Murky Waters: Designing for the Critical Water Literacy and Self-Determination of Black Children Living With Environmental Instability

• In Event: Navigating the Dilemmas, Tensions, and Contradictions of Teaching Critical Issues in the Pursuit of "Truth"

Abstract

The development of youth agency and critical consciousness is an often-cited aim associated with justice-centered environmental education. In addition to deepening and desettling science domain knowledge (Bang et al, 2012), research on learning has been explicit in recognizing and studying the relationship between curriculum, pedagogy and transformative socioscientific behaviors (Hodson, 1999; Morales‐Doyle, 2017; Mutegi, 2011). This attention in the field to sociopolitical learning in STEM is promising. However, with a few important exceptions (e.g. Davis & Schaeffer, 2019; Nxumalo, 2021), this work tends to foreground the learning and experiences of adolescents and university-based students, leaving open the question of younger children’s agentic behavior (e.g. self-determination) and sensemaking. In particular, the development of critical literacy and self-determination in Black children who are living with environmental injustices and instability, remains an area that has been understudied and undertheorized. This paper revisits a taken-for-granted question, “What exactly do we want [Black] children to do with the insights gained through justice-oriented lessons in environmental education?”. The answers to this question are further complicated in contexts where children are simultaneously impacted by the everyday truths of environmental racism, anti-Blackness and structural inequities. If self-determination is defined as contestations & moves to elsewhere that shift activity and dictate future sociopolitical and intellectual status (Davis et al, 2020), how do science educators engage with the tensions that emerge as children make sense of what should be questioned/challenged and, what environmental futures might be possible?

This paper draws data from two justice-centered curriculum design projects focused on water literacy. The analysis is conducted in partnership with the lead science educators responsible for the development and facilitation of each place-based unit with urban-based Black children. The 1st case centers a unit on coastal land loss and flooding in New Orleans, Louisiana. The second case follows children learning about the Flint Water Crisis and water shut-offs in their own neighborhood. In both contexts, 4th graders were led through a series of exercises and asked to explore possible solutions to local water issues. We analyzed the theories of change that emerged for children, with particular attention to the questions and tensions that arose for participating children and teachers.

While young learners developed a sense of urgency to act on the water issues they were studying, educators often struggled with how to authentically engage and build on their ideas. Across contexts, teachers found it difficult to determine when/how to explore the nuances, complexities, risks and rewards associated with various modes of strategic action. There was also a pattern in teachers’ reflections related to tensions between individual helping behaviors and cooperative/structural interventions. Findings from this work suggests a need to extend and deepen theories of sociopolitical learning in environmental education in ways that better account for the meaning making of Black children (Nxumalo & ross, 2019). It also points to a need to clarify and design for pedagogical “ends” that honor children as sociopolitical actors without over-prescribing “transformative” behaviors that may not align with students’ visions or everyday realities.

Authors

• Natalie R. Davis, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author

• Claire Anderson, Ripple Effect Water Literacy Project
  Presenting Author

• Janelle Schaeffer
  Presenting Author