"It's Just Like Three Windows and in Each You Can See Something Else": Eco-Literacies as Space for Youth's Multifaceted Understandings of Relationships in Environmental Education

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Environmental Education Across the Disciplines

Abstract

During a practitioner inquiry research project in Ontario, Canada, high school English students engagement with a framework for ecoliteracies. During focus groups, students used a variety of craft supplies to rebuild the ecoliteracies framework after working with it during 10 weeks of in class teaching. Youth used their redesigned ecoliteracies models to demonstrate broad and deep engagement with theoretical underpinnings of Environemntal Education. Their multifaceted understandings of relationships between cultural, critical and functional perspectives of environmental issues indicate the rich space that opens up when youth are given opportunities to challenge traditional underpinnings of EE. The research builds off critical literacy scholarship and teaching to frame English as a site to take up justice-oriented EE curriculum.

Author

• Velta Douglas, University of Toronto