Redefining "Locally Grown": The Evolution of Students Into Co-Teachers in an Urban Gardening Program

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

Abstract

A growing body of EE research focuses on relationships between informal teaching/learning experiences and development of youth environmental agency (Chawla and Flanders-Cushing, 2007; Barratt, Barratt, & Scott, 2007; Calabrese Barton and Tan, 2010). Critical place-based pedagogy (Gruenewald, 2003) within hybrid spaces, between informal and formal learning environments, offers rich possibilities for adults and youth co-engaging in inquiry and action. Inquiry and action are relevant to the lives and communities of students and offer youth opportunities to build leadership around environmental concerns. Exposure to such experiences in high schools is limited under neoliberal reform, wherein environmental education is typically relegated to one course, disconnected from social, political, historical and economic contexts; at the same time, teachers are given few opportunities to build theoretical understanding of, or experience enacting, learner-centered, social justice-oriented, place-conscious and trans-disciplinary EE pedagogies. “Hybrid” spaces, situated between formal and informal learning environments, offer enhanced freedom to negotiate how EE can be enacted and to experiment with the various roles of teacher and learner that redistribute authority, agency and responsibility, to build youth engagement and capacity. The purpose of this study is to better understand how youth experience and cultivate identities as leaders and co-teachers (Freire, 2000) in a hybrid space, highlighting ways that critical, transdisciplinary pedagogy can facilitate meaningful youth environmental agency.

This research is based on a seven-week summer ecojustice (Bowers, 2001) course serving public high school students. Critical place-based pedagogy (Gruenewald, 2003) is used to promote dialogue between adult facilitators and youth participants. “Mentors,” returning 17-21 year-old students, lead groups of participants as they engage in daily activities as teams. Participants explore their communities from the perspectives of interrelated topics (food-systems, land and water access, community-assessment, consumer culture). They manage several garden spaces, engage in topical activities and field trips, and document their experiences and responses in classroom discussions and on a mentor-facilitated website. Many activities and discussions, including those leading to culminating student “action-plans,” are also facilitated by mentors. These individuals not only develop and model special roles in the teaching/learning process (as holders, co-generators and disseminators of knowledge) but encourage other youth participants to assume increasingly active roles in learning, teaching and decision-making, within their groups, as part of the larger class-community and, by extension, in other spaces they inhabit in their daily lives.

From both mentor and teacher perspectives, this presentation will focus on how youth experience and engage with the teaching/learning practices described, over the course of their transition through the roles of student, mentor and co-teacher. We will draw on multiple artifacts: teachers’ field notes, mentors’ written reflections’, videos of classroom discussions, photographs of and by participants, action-projects and structured interviews. As part of an ongoing, reflexive and iterative process, teacher- and student co-researchers (mentors) will review and reflect upon these artifacts, with attention to key points of inquiry, emergent themes, implications to teaching, learning, and teacher education, and questions for further investigation.

Authors

• Pieranna Pieroni, Brooklyn College

• Atasi Das, The Graduate Center, CUNY

• Alyssa Vasquez

• Cecelia Poon