2014+syllabus

Sustainability Education Spring 2014, STSS 4965, T/R 4:00-5:50, Sage 4112
Professor Brandon Costelloe-Kuehn, costeb2@rpi.edu, 727-1623, x Sage 5112 & 5408, Office hours Thursdays 3-4, and by appt.

STS EcoEd Spring 2014, STS 6962, T/R 4:00-5:50, Sage 5711
Professor Kim Fortun, fortuk@rpi.edu, x2199, Sage 5112. Office hours Thursdays 3-4, and by appt.

What knowledge and thought styles are needed to advance environmental sustainability? How can educators cultivate the kind of knowledge and thinking needed? How can sustainability educators reach kids of different ages, and different kinds of communities? This course will examine these questions through review of varied ways environmental education can be conceptualized and delivered. We will also develop and deliver our own educational materials, experimenting with ways social science and humanities research findings can be translated for different audiences – extending what the National Science Foundation calls the “broad impact” of the research.

We will examine the history of public education in the United States, factors shaping contemporary children and the education they receive, various approaches to environmental education, and the complex challenge of “backward design” of curriculum to produce educational outcomes that enhance and interlace students’ knowledge, skill and sense of purpose and possibility. Working off an evolving list of literacy goals – drawn from anthropological research on environmental problems – we will critically review existing environmental education curricula and modules, then design and deliver our own to k-12 students in our area.

Our reading for the course will be wide-ranging, drawing together different ways of thinking about teaching, learning, culture and cultural change. We will read the work of many critical theorists of pedagogy, including the works of L.S. Vygotsky, Paulo Friere, Gregory Bateson, Shoshana Felman, and Jean Lave, among others, alongside related anthropological work concerned with subject formation, affect and ethics. We'll also work with literature from the anthropology and sociology of teaching – focused on how learning occurs in different settings, for example, on ways schools are often sites of social (class) reproduction, etc. The course in part responds to the call for better preparation of (future) professors //as teachers,// providing graduate students with opportunities for thinking about and practicing pedagogy//,// informed by critical theories of language and sociality. .

The course will have five **learning outcomes**. Upon successful completion of the course, you will:
 * demonstrate understanding of key factors and stakeholders shaping US children's education today.
 * demonstrate understanding of how environmental education is developing in the US, and internationally.
 * demonstrate understanding of how (environmental) research findings can be woven into educational outreach programs, broadening the impact of the research.
 * demonstrate your own teaching, curriculum design and mentoring skills.
 * be able to articulate your own environmental and educational values.

Grades for the 4000 level course will be based on the following percentages: Active Participation 15% Journal 15% STS-Sustainability Events 10% Curriculum Reviews 10% K-12 contact (beyond class time) 10% Curriculum Innovations 10% Annotations 10% Two Essay Exams 20%

Grades for the 6000 (PhD) level course will be based on the following percentages: Active Participation 15% Journal 15% STS-Sustainability Events 10% Curriculum Reviews 10% K-12 contact (beyond class time) 10% Curriculum Innovations 10% Annotations 10% Edu-Organizational Study 20%

REQUIRED TEXTS
Required reading will be accessible through the wiki for Rensselaer’s EcoEd Research Group: http://ecoed.wikispaces.com/ **// COURSE POLICIES //** Attendance is required. Unexcused absences will result in a 2% reduction from your final grade. An excused absence (for illness, emergencies and approved Rensselaer activities) can be made up through submission of an extra film annotation (see details below). Documentation for excused absences should be obtained from the Student Experience Office, 4th floor Academy Hall, x8022, se@rpi.edu. Printed copies of assignments are due in class as indicated on the schedule below. For each day an assignment is late, you will lose 1% from your overall (cumulative) grade. If your midterm essay is a day late, for example, it can contribute at most 9% to your overall grade.

