Nurturing Civic Awareness and Skills among Low-Income Students of Color through Collective Environmental Action

• In Event: 1-017 - Social Justice and U.S. Politics: Multidisciplinary Insights into Children's Political Development

Integrative Statement

Children develop concepts of the polity and their roles as political actors via engagement in societal institutions or mini-polities (Flanagan, 2013). In this paper, we focus on a partnership model of two mini-polities--schools and community organizations--and the processes whereby children become engaged citizens via collective action for the public good. Specifically, we investigated a model of place-based stewardship education (PBSE) in which students and teachers partnered with adults from local community organizations to identify, study, and address a local environmental issue, and then share their work in public venues.

Environmental action is a way for children to exercise civic agency. Longitudinal studies show that engaging in collective public action in the pre-adult years predicts voting and volunteering in early adulthood (McFarland & Thomas, 2006). Environmental issues include such diverse topics as storm water runoff and bio swales, energy savings from tree plantings or building upgrades, food security and community gardens, and razing and replacement of abandoned properties. Importantly, environmental issues are also social justice issues. Individuals from marginalized communities (e.g., African American and Latinx youth living in low-income communities) are disproportionally affected by environmental hazards and are simultaneously underrepresented in political institutions and processes.

Conceptually, the project is informed by an understanding of the environmental commons by which we mean: 1) the natural resources and systems on which life depends, and 2) the public processes whereby people make decisions about how they will steward those resources and be responsible for their communities. The “commons” term implies that natural resources belong to everyone and that everyone (regardless of age or background) has a voice and responsibility to protect them. Our project also is informed by the work of Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel prize in Economics for identifying characteristics of citizen groups that are effective in stewarding environmental resources: identification with the group and its goal; mutual respect, responsibility and communication that build trust (Cardenas & Ostrom, 2006).

A multi-method study was conducted with predominantly ethnic minority participants from urban, low-income communities, who generally have been neglected in studies of political development and environmental education. Pre-post surveys and reflective essays were collected from 255 youth (78% high-, 6% middle-, and 16% elementary-school students; 66% African-, 15% European-, 7% Latinx-, 3% Asian-, 3% Arab-American, 6% Multiracial; 80% qualify for free or reduced lunch).

Analyses of surveys administered before and after their PBSE projects revealed significant increases in students’: sense of civic responsibility, awareness of natural systems within their urban ecology; confidence in their civic capacities, commitment to bridging differences within groups to find common ground. Content analyses of essays on what they learned revealed students’ capacities to articulate ideas relevant to an understanding of the environmental commons including: human impact on and interdependence with natural resources; commitment to stewardship and community identity; trust in capacities of fellow citizens to solve collective problems.

Discussion will focus on the potential of collective action for developing children’s civic skills and dispositions and addressing social inequalities in political participation and environmental justice.

Authors

• Constance Flanagan, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author

• Alisa Pykett, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Morgan Smallwood, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erin Gallay, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author