Teaching holistic environmental thought: A classroom approach

Abstract

Climate change has exacerbated environmental problems globally, exposing the inadequacy of land management plans designed to function best under stable and predictable circumstances. Indigenous land management practices have received considerable attention for maintaining resilient, biodiverse ecosystems in the face of change and complexity. This has stimulated ample research on transdisciplinary collaboration between Western science and Indigenous Ways of Knowing (IWK) to promote sustainable land management practices. Equitable partnership that furthers these goals may remain out of reach, however, without addressing the ongoing marginalization and erasure of Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies. A fundamental shift toward epistemologically plural, multicultural approaches in environmental science education in the United States is vital for ameliorating deep-rooted, systemic, cultural injustices in land management. The failure to incorporate plural epistemologies in the classroom may help to explain the intractable nature of environmental problems through the suppression of ideological diversity needed to address complex problems. In this study, community-based design research (CBDR) was utilized over a three-year period to design a multicultural framework for environmental education in collaboration with tribal and place-based educators. It was conducted within a university-level environmental science course taught at the University of Washington in the Northwestern United States. This collaborative effort included members and educators from three Washington State tribes and a multidisciplinary team of K-12 and university-level instructors. Through an iterative process, our team developed curricula to decolonize environmental science education using holistic pedagogical tools from both Western and Indigenous traditions.