Krasny & tidball mtnyc 2010

Editor's Notes

1. When we think about EE, the image often comes to mind of a program that takes kids outside the city to a nature center where they learn about the environment. As we come to realize that more and more kids experience the environment in urban neighborhoods, EE have begun to ask questions about how to provide nature experiences in the city, and how such nature experiences link with social experiences. My colleague Keith Tidball and I have begun to develop a conceptual framework for linked social-ecological perspectives on environmental education. In so doing we draw on the pioneering work for the LTER scientists in linking social and ecological systems as well as some of the more applied work being conducted by Svendsen and Campbell in NY and other cities. Our hope is that the conceptual framework I will present today will stimulate thinking about how environmental education, rather than being viewed as somehow outside of a linked social-ecological system, may actually be viewed as part of and as playing an important role in such urban systems. In developing this theoretical framework, we hope to lay a ground work for the empirical work of others in our Civic Ecology Lab at Cornell, including Alex K who follows me. EE apart from Urban ee within the ecological and social system Coneptual framework drawing on LTER and S&C Stimluate thinking about the role of EE in system and for empirical work
2. So where do we start in developing a conceptual framework for urban EE? Svendsen and Campbell have done some foundational work documenting the importance, diversity and activities of urban env stewardship groups, such as those mapped on this OASIS website. Interestingly, according to S&C, 60% of these groups work with schools. When asked to report what benefits they provide to the community, 1/3 provide education and 2/3 engage youth. In short, these groups are already active in school as well as in what we would call informal or out of school education
3. Keith Tidball and I have proposed the term Civic Ecology Education to describe learning programs that are situated in urban env stewardship activities and that have both civic and environmental outcomes. Examples include learning that occurs in community gardens such as through the GM program, oyster restoration in the Bronx River such as that conducting by Rocking the Boat, and the Urban Env Course taught by Keith Tidball that engaged Cornell students in a service learning project planting trees in NYC.
4. Several pedagogical strategies that are consistent with CEE include hands-on science inquiry. Through Garden Mosaics, youth are engaged in collecting and reporting over the internet data on planting practices and the rels of these practices to the gardeners’ cultural backgrounds—thus all the data collection activities have linked social and ecological components. The intergenerational component plays out as youth work alongside the adult gardeners, and the multi-cultural aspect involves youth collecting practical or local knowledge from gardeners from a diversity of cultural backgrounds.
5. Civic ecology also draws on situated learning theory, which views learning as an interaction of the learner with his /her social and biological/physical environment. Situated learning theorists might describe learning as situated in a particular stewardship activity, which consists of an affordance network---or network of social and ecological entitites and processes that afford learning opportunities when the learning interacts with these social and ecological elements.
6. We are particularly interested in the role that civic ecology education might play in an urban SES. To start this exploration of a role for CEE, we are using the conceptual framework for social-ecological systems research developed by LTER. Note that in this framework, human activities are viewed as having pretty much exclusively a negative impact on ecological systems. Campbell and Svendsen’s work on urban env stewardship and our work on CEE embedded in ues suggests a somewhat different way of viewing this with the possibility that presses and external drivers may actually act to enhance the environment rather than degrade it.
7. Take you through a scenario of how CEE might fit in with this conceptual framework. In this particular scenario let’s imagine that we have a CEE program that is part of the MTNYC. The scale we are looking at is a yr long program that plants trees along one block. IMPORTANCE OF THIS CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK IS THREEFOLD--- Suggests research questions---we are currently developing tools to measure SOP and SC in youth, adapting tools that are developed and tested for adults. 2. CEE may be part of feedback loops and embedded in activities that have positive outcomes; 3. education prms can contribute to outcomes beyond the level of the individual learner, including those that contribute to resilient systems
8. Review—learning in UES Learning Occurs through interaction of learning with social/bio-physical elements of the system---such as the individuals involved in tree planting, the trees and soils themselves Outcomes of CEE programs may include improvements in tree canopy, SES understanding, SOP, Social capital, CEE may become part of reinforcing feedback loops potentially leading to larger level impacts and new loops at different scales.