All assignments should also be posted in your wiki portfolio. Computers should be brought to class but should only be used for class-related activities. Other forms of electronic communication are not allowed. Academic honesty of the highest order is expected. It is not acceptable to submit work done for another class in this class, though it is acceptable to build on previous work. Talk to your instructor if you have questions about this. Nor, of course, is it acceptable to submit work done by someone else as your own. Citations must be included for both indirect and direct quotation, providing clear documentation of sources. Special care must be taken to properly cite digital resources. Please see the Student Handbook for complete guidelines on academic honesty. Here is a useful review of plagiarism: []. //If we am able to confirm plagiarism or another form of academic dishonesty on any assignment in this course, you will fail the entire course.//

You may appeal a grade through a written statement describing the grounds on which a change of grade should be considered. Before initiating a formal appeal of a course grade, you must talk to your instructor. The written statement goes first to your instructor, then to the Department Head, then to the HASS Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs.


 * // ASSIGNMENT AND GRADING DETAILS //**

// * This class is somewhat complex logistically. To pace yourself, think in terms of spending at least two hours out of class for every hour in class – so about 10 hours a week on homework, out-of-class K-12 outreach or sustainability events (described below). * //

** 15% Active Participation ** Attendance is required, but attendance alone does not guarantee a high participation grade. The participation grade is based on the quality of participation in class discussions, your presentation of curriculum module reviews, and your planning and outreach to k-12 students. ** 10% STS-Sustainability Events ** This course is designed to provide opportunities to translate social theoretical and ethnographic understanding of environmental problems into creative curricula for young students. We will use STS-Sustainability events during the semester – films in the STS Sustainability Film Series, Earth Week lectures, etc. – as the ethnographic component of the course, thinking through the educational implications of the material presented in these events. Minimally, you are required to attend the films in the STS Sustainability Studies Film Series (Sundays, 4-6pm, Feb 2, March 2 and April 6), and at least five events in RPI’s Earth Week Festival (April 21-26). Please plan now to have the flexibility needed to be available during Earth Week. If you are unable to attend films in the film series because of scheduling conflicts, they can be made up through submission of extra film annotations, following the template below. ** 10% Contact Hours ** I expect you to have approximately 10 contact hours with K-12 students during the semester – beyond those scheduled during our class time, within programs we’ll organize on the RPI campus and through work with area teachers in their classrooms during the regular k-12 school day. We will work out the logistics in class. If scheduling makes it impossible to build sufficient contact hours, film annotations may be used as an alternative (1 annotation = 2 hours). During our Thursday class time, beginning February 27 and running through April 24, we will host upper elementary and secondary students accepted into EcoEd Research Programs. This is the third year we have run a research program for secondary students, and the first year we have run one for upper elementary students. You will help mentor students in these programs. Their work will be presented as posters on the last day of RPI’s Earth Week Festival, Saturday, April 26; oral presentation of their work will be on Sunday, April 27. Please reserve these dates now. We are also scheduled to run a series of four 90-minute workshops for (40) 1st graders at Tamarac Elementary, and another series of four 90-minute workshops for (20) third graders. These workshops will run on Wednesdays (see the schedule below). We realize that some students will have scheduling conflicts. You can also consider contributing to three other programs already scheduled: Lindsey Poirier will run a workshop at RPI February 18-19, (winter break for k-12 students), focused on critical media literacy and the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. Kelley Fischbach will run a research group at Tamarac High School on Friday afternoons February 14-April 24 focused on a wastewater treatment facility run on the Tamarac campus due to its proximity to wetlands. Lisa McDevitt and others in RPI’s Fracking Research Group will run a jeopardy game and debate focused on the shale gas boom for teachers participating in a lab day run by the Science Teachers Association of New York State (STANYS) on March 1; these activities may also be scheduled at area schools.

Curriculum that you develop in this course can be built into our programs at Tamarac, or into the research programs we will run at RPI. We also can schedule additional workshops to match your interests during the semester, or to run during the Saturday finale of RPI’s Earth Week festival (April 26).

