A network of development: A comparative study of agro-science units in a rural Honduran secondary curriculum

• In Event: Effective teaching in rural schools: examining local knowledge, sustainable development, and scientific agency within a multi-national curricular program

Proposal

This work explores two curricular units in a rural secondary educational program in Honduras, Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial (Tutorial Learning System or SAT). The units in the Technology strand involve agricultural practices common to students and their families, with projects for developing both students’ technical knowledge and their communities’ capacity for sustainable growth. To understand the nuanced learning goals of these units, their enactment in several Honduran communities is analyzed from both a local activity-network perspective and a large-scale social-ecological-systems framing. This allows for emergent components of the curricular design, from economic resources to tensions between ideals and practice, to arise from a wealth of data sources.
To support this examination, this work draws on principles from Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and analytical approaches of Environmental education (EE). ESD aims to develop the ability to see interconnections between different dimensions (environmental, social, economic, cultural) and the complexity of problem-solving sustainability issues (Cebrián & Junyent, 2015). Additionally, science education scholars suggest that complex social interactions be expanded beyond a single node to include people, place, and cultural lenses (Bell et al., 2009). Krasny & Roth (2010) apply these lenses simultaneously through their hybridization of an activity theory model, which includes the history, resources, and community guidelines within a learning environment, with a social-ecological systems model (highlighting the environmental, social, and economic dimensions pivotal to ESD), allowing for a complex view of learning in an outdoor setting.
This paper builds on their approach by applying this frame to a large educational program, using it as a comparative tool across two learning environments to reveal insights about curricular design. The questions guiding this investigation focus on the individual and collective capacities developed through the units. Respectively, these are: (1) What individual (student) capacities for supporting community development emerge from the enactment of Technological SAT units? (2) How does the enactment of the focal curricular units include the social, environmental, and economic development of SAT communities?
These questions emerged during an immersive four-week field study to investigate science learning in SAT in Honduras. The focal units, Sembrando Cultivos (Planting Crops) and Cría de Pollos (Raising Chickens) were selected as they emerged frequently in conversation with tutors and students. Data include interviews, text analyses, and classroom and community observations. To consider the individual and collective capacity-building components of the units, I utilize Krasny & Roth’s (2010) hybridized analytical model to capture both discrete micro-genetic behaviors at an individual level, and the systems of natural resources and actors at a societal level.
This design entailed an examination of Planting Crops and Raising Chickens to illustrate the individual capacity-building factors present in each lesson. Once uncovered, contrasting the two units’ connections to local economic and environmental resources revealed how they respectively contribute toward community development at a macro-scale level. Findings include differing tensions for the Planting Crops unit, with a focus on long-term conceptual change and shifts in practices, as compared to the immediacy of economic relevance for the Raising Chickens unit, with implications for sustainable development education design.

Author

• Rebecca Shareff, UC Berkeley