Reimagining a Community-Informed M.Ed. Environmental Education Program

• In Event: Finding (Y)Our Pack: Coming Together to Inform and Transform Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives
Environmental education is a contested space and there has been increasing critical analysis of the canon and pedagogical approaches to prepare critical and diverse environmental educators (Martusewicz, Edmundson & Lupinacci, 2015; Kahn, 2009; Grass & Agyeman, 2002). Programs that prepare environmental educators are vital in whether their roles and impact on novice environmental educators is the reproduction of deficit mindsets that perpetuates stereotypes about students, their families, and communities or programs that can be sites of interrogating societal inequities and working towards environmental and educational justice. We, environmental education program faculty, placed our program in moratorium to challenge ourselves to re-imagine what an environmental education masters program should be accountable to and for given our reality of living in a continual state of settler colonialism and the climate crisis. The main focus of the program redesign was/is to be responsive to the communities in our regional context and collaborate with various stakeholders in the community to center and address accountability and reciprocity.

Theoretical framework
This study drew upon ecofeminism (Code, 2007; Merchant, 1980; Plumwood, 1993, 2002; Shiva, 2005; Warren, 2000), ecopedagogy (Fassbinder, Nocella, & Kahn, 2012; Kahn, 2010), and decolonial feminisms (Cruz, 2001; Lorde, 2007; Lugones, 2010; McClintock, 1995; Smith, 1999). In an ecocritical framework, a goal is to address “value-hierarchized dualisms that contribute to inequities such as racism, classism, sexism, ableism, anthropocentrism, etc.” (Martusewicz, Edmundson & Lupinacci, 2015), thus, ecocritical scholar activists must be concerned with the curricular and programmatic approaches in environmental education programs that might reify settler colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, anthropocentrism, etc.

Methods
Evaluative case study- Guba and Lincoln (1981), (as cited in Merriam, 1998) “conclude that case study is the best reporting form for evaluations. …case study is best because it provides thick description, is grounded, is holistic and lifelike, simplifies data to be considered by the reader, illuminates meanings, and can communicate tacit knowledge. Above all else, though, this type of case study weights ‘information to produce judgements. Judging is the final and ultimate act of evaluation’” (p. 39). Moreover, Kenny & Grotelueschen (1980), (as cited in Merriam, 1998) note that case study is appropriate when the objective of an evaluation is “to develop a better understanding of the dynamics of a program. When it is important to be responsive, to convey a holistic and dynamically rich account of an education program, case study is a tailormade approach” (p. 39).

Data
Data was collected over one and a half academic years. Data sources include focus group interviews, programmatic data, observations, surveys and classroom artifacts.

Results
Findings suggest that a community of practice approach to redesigning the program supported critical examination of an evaluative case study for program faculty and created curriculum and programmatic structures that are responsive to our local context, sociopolitical context, and environmental crises. This work also informed future departmental reorganization.

Scholarly Significance
Provides examples and suggestions for how a community of practice can inform an intentional, transformative and responsive programmatic redesign.

Author

• Nini Hayes, Western Washington University