Practical Theories: Developing Children’s Environmental Stewardship Skills and Identities

• In Event: 2-017 - Leveraging Community- and Practitioner-Research Partnerships to Advance Equity and Justice in Developmental Science

Integrative Statement

In the work outlined in this paper we take seriously Lewin’s (1948) observation that both theory and practice are enriched through collaborations. Drawing from Lewin’s quotes, "There is nothing so practical as a good theory” and "If you want to understand something, try to change it”, we summarize our scholar-practice collaboration with the Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition (SEMIS).

SEMIS is an educational network that facilitates environmental learning-action partnerships between k-12 schools and community organizations. It is one of 9 regional hubs of the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative (GLSI), a consortium of such partnerships on place-based stewardship education (PBSE) in Michigan. Although the issues addressed (e.g., storm water runoff, energy savings from trees, etc.) vary, in all projects students (along with teachers and community partners) define an environmental issue impacting their community, collect and analyze relevant data, and take actions to mitigate the problem. The goal is to develop students as environmental stewards and the focus on local place is two-fold: as a source for learning and as a community to which students can make a civic contribution. Most students in SEMIS projects are African-American and Latinx and reside in urban low-middle income communities that are underrepresented in research on environmental and civic development.

Using a multi-method approach (pre-post surveys and open-ended reflective essays) our team has collaborated with SEMIS to document changes associated with students’ participation in these PBSE projects. Drawing from Lewin (If you want to understand something, try to change it), our goal has been to understand how students’ awareness of natural systems and human impact in the urban ecology and their agency as community environmental stewards might develop through participation in this community science model. Based on analyses of over 200 (middle-high school) surveys collected before and after participation in the PBSE projects, we found significant increases in students’:

• Awareness of nature as part of the urban ecology and of human impact on the environment
• Confidence in their capacities to gather/ analyze data and make plans to address environmental issues
• Sense of efficacy in communicating with and organizing others to care about the environment
• Beliefs that solving environmental problems takes a team effort including working with people with whom they disagree
• Knowledge about finite resources and ways to improve water quality
• Attitudes toward science content and interest in careers that use science

In addition, using a grounded approach to analyzing students’ reflections regarding what they learned from participating in the SEMIS projects, we have advanced an emergent theory of the Environmental Commons. By the Environmental Commons we refer to: 1) the natural resources and systems on which life depends, and 2) the public processes whereby people work together and make decisions about how they will care for those resources and for the communities they inhabit. Drawing from students’ reflections, we will illustrate Environmental Commons theory and Lewin’s observation that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory”.

Authors

• Erin Gallay, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author

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

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

• Constance Flanagan, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ethan Lowenstein, Director, Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition (SEMIS), Eastern Michigan University
  Non-Presenting Author