The Influence of the Collaborative Learning Project on Environmental Education - A Case Study from a Postcolonial Lens

• In Event: Cultivating Sustainability: Schools, Campuses, and Collaborative Environmental Learning

Proposal

As an environmentally vulnerable country increasingly affected by disasters like droughts, floods, and cyclones, Malawi is also struggling with widespread poverty (The World Bank, 2022a, 2023; UNDP, 2023; USAID, 2023). When the environmental challenges intersect with other social, economic, cultural, and political factors, it is usually the marginalized groups such as indigenous communities and students who endure most of the damage (Maina-Okori et al., 2018). Aside from other human activit ies, the legacies of British colonization from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century have also been influencing Malawi’s environmental situation (Morris, 2016). The colonial rule and its legacies have also played a significant role in developing environmental education in Malawian schools, with Western knowledge and perspectives dominating the curriculum at the expense of indigenous ecological knowledge and culture (Glasson et al., 2006; Kayira, 2015). Despite previous curriculum reforms, the current curriculum in Malawian secondary schools still bears the imprint of the colonial past, with insufficient attention given to contextually-relevant knowledge and local needs (Tikly, 2019; Sharra & Silver, 2023). This issue is compounded by the education system's predominant focus on examinations and academic performance, which has neglected to provide students with opportunities to participate in practical applications and interact with the natural environment. Consequently, it seems to impede the cultivation of students' capabilities for environmental protection and sustainable livelihoods. Under these circumstances, the researcher of this study argues for the necessity of a transformative shift in the approach to environmental education in Malawian secondary schools, which is helpful to facilitate social transformation and a sustainable future of Malawi. Specifically, the researcher adopts Tikly’s (2019) transformative interpretation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and advocates for the implementation of environmental education through the transformative approach of ESD to facilitate an environmentally and socially just education. The 1.5 MAX Project, led by Sustainability Partnerships, a non-governmental organization (NGO), has been implemented in several Malawian secondary schools for two years (1.5 MAX, 2023). It contains a series of collaborative learning activities that connect a number of schools in Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Scotland for learning on climate change and environmental sustainability, aiming to enhance participants’ awareness and capabilities to address environmental challenges, especially local environmental crises. In contrast to the predominant exam-oriented and fact-based methods, the project adopts a student-centred and place-based approach, using various teaching materials and methods to facilitate participatory learning and capability building. To explore whether and how the collaborative learning project contributes to the implementation of environmental education through the transformative approach of ESD (Tikly, 2019) in Malawian secondary schools, two r esearch questions will be addressed by this study: 1.How does the 1.5 MAX collaborative learning project influence the implementation of environmental education in the participating schools? 2.In what ways does the project contribute to facilitating an environmentally and socially just approach to secondary school environmental education? This study adopts postcolonialism as the theoretical framework as it offers a critical paradigm that can counter hegemonic perspectives and create space for alternative views (Said, 1978; Fanon, 1967; Bhabha, 1994; Hall, 2023). Therefore, it allows for an in-depth and nuanced analysis of the environmental and educational circumstances in Malawi, as well as the underlying power imbalances and issues of inequalities and injustice (Kayira, 2015). Given the persistent influence of colonial legacies on Malawian society, the postcolonial paradigm is relevant to the context of this study and is particularly useful in facilitating a comprehensive analysis due to its decentered conceptualization of colonization under the background of globalization. In this study, the qualitative approaches of case study and narrative enquiry are employed. Combining these two methodologies can help generate a contextually-grounded, in-depth, and comprehensive analysis of the research topic (Tisdell & Merr iam, 2015). The methods of semi-structured interview and field observation are applied at the stage of data collection in order to leverage the advantages of both methods to collect more in-depth and nuanced data. By triangulating the data from different sources, the researcher can improve the credibility and trustworthiness of the study. What follows is the data analysis carried out with the method of thematic analysis under the analytical framework of environmental and social justice (Schlosberg, 2004, 2007; Fraser, 2009). Therefore, the four pillars of distribution, recognition, participation, and capabilities of the framework are adopted as the themes for the analysis and interpretation. Through this study, it is found that the 1.5 MAX collaborative learning project in Malawian secondary schools has contributed to the implementation of the transformative Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) approach (Tikly, 2019) adopted by this study in local environmental education. Its positive eff ects are demonstrated in promoting environmental education through the four dimensions of distributive justice, recognitional justice, participatory justice, and capabilities. However, there is not sufficient evidence to prove that the project has facilitated environmentally and socially just environmental education in the participating schools. In order to achieve this, improvement of the project is required.

Author

• Katherine Shen