Differentiating and Evaluating Conceptions and Examples of Participation in Environment-Related Learning

Intergenerational learning at a nature center: families using prior experiences and participation frameworks to understand raptors

“…This finding is relevant specifically for environmental education in that prior research (Ballantyne, Fien, and Packer 2001;Duvall and Zint 2007;Uzzell 1999) suggests that children have more information about environmental issues than their parents. By allowing the children space to bring their ideas into the conversation, these three families at SCEC created structures that tackle 'hegemonic' or dominant views (Reid and Nikel 2008) of the primacy of adult-driven 'learning agendas' (Anderson, Piscitelli, and Everett 2008) and adult-directed interactions. Here, participation frameworks flattened intergenerational microstructures during discussions of raptors, so that the elders' ideas did not overshadow the ideas of children, even while the parent or grandparent in our study still retained control of the visit (such as the ability to end the trip).…”

“…Given the interest in EE about the nature of participation (Reid and Nikel 2008), the participation framework concept can provide researchers with an analytical tool to examine joint participation in future studies to better understand the roles and positions available for learners. Additionally, a future line of work can examine environmental educators suggesting that families engage in discursive patterns to create participation frameworks that provide learners access to the meaning-making conversations as valid contributors of knowledge related to environmental topics.…”

“…Participation is a term in environmental education with many divergent meanings (Reid and Nikel 2008); given our sociocultural framework, we build from a 'situative' approach to participation (Greeno 2006;Reid and Nikel 2008) where people engage together in tasks with shared social practices. When engaged in shared social practices, groups structure their activities to organize involvement, including opportunities to contribute in the shared activity.…”

Collaborative research as boundary work: learning between rice growers and conservation professionals to support habitat conservation on private lands

“…Similar epistemological frameworks While epistemological divides and differences between traditional ecological knowledge and scientific knowledge can erect formidable boundaries that complicate collaborative research in many settings (Berkes et al 2000;Fortmann 2008;Reid and Nikel 2008), both of the communities in this case were grounded in conventional scientific practice and had faith in science as a legitimizing process, as evidenced in the outreach documents and comments during interviews from both groups. Scientific research played a large role in informing farming practice for the rice growers; growers relied on the research conducted both through the university and, in the case of rice, a specialized research center, to generate new varieties, new technologies and new ways of coping with regulation.…”

The Influence of Higher Education on Student Learning and Agency for Sustainability Transition

“…Graduates need to develop the capacity to contribute to sustainability transitions as individuals and in groups. Importantly, this capacity is learnt and constructed and dynamic [65], and HE can contribute by developing such capacities in their students. Sustainability education (SE) is a broad term that encompasses the array of philosophical approaches (aims) to holistic sustainability and the teaching praxis (techniques) to build skills, knowledge, and potential agency for sustainability [66].…”