Curriculum+Review+Memo+3

Allison Mrugal 11/27/15 Curriculum Review 3: Kids Doing/Thinking Ecology Sust. Ed., 4280-01 Prof. Fortun

Prompt: Focus here on curriculum that gets kids thinking about and researching ecology. This can build off of and feed into the Children's Forest design challenge we are working on.

Response: The curriculum provided by Project Learning Tree in partnership with the World Forestry Center aims to “provide students with opportunities to apply scientific processes and higher order thinking skills while investigating world forestry issues and conducting service-learning action projects” (Project Learning Tree). The module includes nine activities, some of which are self-guided and involve critical analysis. Following this module, students practice different ways to conduct research and learn concepts related to sustainability, while relating their study in forestry to personal and local interests.

The first activity in the module, “Making the Global Connection”, asks students to collect their own knowledge and data about forests: “students will conduct a survey to help them assess what they and others know about forests and to consider ways that people are linked to forests around the world” (Project Learning Tree). Since this activity involves the strategy of surveying, students gain communication skills used in initiating interaction with people who hold differing opinions and knowledge. Students who can survey can progressively learn to communicate and/or debate their own knowledge informally and formally. Surveying also allows students to collect their own information on an issue to supplement that recorded in literature and media, which may eventually contribute to an empowered sense of self and/or compelling storytelling.

Another notable activity in the curriculum is the second activity. In completing this, students conceptualize how “dozens of official definitions of the term ‘forest’ are in use throughout the world” and learn to “analyze various definitions of this term” (Project Learning Tree). Students “then consider different cultural perspectives that affect people’s perception of forests” (Project Learning Tree). Since this module acknowledges that there is no one definition of a ‘forest’, it reflects the process of conceptualizing ‘sustainability’ and related solutions to climate change: there is no one way of doing things. Further broadening the discussion to incorporate cultural contexts introduces students into a global setting with which many may not be familiar. In this way, educators do not ‘teach at’ students but allow students to identify a vast array of knowledge in the world, using it to create their own sense of the world and specifically forests in it.

A final activity worth noting is the last activity in the module, “Activity 9: Researching Forests Around the World” (Project Learning Tree). Since this activity directly asks students to think and research ecology, its summary describes that “students will explore their connections to the world's forests by researching a forest in another country or region, and by creating a profile about that forest” (Project Learning Tree). In other words, students will use books, journals, newspapers, and websites to learn more about the importance of forests around the world. In allowing students to collect data already published, they curate their own understanding of how both the environment and society rely on forests in the world.

While Activities 3-8 in the curriculum module mainly aim to get kids thinking about ecology, Activities 1, 2, and 9 do a effective job of encouraging kids to research and analyze it themselves. By collecting personal and published data, students come to understand how others think of forestry, which may help them “recognize and productively deal with diverse perspectives, avoiding the paralysis often produced by insistence of ‘balance’ and ‘consensus’” (Eco-Ed Research Group). Furthermore, using these research and analytic methods, students practice “having creative info-seeking practices, animated analytic capabilities, and a capacity to narrate complex chain of events” (Eco-Ed Research Group). Using and modifying the activities in the module to allow students to research and connect with forests in more of a self-guided manner (like that used in Activities 1, 2, and 9) may help the entire curriculum encourage students to think about and get involved in sustainability in ways they did not expect or see possible.

To view this curriculum, go to: https://www.plt.org/forests-of-the-world

To view other curriculums by Project Learning Tree, see: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">https://www.plt.org/environmental-education-curriculum