Constraints on Speculation: Representations of Powered Human-Nature Relations in Students’ Projects About Tree Equity (Poster 10)

• In Event: Speculative Science Education Toward Socioecological Care

Abstract

Purpose & Theoretical Framing
Envisioning more just worlds requires recognition and understanding of current injustices. These injustices interweave human and more-than-human relations, so collective thriving requires disrupting the nature-culture binary, which presumes humans are separate from and superior to other beings (Bang & Marin, 2015). Critical place-based science education may be a powerful context for apprehending and rectifying socioecological injustices (Learning in Places Collaborative, 2021; Davis & Schaeffer, 2019). However, we need to better understand diverse youths’ meaning-making within justice-centered science learning contexts (Davis & Schaeffer, 2019). Given youths’ various identities and relations within sociopolitical power structures, insight into how differently-positioned youth take up and communicate about environmental justice issues will help researchers and educators to better support critical understandings and liberatory futures. To this end, this poster explores: How do diverse middle school students represent human-nature relations, and power within these relations, in their final projects in a critical place-based science unit on tree equity and the urban heat island effect?

Methods
The middle school students in this study were in a STEM program that is a partnership between a private university and an urban public school district in a southeastern U.S. city. They comprised four classes from three schools and diverged demographically in alignment with different neighborhoods. Three classes were from schools that serve predominantly White and affluent communities, and one was from a school that serves majority-minority and low-income communities. The 5-lesson tree equity unit involved: socioecological field work in local parks; analyzing local tree canopy cover, heat, demographic, and health data; researching solutions to urban heat islands; and creating final projects to communicate about tree inequities and urban heat islands. Through a domain analysis (Spradley, 1979) of all the final projects, and closer analysis of select projects and accompanying interviews with the students who created them, we identified themes in how students characterized tree canopy problems, the powered relations they entail, and ways to address them.

Results & Significance
Many projects framed tree canopy and urban heat island issues as affecting people universally. It was common among these projects for students to present humans as nature-destroyers in the past and present, but potential future stewards, reflecting a human- and future-centrism that is common in environmental discourses (Rose, 2004). Notably, many of the solutions students presented focused on individual actions and/or technical fixes, with fewer emphasizing collective efforts and organizations. This suggests curricular shortcomings (e.g. a lack of guided reflection on students’ positionalities, a too-quick jump from unpacking inequities to centering solutions).
At the same time, about a third of the projects emphasized inequitable effects on different human communities—most focused on economic disparities, one noted racial disparities—and a few centered injustices to other species. Several of these projects presented a more nuanced view of human-nature relations, recognizing non-human agency and/or centering interconnectedness. However, they less commonly offered solutions, and some students expressed a sense of powerlessness against untrustworthy people in power. Overall, these findings suggest the need to scaffold speculative visions of the future unconstrained by neoliberal logics.

Authors

• Tessaly Jen, Vanderbilt University

• Heidi Carlone, Vanderbilt University

• Jingyi Chen, Vanderbilt University

• Zachary C. Conley, Vanderbilt University

• Yelena Janumyan, Vanderbilt University

• Quinn Tanner, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

• Liwei Zhang, Vanderbilt University

• Hannah H. Ziegler, Vanderbilt University