Learning From the Lake: Exploring Human-Water Relations and Teacher Perceptions of Multispecies Justice

• In Event: Waterways and Pedagogical Entanglements: Teaching, Learning, and Relating to Water and Its Multiple Meanings

Abstract

Training formal and informal science educators in best practices for environmental education is an important component of bringing high quality environmental education experiences to more children and youth (Kennedy, 2016). However, reconfiguring human-more-than-human relations in dominant science educational spaces is an essential part of transformational socioecological justice (Nxumalo, 2019). This project explores how two environmental education professional development programs impact science educators’ interactions with, perceptions of, and relationships with Lake Erie and the more-than-human beings, including fish and macroinvertebrates, that call the lake home.
There are persistent tensions in the relationship between science and environmental education. Science education often promotes entrenched Eurocentric perspectives of human exceptionalism and persistence of a nature-culture binary (Bang et al., 2013). For example, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which include environmental content on topics such as climate change and sustainability, consistently position humans as separate from or absent from the environment (Hufnagel et al., 2018). While environmental education is often framed as a subset of science education with an emphasis on learning about natural phenomena, environmental education often layers in additional goals building on knowledge and awareness about phenomena that compel action to bring about positive environmental changes (Braus et al., 2022).
This shift requires different orientations to teaching and learning that may include learning in the environment (e.g., outdoor learning); with the environment (e.g., exploring environmental processes as a tool to deepen knowledge); and educating for the environment (e.g., activities that lead to action and change) (Reid, 2018). Environmental education that builds on European-derived science education may also use a combination of these approaches. An additional orientation in education that is absent from most Eurocentric approaches to science and environmental education includes learning from the environment, which is a foundational approach in Indigenous L/land-based pedagogies that recognize agency of more-than-human beings and position L/land as teacher (e.g., (Styres, 2011). Recognition of the significance of more-than-human beings for learning with/in the world is well aligned with the long-standing emphasis on experiential, place-based learning in environmental education (Smith & Sobel, 2010), and is theoretically grounded in Indigenous pedagogical scholarship (Cajete, 1994; Kawagley, 2006).
Better integration of Eurocentric and Indigenous approaches towards science and environmental education offers a valuable approach for increasing student science engagement (Bang & Marin, 2015) and repairing human-more-than-human relations (Authors, forthcoming). However, taking into account the agency of more-than-human beings in learning processes requires new units of analysis. Building on learning sciences methods that use point-of-view video to explore interactions (Marin, 2020), we used participant-mounted GoPro Max cameras to capture 360° video recordings of educators engaging with water, creatures living in water, and the tools used to mediate these interactions. This approach allows for detailed interaction analysis between educators and environmental contexts they are learning with/in and from. We explore how educators position themselves physically and conceptually in relation to and with water, fish, and macroinvertebrates and consider potential impacts of these interactions for learning and teaching about multispecies justice.

Author

• Marijke Hecht, The Ohio State University