Shared understandings: environmental perspectives of Kenyan community members and teachers

Abstract

Environmental issues are a shared human concern as communities in all nations and geographic regions are grappling with environmental degradation. Despite this concern, there are multiple different viewpoints on the current state of environmental issues and how to understand these problems. Understanding how different communities conceive of the environment and sustainability is paramount in efforts to increase the frequency of environmentally conscious choices. If an awareness of others’ perspectives of the environment is lacking, then the development of sustainable choices is placed at risk because of potentially competing views of what sustainability means in a particular context. As such, solutions to these environmental problems are frequently viewed as ‘wicked problems.’ This study investigates the shared and divergent environmental viewpoints of teachers and community members in Kenya. This study utilized photo-methodologies and qualitative in vivo analysis. The shared viewpoints were on positive and negative notions of environmental issues. The divergent viewpoints were on solutions that included types of innovations and amount of government involvement.

Keywords:

• environmental perspective
• photo-methodology
• divergent viewpoint
• shared viewpoint

Notes

1. For more information on these land adjudication practices, see (Anderson 2005)

2. Pseudonyms are used for the participants’ names, schools, and institutions.

Additional information

Funding

Funding. The work was supported by the University Research Council and Health, Education and Human Development Interdisciplinary Research Innovation Grant from Clemson University.