Designing a Real-World Course for Environmental Studies Students: Entering a Social-Ecological System

Douglas Bolger,Flora Krivak-Tetley,Gillian Maggs-Kölling,Joseph Tjitekulu,Karen Bieluch

doi:10.3390/su10072546

Douglas Bolger, Flora Krivak-Tetley + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072546

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Abstract

There is increasing interest in using “real-world pedagogy” to train students in ways that make them better able to contribute toward a more sustainable society. While there is a robust body of literature on the competencies that students need as sustainability professionals, there is a lack of specific guidance in the literature on how to teach for competency development or on how to structure a program or course to support competency development. Our research addresses this gap in the literature through a description and autoethnographic reflection on the design and early implementation of a “real-world” course. The course is from the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH, USA), but it takes place in the environs of the Gobabeb Research and Training Centre in the Namib Desert of Namibia and in nearby Topnaar settlements. Our research objective was to articulate strategies to address the primary pedagogical challenges that we faced during the design and first five iterations of the course. These include: How do we frame this course and communicate it to students in a way that is understandable and works within the particular context and constraints of the course? Can we provide students with a coherent framework that helps them to understand the approach and also provides a platform for thoughtful consideration, acquisition, and retention of appropriate competencies? How do we develop collaborations with our community partners that are ethical and effective? How do we frame these real-world experiences in a way that allows for students to integrate their experience with the theory and broader empiricism they learn on campus? To address these pedagogic challenges, we framed the course as a research-based course, more specifically community-based research (CBR), conducted in a social-ecological system (SES). We developed lower-level strategies for implementing this framing, including preparing students for collaborative research, encouraging student ownership of their learning, linking theory to research, and thoughtfully navigating time constraints. Furthermore, program-level and student-level engagement with community have been critical for avoiding becoming “helicopter researchers.” Drawing on our personal reflections and those of our community partners, we conclude with a discussion of emergent outcomes and the next steps for continual improvement and adaptation.

Highlights

The related fields of environmental studies, conservation biology, and sustainability science are searching for ways to make higher education more practically relevant in efforts to move toward a more sustainable society [1,2]
It is not surprising that there is a lack of specific guidance in the literature on how to teach for competency development [8,10], or on how to structure a program or course to support the development of these competencies
We required that it thoroughly engage the human and ecological dimensions of an issue in an interdisciplinary way, and that students connect their activities in the course to the skills, theory, and broader empiricism taught on campus and available through the scholarly literature (Figure 1)

Summary

Introduction

The related fields of environmental studies, conservation biology, and sustainability science (and others) are searching for ways to make higher education more practically relevant in efforts to move toward a more sustainable society [1,2]. A partial list of these competencies includes: problem solving [3], inter- and transdisciplinary proficiency [4], systems thinking [5], collaboration skills [6], communication [7], understanding how values and ethics shape problems and solutions, incorporating diverse opinions and knowledge [7], and applying theory to practice. There is broad consensus that these are worthy educational goals, and numerous studies have evaluated these learning outcomes (e.g., [8,9]). Many of these competencies involve vague concepts for which even specialists have trouble agreeing on operational definitions. It is not surprising that there is a lack of specific guidance in the literature on how to teach for competency development [8,10], or on how to structure a program or course to support the development of these competencies

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