Shared Understandings: Common Environmental Perspectives of Kenyan Community Members and Teachers

• In Event: Cases of Places: Place-Based Education and International Environmental Ed Approaches

Abstract

Communities in all nations and geographic regions are grappling with environmental degradation—environmental issues area shared human concern. Despite this concern, there are many different viewpoints on the current state of environmental issues and how to solve these problems. Understanding how communities conceive of the environment, and sustainability is paramount in efforts to increase the frequency of environmentally conscious choices. The purpose of this study was to create a space to generate shared and mutual, locally constructed and situated, meanings through common experiences among Kenyan teachers and community members. In this case, the common experiences for the participants included photo-documentation over several months and then follow-up focus-group vignette interviews using the photographs the participants had collected as prompts for the vignettes.

Authors

• Cassie Fay Quigley, Clemson University

• James Dogbey, University of South Florida

• S. Megan Che, Clemson University

• Jeff Hallo, Clemson University