory Action Research for Environmental Education

Investigating the Benefits of Participatory Action Research for Environmental Education

‘Not for everyone, but kind of amazing’: institutional friction and the nature of sustainability education

Environmental Health as an Interdisciplinary Subject

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