** 15% Journal ** Regular journal writing is a critical habit for anthropological fieldworkers; we will adopt the practice in this course as a way to continually track back and forth between what we see to be the conceptual challenges created by sustainability problems, and what this calls for in educational programming. Ideally, you’ll write daily; minimally, post three entries each week. At least one entry a week should bounce off of sustainability related news (see, for example, []). Your journal entries should address the following questions: 1) What educational outcomes are called for by sustainability problems and challenges? 2) What habits of mind, language and practice need to be undercut for sustainability problems to be recognized and addressed? 3) What experiences and learning are likely to provoke the (cultural) transformations called for by sustainability challenges?
 * 10% Annotations ** Five annotations of texts that explore the theory, practice and history of schools, teaching and learning are due at various points in the semester. You can annotate any texts assigned in the class, or others we have agreed upon. 6000 level students should annotate book-length texts. An annotation template will be provided.


 * 10% Curriculum Review Memos ** Over the course of the semester, you will write five memos that evaluate environmental curriculum modules now in circulation, evaluating what they accomplish (with specific reference to the evolving literacies goals of EcoEd), commenting on how they could be improved. You can review curriculum modules available at sites like this: []. PBS, National Geographic, New York Department of Environmental Conservation, and many museums also post k-12 environmental teaching materials. Your review should address these (and possibly additional) questions:

What organization developed the curriculum module you are evaluating? What is the overall mission of the organization? What is the educational mission and philosophy of the organization? What does the curriculum module aim to teach? In other words: what are the learning outcomes supposed to be? Do you think the curriculum is appropriately designed to produce the intended learning outcomes? Does this curriculum teach the kind of literacies advocated by EcoEd? What could be layered into this curriculum so that it addresses more of the learning outcomes advocated by EcoEd?


 * 10% Curriculum Innovation Memos ** You will also write two memos describing curriculum modules that help build the kinds of literacies the EcoEd Research Group has determined to be important when dealing with complex environmental problems. These modules can build on modules already developed by others; they should be structured to contribute to the cache of modules being built by the EcoEd Research Group. Ideally, we will find an opportunity to use the modules you develop during the semester. Please use this curriculum module template.


 * 20% Essay Exams ** Students in the 4000 level course will have two essay exams. There will be five essay questions on each exam; each response should be about 500 words long. The best way to prepare for the exam is to deeply engage class reading material, films, discussion and presentations. Mid-term questions will be posted by Tuesday, February 11; responses are due Tuesday March 4. Final exam questions will be posted by Tuesday, April 15; responses are due Tuesday, May 6. You are free to discuss the exam questions with others; the exam should be written independently (i.e. without collaboration).


 * 20% Eco-Organizational Study ** Students in the 6000 level course will write an essay describing the history, mission, educational logic and practice, and social ecology of an organization that has an educational mandate. You could write about the New York State Department of Education, for example, or about farmer extension services in the United States, Kenya, or any other context you are interested in. We will discuss shared questions to address in class.

** Excused Absences and Film Annotations ** Excused absences (from class or the film series) can be made up by writing film annotations for any sustainability-related documentary. You cannot re-submit annotations submitted in other classes.

Credit will depend on complete coverage of the annotation questions, use of concrete examples from the film to illustrate points and high quality writing. Annotations can be in essay form, or can answer each question separately, but must be in complete sentences and paragraphs. It should be clear that you have moved beyond notes to a sophisticated analysis. Each annotation should be approximately 1000 words long. Indicate word count at the top. The questions to be covered are as follows:

1. Title, director and release year? 2. What is the central argument or narrative of the film? 3. What sustainability issues does the film draw out? 4. What parts of the film did you find most persuasive and compelling? Why? 5. What parts of the film were you not compelled or convinced by? Why? 6. What kinds of corrective action are suggested by the film (either overt or implied)? 7. What kinds of literacy are cultivated by the film? 8. What would improve the environmental educational value of the film? 9. What additional information has this film compelled you to seek out? (Describe what you learned in a couple of sentences, providing at least two supporting references).