Critical Sustainability: Critical Professional Development for Sustainability Education

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Description
Amidst mounting global crises spanning environmental, social, and economic domains, sustainability education has emerged as a vital pathway toward a thriving future. However, despite its promise, the concept of sustainability often remains superficial, leaving educators ill-equipped to address its complexities.…

Amidst mounting global crises spanning environmental, social, and economic domains, sustainability education has emerged as a vital pathway toward a thriving future. However, despite its promise, the concept of sustainability often remains superficial, leaving educators ill-equipped to address its complexities. While efforts to integrate sustainability into education are underway, critical pedagogy, a crucial tool for fostering social change, is notably absent from instructional practices. This action research project utilized critical pedagogy to design and implement a critical professional development (CPD) workshop within a larger fellowship program to center justice within sustainability in both content and pedagogical approach. As a result, participants’ definitions and understandings of sustainability increased across all measurements of extent, breadth, and depth. Specifically, participants redefined collaborative relationships and more prominently included notions of justice and equity in their conceptualizations of sustainability and sustainability education. The use of critical pedagogy encouraged teachers to analyze intersectional oppressive systems and fostered a new, critical perspective on sustainability. In their own educational designs, participants demonstrated an intention to model elements of critical pedagogy, such as dialogic action and permeable content. Finally, in alignment with the intended outcomes of CPD, participants developed cooperative space for co-learning, built unity, shared leadership, and felt confident implementing their own professional development to address context-specific concerns. By using critical pedagogy in sustainability education, the workshop participants prioritized deep and caring relationships which fostered empathic engagement with the intersectional and often dehumanizing systems that have led to interconnected global crises. The results indicated that using CPD as a framework could be effective in teacher professional development for sustainability as a design and implementation tool to center critical work that examines systemic issues of injustice and exploitation against both humans and our planet.
Date Created
2024
Agent

Observing Children's Relationships with Nature in an Outdoor Education Class Setting

Description
The creation of this study was driven by my belief in the importance of transforming and reimagining human-nature relationships for sustainable futures and my interest in understanding the implementation of nature-based learning in schools. Through observations of children in an…

The creation of this study was driven by my belief in the importance of transforming and reimagining human-nature relationships for sustainable futures and my interest in understanding the implementation of nature-based learning in schools. Through observations of children in an outdoor education setting, I sought to answer the following research questions: “How do children that have engaged in nature-based learning view themselves in relation to nature?” and “What can be observed about children’s personal understandings of nature and their personal relationships with nature in their writing and drawings?” This study was implemented with participants in third grade outdoor education classes at a local charter school in South Phoenix using multiple participatory research methods. My findings add to an existing body of knowledge and research focused on understanding children’s relationships with nature and the impacts of nature-based learning. In the conclusion of this paper, I pose additional questions about conceptualizing children’s relationships with nature and exploring their nature connectedness through research, share reflections on my personal relationship with nature, and discuss how my observations support benefits of nature-based learning as argued by existing scholarship.
Date Created
2024-05
Agent

Arizona Farm to School Programs: Challenges to Success

Description
Issues surrounding the impact of food insecurity on child development and academic achievement have led to increased attention surrounding food access and nutrition security. This attention includes spaces such as schools and initiatives like the Farm to School Movement. A…

Issues surrounding the impact of food insecurity on child development and academic achievement have led to increased attention surrounding food access and nutrition security. This attention includes spaces such as schools and initiatives like the Farm to School Movement. A 2022 survey administered to over 4,000 Arizona educators explored variations in farm to school programs. This research analyzed responses from four survey questions to understand current status, existing barriers and access issues related to farm to school programming across Arizona. Next, farm to school related policies written for states in the Southwest were reviewed for inspiration on what Arizona could do to develop support for farm to school programs. A list of three recommendations was developed based on the results of the data analysis and the policy review. These recommendations include passing a Farm to School Enhancement Funding Bill, establishing the Arizona Farm to School Task Force to partner with stakeholders, and designating an Arizona School Garden Day to promote school gardens. There already is incredible work happening to support farm to school programs in Arizona and this effort is recognized. The ultimate purpose of this paper is to provide inspiration and insight into the status and future of farm to school programs in Arizona informed by the educators regularly involved.
Date Created
2023-12
Agent

Re-Imagining and Transforming the ‘Teacher’ in a More-Than-Human World: Encounters with Alternative Ways of Teaching and Learning

