21st-century stewardship: infusing environmental stewardship education with global citizenship

Abstract

Environmental stewardship education, as a locally oriented concept, benefits from being recast to account for the emergent, multidimensional, and interdisciplinary nature of today’s most pressing socio-ecological issues. In an effort to infuse environmental stewardship education with global citizenship, instructional materials on community-based conservation in Peru were delivered to high school students in New York, USA. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of instructional materials on student learning outcomes related to the practice of global citizenship in environmental stewardship education. The CLIA model for powerful learning environments was used to convey the competencies, learning conditions, interventions, and assessments that structured the delivery of the instructional materials. To evaluate learning outcomes, written student responses were analyzed, using the qualitative coding methodology. Additionally, transformative learning was assessed using the Learning Activities Survey. Results suggest a trajectory past knowledge comprehension and toward transformative, empowered action, progressing from a cognitive understanding to affective and ultimately behavioral shifts. Based on these findings, this study conceptualized and operationalized the concept 21st-century stewardship – a term coined here as an updated stewardship model that is infused with global citizenship’s multi-scalar perspectives, global compacts, and layered identities to achieve its maximum impact in our interconnected world.

Keywords:

• Environmental stewardship
• global citizenship education
• community-based conservation
• traditional ecological knowledge
• action competencies for sustainable development

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS:

• SDG 4: Quality education

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the Maijuna community for sharing their story. Thank you also to OnePlanet and the Morpho Institute. We would especially like to extend our thanks to Elizabeth Benson from OnePlanet for her leadership in community-based biocultural conservation, as well as Christa Dillabaugh, Nancy Trautman, and Kelly Keena from the Morpho Institute for their dedication to rainforest education and stewardship. Lastly, thank you to Millbrook School’s science department and students for their participation in this study. 

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ava Y. Goodale

Ava Goodale has over a decade of experience in science education and leadership. She holds a B.S. in Natural Resources with a concentration in applied ecology from Cornell University, a Master of Arts in teaching in the biological sciences from Miami University and is a current doctoral candidate at Antioch University. She is currently the associate director for the Center of Service and Global Citizenship at Deerfield Academy.

Michael P. Gilmore

Dr. Michael Gilmore is an associate professor in the School of Integrative Studies at George Mason University and is the founder and president of the non-profit OnePlanet. He has 25 years of experience working with the Maijuna Indigenous group of the Peruvian Amazon on community-based biocultural conservation and sustainable development projects. He has published widely in a variety of scholarly journals spanning the fields of ethnobiology, geography, ecology, and policy.

Brian M. Griffiths

Dr. Brian Griffiths is a human ecologist and assistant teaching professor in the Earth Commons (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences) at Georgetown University. He is also the director of research at the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER).