Reimagining Environmental Education (EE): Incorporating EE Into a Brooklyn Public High School

• In Event: 66.046 - Diverse Approaches to Critical Pedagogies of Place in Urban Environmental Education

Abstract

“A connection to the natural world can still be made in the classroom but it won’t have the same effect as when you’re actually outside and visualizing it first-hand.”
-Kim (Former Field Studies student)

The urban environment is often thought of as a place devoid of nature. Yet, the science-themed urban high school in Brooklyn, NY strives to provide students with place-based outdoor science learning experiences to enhance student understanding of science and appreciation of the natural world through the Field Studies course. Field Studies is a required course for ninth grade students and learning activities occur in the school building, the partner botanical garden, an adjacent large urban park, and in the neighborhood surrounding the school.
According to Sobel (1996) environmental place-based education begins with creating a caring attitude towards the familiar (local) area, moves outward to explore the surrounding area, and leads to social action and reinhabitation. Reinhabitation refers to identifying, conserving and creating knowledge that nurtures and protects people and ecosystems (Gruenewald, 2003). This research focuses on the reinhabitation of the natural environment adjacent to the school. When planning and co-teaching the environmental science and ecology Field Studies course my colleagues and I had two overarching goals: (1) providing students with hands-on ecological learning experiences to observe and understand the ecosystems of the local urban park and (2) to engage students in authentic science research projects about the local environment. Place-based education recognizes that ecosystems and communities vary around schools therefore schools should design their own programs to take into account the natural ecosystems and sociocultural systems specific to their location, resources, and needs (Lieberman & Hoody, 1998). The course is designed to engage traditionally underrepresented students, who may see themselves as outsiders to the field of science (Brickhouse, 1994), in real-world science activities where they have opportunities to develop questions and design investigations of local ecosystems.
In this presentation I will explore how conducting science class in places outside of the traditional classroom, such as the urban park and botanical garden, and using a place-based approach, mediates students’ science identities, and potential interest in science. I use Gruenewald’s/Greenwood’s (2003) lens of critical place-based pedagogy side by side with a lens of identity development to describe students’ Field Studies experiences and the strengths and challenges of the Field Studies course. I share student and teacher reflections of experiences obtained through cogenerative dialogues (cogens) between students and myself, and critique to what extent the Field Studies class follows a critical place-based science teaching and learning approach. I use my research findings to discuss how the course can evolve to be more meaningful to students while being responsive to what I learn about students’ science identity development.

Author

• Amy DeFelice