Place-based education for environmental behavior: a ‘funds of knowledge’ and social capital approach

Abstract

In this paper we suggest that a new theoretical framework is needed within environmental education in the discussion of rural, underserved communities in Latin America. We argue that a community-resources approach, comprised of funds of knowledge and social capital, should be incorporated into contemporary research on place- and community-based education and environmental behavior. The model we present builds upon previous research in the areas of education, anthropology, social capital, and environmental education. These perspectives are discussed in accordance with their relevance to high school students in one of the most bio-diverse regions of Central America: the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica. In this context, we suggest that promoting environmental behavior is both contextualized by and dependent upon social and community interactions, or ‘mediations,’ after Lev S. Vygotsky. We believe that the framework presented here may contribute to increased socio-economic, academic, and environmental benefits for underserved, Latin American communities.

Keywords:

• Place-based education
• community-based education
• funds of knowledge
• social capital
• environmental behavior

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank The Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment for its institutional and financial support, as well as Emily Arnold Mest for her administrative oversight. We would like to recognize MUIR undergraduate research interns Rosemary Mena-Werth and Nicole Bennett-Fite for their assistance and fieldwork contributions, as well as Stanford researcher Autumn Albers and Stanford ecology doctoral candidate Beth Morrison for their pedagogical expertise and program implementation. We give special thanks to Dr. Rodolfo Dirzo and Dr. Nicole Ardoin for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Finally, we would like to offer our deep gratitude to the students, families, and businesses with whom we worked, and to colleagues in southern Costa Rica too numerous to name, a few of whom include Travis Bays, Juan José Jiménez Espinoza, Reinaldo Aguilar, Alberto Herrera, Mario Cambronero, Hermiley Alvarado, and Dayana Zúñiga who generously invited us into their communities.

Notes

1. It is important to recognize and underscore that a particular rural, underserved audience in Central America, in this case in the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, should not be generalized to represent rural, underserved audiences throughout Latin America more generally despite any similarities or differences. Our emphasis on rural underserved students in Latin America should instead be understood as one example of such until further EE research among rural underserved audiences in Latin America is forthcoming.

2. Land use change on the Osa Peninsula has caused concern for non-human species’ interactions and stability (Broadbent et al. 2012). Increased deforestation (Sanchez-Azofeifa et al. 2002), the cultivation of mono-crop agriculture, specifically African oil palm (Beggs and Moore 2013) and rice (Forestelli and Angulo Aguilar 2013), cattle ranching (Naughton 1993), and large scale infrastructure projects (Murillo 2012; Umaña 2013) all pose serious challenges to the ecology of the region. Although we do not provide an exhaustive review here, development on the Osa Peninsula can trace its socio-political antecedents to the exclusion of indigenous peoples (Miller 2006; Umaña 2013), pre-Columbian and industrial agriculture (Rodriguez and Smith 1994; Clement and Horn 2001), diffuse economic and political power (Silva 2003), and tourism (Horton 2009; Fletcher 2012). While tourism and specifically ecotourism and nature-based jobs have been shown to have positive social and environmental impacts in Neotropical countries (Stem et al. 2003; Janzen 2004; Gordillo Jordan et al. 2008; Stronza 2010; De Koning et al. 2011), in Costa Rica (Almeyda et al. 2010) and along its southern Pacific coast (Kull, Ibrahim, and Meredith 2007; Zambrano, Broadbent, and Durham 2010; Driscoll et al. 2011; Hunt et al. 2015), the stability of the larger socio-economic context of these developing regions remains central for sustainable development (Becker 1998).

3. We broadly define EB as ‘behavior that consciously seeks to minimize the negative impact of one’s actions on the natural and built world’ (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002, 240), but with the critical perspective that environmental problems are anchored in society and our lifestyles (Jensen and Schnack 1997), calling for a non-prescriptive approach to education that advocates democratic participation, strategic analysis, and public action (Jensen and Schnack 1997; Jensen 2002; Chawla and Cushing 2007). In this sense, our definition of EB attempts to incorporate both environmental and social well-being.

4. We define underserved as individuals or groups possessing one or more of the following characteristics: low-income, racial/ethnic minority, and being first-generation high school or college students.

5. Culturally and linguistically informed science education and EE in the US is ever more in need as the divergence in environmental priorities and behavior types between Caucasians, Latinos, and African-Americans has grown (Chavez 2005; Whittaker, Segura, and Bowler 2005; Lee 2008). Additionally, EE studies within US minority (Latino and African-American) communities typically have been addressed in an urban context (Schultz, Unipan, and Gamba 2000; Chavez 2005; Strife and Downey 2009; Kudryavtsev, Krasny, and Stedman 2012), leaving a paucity of research and discussion on their rural counterparts (Lopez et al. 2007).

6. We borrow from Andrews, Stevens, and Wise’s (2002, 164–165) use of ‘community-based’ education as ‘more than “education based in the community.” It implies an education plan created as a result of community involvement and designed to match community interests. “Community interests” refer to standard community issues, such as affordable housing or workforce development, as well as activities with a recognizable environmental component such as road building, stormwater management, “permitting” a new development, or addressing environmental health concerns in an urban neighborhood. Ideally, the education plan helps strengthen citizens’ skills to plan or act with the environment in mind.’

7. Academic delineation of the term community is wide-ranging and beyond the scope of this paper. However, our use of the word centers on its actualized social form and its collective identity, thus incorporating notions of both interaction and ideation (for a more extensive review, see Amit 2002). In practice, community was used to (a) include individuals who reside in and/or conduct social and/or business responsibilities in and around the town of Puerto Jiménez, and/or (b) include individuals who self-identify with the ‘green’ economy (tourism, eco-tourism, sustainability, conservation, and social development).

8. We define place-based education as inter-disciplinary, inter-generational pedagogy that is specific to the geographical, ecological, socio-cultural, economic, and historical phenomena of that place, including experiences both inside and beyond the classroom. In that regard, we borrow from Gruenewald and Smith’s (2014, xvi) working definition: ‘place-based education can be understood as a community-based effort to reconnect the process of education, enculturation, and human development to the well-being of community life …. [It] introduces children and youth to the skills and dispositions needed to regenerate and sustain communities. It achieves this end by drawing on local phenomena as the source of at least a share of children’s learning experiences, helping them understand the processes that underlie the health of the natural and social systems essential to human welfare. In contrast to conventional schooling with its focus on distant events and standardized knowledge, education conscious of place systematically inducts students into the knowledge and patterns of behavior associated with responsible community engagement.’