Community-as-pedagogy: environmental leadership for youth in rural Costa Rica

Abstract

This mixed-methods study examines an informal place- and community-based environmental education program implemented for rural, underserved high school students in Costa Rica’s bio-culturally diverse Osa Peninsula. Using a community-as-pedagogy framework built on Paulo Freire’s concept of a problem-posing education, we investigate how pedagogically-positioned social relationships mediate students’ knowledge, perceptions, and leadership. We find linkages between existing community resources and endogenous environmental leadership, and suggest how making those connections strengthens students’ perceptions of their social relationships and their ability to create meaning and take action. Through the program, students show an increase in knowledge about their local environment. They critically and socially engage with that new information, further developing networking skills in the context of community-informed environmental issues. After participating in the program, the students describe environmental leadership as requiring persistence, forethought, and a willingness to care for both the environment and community.

Keywords:

• Youth
• community
• leadership
• environmental leadership
• community-based education

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the following individuals: Emily Arnold Mest for administrative oversight; Autumn Albers and Beth Morrison for pedagogical expertise and program implementation; Martin Carnoy and Christine Min Wotipka for support and guidance. In Costa Rica, Travis Bays, Juan José Jiménez Espinoza, Reinaldo Aguilar, Alberto Herrera, Mario Cambronero, Hermiley Alvarado, and Dayana Zúñiga were especially helpful in implementing and supporting this work. Finally, we offer our deepest gratitude to the students, families, and businesses with whom we worked, and to our colleagues in southern Costa Rica too numerous to name, who generously invited us into their communities. We also appreciate helpful comments from anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

The authors reported no potential conflict of interest.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially and institutionally supported by the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Notes on contributors

Samantha T. Selby

Samantha T. Selby is a research associate for Challenge Success. Previously, she was a research associate in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, where she received a M.A. in International and Comparative Education. She also worked as a social sciences researcher in the Department of Anthropology and the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. Her academic and research interests include international and environmental education.

Austin R. Cruz

Austin R. Cruz is a doctoral student at the University of Arizona with interests and research in socio-ecological systems. Prior to doctoral studies, Austin was a social sciences researcher in the Department of Anthropology and the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. Currently, he serves as Managing Editor for The Journal of Environmental Education.

Nicole M. Ardoin

Nicole M. Ardoin an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education and a senior fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, studies place connections and community-scale environmental practices. A unifying theme across Professor Ardoin's work is an interest in education as an opportunity to engage communities in productive dialogue about sustainability to build resiliency and adaptability in light of changing environmental conditions.

William H. Durham

William H. Durham is Bing Professor in Human Biology, Emeritus, in the Department of Anthropology and Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. Bill has worked for many years on environmental issues, conservation and community development in Latin America with the goal of helping local people find paths to sustainable futures. He currently pursues these goals as Stanford Co-Director of the collaborative Osa-Golfito Initiative (INOGO) in southwestern Costa Rica.