Thursday, December 8, 2016

Regenerative Design Education: Living Praxis with a Friendly Universe



Friday, October 21, 2016

Early Release Launch of New Cornell University, EE Capacity, and NAAEE Community Climate Change Education Resource Co-Edited by Marna Hauk

An Early Release Version of "Community Climate Change Education: A Mosaic of Approaches" is now available at naaee.org/mosaic

Edited by Marna Hauk and Elizabeth Pickett
Illustrated by Susan Chung

Authored by 20+ Community Climate Change Fellows

Supported by EE Capacity and NAAEE, with funding from the EPA

A New e-Book on Community Climate Change Education

Strategies and Convergence -
Vibrant Stories from the Front Lines of Community Strength,
Solidarity, Social Innovation, Youth Investment, Climate Justice,
Indigenous Organizing, and School Collaborations

Early Release Date: October 20, 2016 - Now Downloadable from naaee.org/mosaic

Featuring…

• 26 Reports from the Field

• Resources and Links on More than 15 Climate Change Education Topics:
Marine Science, Effective Climate Change Communication, Environmental
Justice, Carbon-Sequestering Community Food Systems, Youth Leadership,
School Projects, Neighborhood Eco-Organizing, Social Incubators for Gaian
Resilience, Ecotourism, Indigenous Resurgence, and More…

• Fifty+ Vignettes from the Front Lines – The Process of Effective
Community Climate Change Action: Alliance, Capacity, Networks, Mutual Learning,
Communities of Practice, Restoration, Possibility, Hope

• Original Research Report: Strategies and Resources for the Long Haul and
Preventing Burnout for Climate Change Educator-Organizers

• Original Facilitation Guide with Learning Practices: Facilitation Strategies for Surfacing Unheard Voices

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Spectrum of Inclusive Resilience: Designing and Assessing Climate Justice Education

In 2014, I took a course on "Measuring Environmental Education Outcomes" with Marianne Krasny and Alex Kudryavtsev, through EE Capacity, NAAEE, and Cornell University Civic Ecology Lab. For this course, I developed a three-tiered spectrum instrument that faculty and teachers could use to assess the level of inclusion of climate justice considerations in their curriculum. The intention was this would support teachers in designing for deeper integration of climate justice education in their courses.

In October 2014 I developed a visualization for this instrument and presented it as one of the Community Climate Change Fellows of NAAEE in Ottawa, Canada. In the following year, I refined the instrument, inspired by my experiences teaching doctoral students climate change education and mentoring graduate students in environmental justice and just sustainabilities. In October of 2015, I revised the instrument and was selected to present it at the Research Symposium of the North American Association for Environmental Educators. Now available are a companion briefing about the instrument as well as an informational poster. I am still in the process of further refining and articulating this work for academic publication.


Figure 1. Snapshot, Spectrum of Inclusive Resilience Poster (Hauk, (c) 2015)

Title: Spectrum of Inclusive Resilience: Designing and Assessing Climate Justice Education 

Abstract: Developed by meta-synthesis and refined by multi-case application, this research offers a three-tier spectrum to assess and design for depth of implementation of transformative climate justice approaches in curricula and projects, to avoid greenwashing and move more deeply towards social transformation, community-based action, inclusion, and resilience in environmental education.

Marna Hauk, Ph.D. – NAAEE – Research Symposium – October, 2015 in San Diego, California

Here's the handout I shared with visitors during the discussion.
Here's the poster I developed to share this instrument - more refined than the 2014 one, and still in formation.

Hope you find it of interest, and please let me know what you see missing or would suggest augmenting or changing. I have subsequently encountered the work of the Hackman Consulting Group on designing climate justice education, whose insights I hope to include in the next iteration of this spectrum model.

Thank you.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Vibrant Earth - Interactive Symposium at the American Educational Research Association

Weaving as a Metaphor for
Biocultural Embedment
Photo by B. Mayer, 2016
At the recent American Educational Research Association meeting in Washington, D.C., the interactive symposium entitled "Vibrant Earth: Bioculturally Embedded Educational Encounters Catalyzing Earth Regenerative Creativities" involved dynamic experiential dimensions and international scholarship at the intersection of bioculture, ecology, and sustainability. Here was the overview description: 
Educational researchers reveal regenerative creativities sourced in Earth that promise biocultural regeneration, creative restoration, and diverse liberations. This interactive symposium draws from a rich, international, transdisciplinary synergy of research projects to generate a creative space for interchange about creative diversities sourced in earth connection. These proposals break the human/nature binary and share in the mutualism of matrixial biocultural embedment. They explore how biocultural embedment, at multiple scales, produces regenerative capacity. Through arts-based approaches, indigenous ethnographies, experiential STEM, and complexity methods, these projects suggest directions for catalyzing change. The earth itself, as the first teacher, in and through embedded learners and learning collectivities, suggests innovations for critical and creative empowerments to catalyze diverse democracies.
 Keywords: transdisciplinary, creativity, eco-restoration, arts-based research, decolonizing methods

The papers presented included

  • Theorizing Earth Regenerative Creativity in Education Design – Marna Hauk, Ph.D. – Prescott College and the Institute for Earth Regenerative Studies
  • After Embeddedness: Dreaming Soil Ecologies Through Arts-Based Research – Barbara Bickel, Ph.D. – Southern Illinois University
  • Decolonizing Development: Freeing Biocultural Diversities in Egypt to Enhance Regenerative Capacity – Abeer Salem, Ph.D. – MSA University, Cairo, Egypt
  • Democratizing Mathematics via Embodied Learning and the Arts in a Teaching and Learning Garden – Susan Gerofsky, Ph.D. – University of British Columbia, Vancouver

 And we learned to make cordage and worked with weaving spring willow. Brett Mayer, a graduate student from Prescott College, helped with the symposium.