Description
The notion of a teacher is an archaic, dynamic, and diverse concept that is embedded in and therefore revealed in the various complex and coexisting cultural and national contexts, ways of teaching and learning, and the entanglements with beings in…

The notion of a teacher is an archaic, dynamic, and diverse concept that is embedded in and therefore revealed in the various complex and coexisting cultural and national contexts, ways of teaching and learning, and the entanglements with beings in multiple worlds. However, under the fundamental impacts of westernization, coloniality, and modernization in the Anthropocene, the concept of a teacher has been endowed with narrow colonial, human-centric, politicalized, as well as vocationalized and secularized connotations. It has been oversimplified to a profession, while other possible interpretations have been omitted and marginalized at the same time. My dissertation questions the implications of the gradual narrowing down of the concept over time and reexamines the concept of a teacher with the aim of ontologically broadening the scope of different connotations and embracing more diverse and inclusive forms as well as contexts of being a ‘teacher.’ In response, this dissertation traces the history, evolution, and cultural contexts of the notion of a teacher in ancient and modern China. It explores the concept of a teacher ontologically through multiple historical and theoretical frames, including decolonial theory in comparative education and several conceptual constructs in Taoism, Confucianism, and posthumanism. Guided by these frames, I introduce innovative (post)qualitative methodologies in data generation and collection, referring to collective re-membering activities, reanimating sense, and speculative fabulation experiences (Haraway, 2013) in terms of “teaching without words/actions,” “sitting and Wu,” and “Ge wu zhi zhi.” This dissertation is designed as a multi-scenario, multi-sense, and multispecies ethnography, and the fieldwork was conducted over three months of summertime in 2022 in a small town and a modern supercity in China. Using a diffractive analysis of memories, stories, and experiences with multiple participants, I attempt to broaden the concept of a teacher by presenting a variety of coexisting conceptualizations of the term and bringing into focus multiple ways of teaching, learning, and being a teacher.
Date Created
2023
Agent

Sunscreen in a World of Sustainability, Healthcare Disparities, and Media Platforms

Description

As educational tactics circulate globally, so too does the prospect of understanding sustainability amongst informed individuals and what it means for our society. Just in the past few decades, the environmental movement has changed the way in which people think…

As educational tactics circulate globally, so too does the prospect of understanding sustainability amongst informed individuals and what it means for our society. Just in the past few decades, the environmental movement has changed the way in which people think about their own impact upon the planet. It is becoming a facet of common knowledge for society to realize the potential detriment of their actions, and for this, we should be grateful. However, there is much work to be done regarding all aspects of sustainability and environmental crises. This paper offers a look into the world of sustainable sunscreen usage, something that is not often thought about as an aspect of sustainable consideration. The task of this research opportunity was to examine a sample of survey respondents and connect their responses from 15 questions to different hypotheses. Alongside the discussion of sunscreen filters damaging sensitive ocean ecosystems, this research also looks into the overall importance of sunscreen for one’s health and the ways in which it can be used safely. My hope is that readers will realize the value of using sunscreen on a daily basis and become better informed of sustainability challenges and healthcare disparities.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

Climate Change Across Cultures: An Exploration of Relationships Within, Around, and Between Nature and Sustainability in Different Areas of the World

Description

This research paper explores how different relationships between people and nature can be fostered by learning experiences to bridge harmful gaps in the field of sustainability. Current disconnectedness from nature and people both within and across geographical borders hinder the…

This research paper explores how different relationships between people and nature can be fostered by learning experiences to bridge harmful gaps in the field of sustainability. Current disconnectedness from nature and people both within and across geographical borders hinder the cultivation of sustainable solutions. After attending a sustainability-oriented educational experience abroad in Ecuador recently, I decided to investigate how cross-cultural exchanges in Ecuador influences participants’ views of nature, new points of intersectionality participants learn while amongst nature in Ecuador, and what about this experience made it uniquely meaningful. Research methods included individual interviews and a group hike and picnic focus group discussion to collect qualitative data. I found that during this experience, students were able to lean into being vulnerable with each other, connect with indigenous community members beyond language borders, and connect with nature in ways that fostered awareness of the human position within it. From this, I learned that there were unique aspects of this learning experience that allowed for these relationships to be built and therefore for sustainable knowledge from the trip to stick when participants got back to the United States. The amount and flexibility of learning and processing time and dynamics created by classroom structure were important variables to the effectiveness of the learning experience. Institutions can learn from these experiences and connect people back to nature to implement successful sustainability solutions in the future.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent
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