Investigating the Benefits of Participatory Action Research for Environmental Education

Abstract

Environmental education (EE) continues to focus on enhancing people's ecological knowledge to encourage sustainable actions. This deficit approach presumes that once informed about environmental harms, people will work towards sustainable solutions for healthy societies. Yet research overwhelmingly demonstrates that knowledge of environmental problems is insufficient to spur pro-environmental behaviors. Traditional EE, therefore, has largely been unsuccessful at achieving its goals of engendering environmentally friendly practices and institutions. This article investigates the pedagogical efficacy of a participatory action research (PAR) project for enhancing environmental education in college courses. Qualitative evidence indicates that a PAR project incorporated into an Environmental Sociology course helped students understand how their everyday activities (in particular the consumption of bottled water) exacerbate poor human and environmental health, increased their environmental consciousness, and encouraged them to adopt pro-environmental behaviors and promote sustainability initiatives on campus. Based on these outcomes, the author recommends expanding educational policy to include a description of pedagogical methods such as PAR that successfully operationalize the goals of EE. Policy reforms should encourage educators to incorporate participatory, action-oriented learning opportunities that enable students to apply their knowledge to improve real-world environmental problems.

Voices on Data Literacy and Initial Teacher Education: Pre-service teachers’ reflections and recommendations

“…The findings of this phase of the research, from the perspectives of the educators, support the literature that argues that hands-on activities, even at a university level, enhance students' learning and deepens their understanding of the course content and enables skills development (e.g. Brown et al, 2011;Bywater, 2014;Dunlap & Prio, 2016, Winn, 1995. As with all skills, practice is needed not only to develop mastery of skills, but also to identify gaps in knowledge and competencies.…”

Transition Factors to Low Carbon Community - Engagement Initiative for Slum Communities

“…It was the beginning of the research in Bangkok slums through focus on local knowledge, social capital, and community engagement. This corresponds with Bywater (2014) who states that environmental education that focuses on enhancing people's knowledge to encourage sustainable actions will not achieve success without people's participation. Berberyan (n.d.) also writes in the same spirit: Environmental development in slum communities by selforganizing from within and using social capital to build adaptive capacity can be more sustainable, effective, and resilient than those with adaptation mechanisms designed and imposed by other outside entities.…”

Niveles de participación de niños, niñas y adolescentes en investigaciones de educación ambiental en Hispanoamérica (1999-2019)

“…Esto ha sido matizado por investigaciones empíricas, las que advierten una participación poco protagonista por parte de los NNA en el desarrollo de las actividades educativas ambientales (Calvente, Kharrazi, Kudo, & Savaget, 2018;Matos-De Rojas, Pasek-De Pinto, Peña-Briceño y Briceño, 2018). Así planteada, la EA tiene un doble desafío: por un lado, contribuir al abandono del "antropocentrismo" y las lógicas de producción/consumo capitalistas; y por otro, trabajar las formas de participación adultocéntricas en educación (Bywater, 2014;Lay-Lisboa y Montañes, 2018), las que dificultan el verdadero involucramiento de los NNA en los proyectos y acciones.…”

“…Según estudios anteriores, la cantidad de tiempo que se necesita para generar instancias participativas, la baja formación y protagonismo ciudadano de educadores e investigadores, la escasa práctica de los NNA participando y las deficientes herramientas estatales para promover la participación, se pueden configurar como obstaculizadores incluso en aquellos espacios donde se le desea fomentar (Bywater, 2014;Varela-Losada, Pérez-Rodríguez, Álvarez-Lires y Álvarez-Lires, 2014). Por este motivo, es necesario que educadores e investigadores se instruyan en estas artes y sean capaces de reflexionar y evaluar de manera crítica su propia práctica y sus relaciones de poder con los educandos (García-Pérez y de Alba-Fernández, 2012).…”