Authority Sharing: Shifting Power in Environmental Education Learning Environments (Poster 5)

• In Event: State of the Ever-Changing Field: Understanding Justice-Centered Efforts Across Informal STEM Learning Institutions

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose
The IslandWood graduate program in Education for Environment and Community (EEC) is an immersive residency in JEDI-oriented (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) environmental education that is in partnership with the University of Washington. One component of this program is an intensive teaching practicum in which graduate students design and implement science curriculum for 4th-6th graders who come to IslandWood as part of their outdoor education experience. In this participatory design-based research study (Getenet, 2019), we examine how graduate students understand, design for, and implement justice-oriented informal STEM learning (ISL). We focus on their uptake of the core equitable practice of authority sharing (author link), or how they examine and redistribute power in their designed learning environments.

Perspective/Frameworks
The IslandWood graduate program adopts a praxis-oriented approach that bridges theory and practice (Friere, 1970), and positions graduate students as both learners and teachers. A focus on intersectional environmentalism (Brown et al., 2022; Thomas, 2022) emphasizes intersectionality (Collins, 2019; Crenshaw, 1991) as a lens for developing pedagogical practices and curricular approaches. This model provides iterative opportunities for graduate students to examine pedagogical commitments. One central commitment is a focus on power; more specifically we draw on the idea of interpretive power to first illuminate the role of teachers as authority figures, and then to cultivate the distribution of this power through instructional practices and recognizing their students’ diverse sense making repertoires (Bang et al., 2017; Rosebery et al., 2016).

Methods and Data
This study takes place during the 2021-2022 academic year. The participants in this study include the entire graduate student class (32 students) as well as nine faculty members in the graduate program. The graduate students were split into two cohorts, and each cohort taught on an alternating, biweekly schedule. During teaching weeks, graduate students attended a Monday morning prep meeting, during which we introduced a skill or topic related to their upcoming teaching practice. On Thursday afternoon we held debrief sessions to reflect on the week. Authority sharing was one of the focal topics, and during these weeks we used ethnographic methods of audio and video recordings during the prep and debrief, and field notes during their teaching, to examine how graduate students addressed power in their teaching.

Argument
Initial findings suggest that graduate student instructors were inclined to understand authority sharing as predominantly shifting decision-making power to their students. This was demonstrated in early conversations and in their teaching practice in the field. However, in reflections, graduate students began to recognize that authority sharing hinged on forming reciprocal, trusting relationships with their students.

Significance:
Understanding the role of power in learning environments is critical for creating more equitable and just learning opportunities. While it is critical for educators to recognize the structural power they hold in their positions of authority, it is not enough to epistemic heterogeneity in both participation and sense making (e.g. Rosebery et al., 2015). Instead, we argue that through building relationality (e.g. Vossoughi et al, 2020) authority sharing can be achieved.

Authors

• Priya Pugh, IslandWood
  Presenting Author

• Déana A Scipio, IslandWood
  Presenting Author

• Renée Comesotti, Islandwood
  Presenting Author

• Day W. Greenberg, Indiana University
  Presenting Author