Pathways to Understanding the Changing Climate

Author(s):

Elsa Lee(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

30. Environmental and Sustainability Education Research (ESER)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

30 SES 02 A, Learning ESE

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

15:15-16:45

Room:

B119 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Elsa Lee

Contribution

The aim of this project is to explore the ways in which people (both children and adults) think about and talk about environmental change and how schools allow children to reflect creatively on their own environmental context.

We are particularly interested in how conceptualisations of time emerge in children’s understandings of local and global environmental change so we will be looking for manifestations of this in the data that we collect.

People’s narratives about the interplay between local manifestations of changing climates and environments and processes that operate at a global scale will be investigated. The role that folklore has within this is a theme we will consider. To enable us to develop an understanding of this local-global interplay we will develop cross-cultural links to connect the local experience of environmental change in East Anglia with the experience of change elsewhere in the world (for example Alaska and Mongolia).

Moreover, we are interested in intergenerational communication and how knowledge about environmental issues is exchanged between generations so this will be a focus of our research.

The participatory nature of this work will influence how these broad aims are manifested in the research hence the context of the research will influence how these aims play out in different school or organisational settings.

Our evolving questions are:

What are the factors that shape children’s perception of their own local environment?
How do primary school children experience time?

What evidence is there that children integrate the past and future into their conceptualisation of place-based environmental change?
What conditions and contexts influence their experiences of time?

How do children communicate/share their perceptions of environmental change both at the inter- and intra- generational level?

Does climate change feature in these perceptions?

How does communication change when a cross-cultural element is introduced?
What cross-cultural convergence/divergence exists about the communication of place-based environmental change?
What interventions are effective at drawing out children’s thinking about environmental change?

The theoretical framework of this research is still being developed. This is a three-year project that started in October 2013 hence we are still in the process of reviewing and distilling the relevant literature. Moreover, the research is being carried out by an interdisciplinary group from both Education and Social Anthropology which further complicates the identification of a cogent theoretical framework. Notwithstanding these challenges, we are currently drawing on research on participatory learning and transactional methodology (e.g. Ohman and Ostman, 2007, Hart, 2008, Biesta, 2011), intergenerational place-based learning (e.g. Mannion et al. 2010), relationships between understanding of conventional and deep time (e.g. Cheek, 2013), global learning (e.g. Barth and Riekcmann, 2009), climate change education (e.g. Niebert and Groppengieser, 2013) and walking narratives and landscape (e.g. Ingold, 2007).

Method

Schools will be given the opportunity to investigate a local environmental issue of significance to them. The researchers will act as participant observers during this process. Thus they will be involved in participating schools’ investigations whilst observing how the investigation proceeds and generates data that can be used to explore the aims and research questions set out above. Each school will be involved in a consultation workshop when they will be given the opportunity to share ideas about environmental issues in their local communities. Walking through the local landscape will form part of this initial consultation. Researchers and school participants will then discuss how these issues might be investigated. Researchers will consider how they might best support the schools through some project work around the issues identified and a decision about the most appropriate project will be reached in consultation with the school. The researchers (alongside local artists, story-tellers and other interested community members) will then work with the school to complete the project and will gather data from this process as it is ongoing. The school will be kept informed about the data that is being gathered and about any conclusions and findings that emerge from this process. We are interested in different ways in which we can encourage children to think creatively about their environment, including storytelling and folklore and mythology, arts projects, and walks through the landscape, and we are also interested in exploring how these creative outputs can link up with scientific knowledge. The researchers will be facilitating activities along these lines that prompt or elicit children’s reflections about the environment but the exact nature of these activities will evolve transactionally through combining the interests of the schools involved in the research and the expertise offered by the members of the research group. Piloting work is currently underway where we are trialling some of these activities and methods. We are gathering data in the form of field notes and audio recordings. Some interviews will also be carried out. This pilot data will be subjected to thematic analysis using a framework of theory- and data-led codes to search for responses to the research questions outlined above. The findings from this process will inform the methods used in the next phase of the project.

Expected Outcomes

This research is still in the planning phase although some pilot work is currently underway. What is presented here is in the form of expected outcomes and outputs of the project. The findings of this project will be influenced by what the participating schools choose to investigate. However, we hope to be able to start to understand how children think about and experience time and how this relates to environmental change. We also hope to get an idea of which issues in the field of environmental change are cross cultural and which are not. We are aiming to produce two major outputs. The first is a methodology for investigating how children and adults narrate their experiences of changing climates and environments. The purpose of this methodology is to elicit children and adults reflections about these matters and is likely to involve some movement through landscapes, for example transect walks. The second is a searchable data-base of narratives, interviews and other materials that academics, educationalists, schools and interested community members can access to investigate how these issues emerge both in East Anglia in the UK and abroad (for example, Alaska and Mongolia).

References

Barth, M., and M. Rieckmann. 2009. “Experiencing the Global Dimension of Sustainability: Student Dialogue in a European-Latin American Virtual Seminar.” The International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning 1, no. 3: 23–38. Biesta, G., 2011. The Ignorant Citizen: Mouffe, Rancière, and the Subject of Democratic Education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 30(2), pp.141–153. Cheek, K.A., 2013. Exploring the Relationship between Students' Understanding of Conventional Time and Deep (Geologic) Time, International Journal of Science Education, 35:11, 1925-1945 Hart, P. 2008. Elusive Participation: Methodological Challenges in Researching Teaching and Participatory Learning in Environmental Education In A. Reid, B.B. Jensen, J. Nikel, and V.Simovska Eds. Participation and learning : perspectives on education and the environment, health and sustainability, [New York]: Springer. Ingold, T. & Vergunst, J. (2008). 'Introduction'. in T Ingold & J Vergunst (eds), Ways of walking: Ethnography and practice on foot. Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception, Ashgate, Aldershot, United Kingdom, pp. 1-19. Mannion, G., Adey, C. & Lynch, J., 2010. Intergenerational Place-based Education: where schools, communities, and nature meet. Stirling: University of Stirling for Scottish Centre for Intergenerational Practice. Niebert, K., and Gropengiesser, H., 2013. “Understanding and Communicating Climate Change in Metaphors.” Environmental Education Research 19, no. 3 282–302. doi:10.1080/13504622.2012.690855. Ohman, J. and Ostman, L., 2007. Continuity and Change in Moral Meaning-Making—A Transactional Approach. Journal of Moral Education 36(2), pp.151-168.

Author Information

Elsa Lee (presenting / submitting)

The University of Cambridge

Fulbourn

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