Sharing the Environment: Cultural Exchange Through Inquiry-based Environmental Education in Trinidad and Tobago (T & T) and the United States

Abstract

This study examined the effects of Sharing the Environment (STE), a situated professional development pilot program that uses an inquiry-based approach to teaching Environmental Education (EE) to elementary students in the US and Trinidad. Inquiry is difficult to incorporate in both cultures because proficient performance on national tests is a priority. As a result, teachers must cover the curriculum via transmission of knowledge rather than its discovery. In order to capture an early understanding of the effects of this program on its participants, focus groups and ethnographic interviews were conducted with ten participating teachers from both countries. Using a grounded theory approach on the data sets, three themes emerged that describe conditions required for replicating this program: structural, cross-curricular, and cultural disconnections, technological needs, and environmental and sociocultural knowledge gains. The findings indicate that cultural factors had a significant impact on how Trinidadian and American teachers and administrators perceived, valued, and reacted to the concrete experiences they had in the course of their participation in the STE situated professional development program.