Who teaches placed-based education: identifying relationships between environmental value orientation and pedagogical values

Abstract

Place-based education (PBE) offers teachers a unique opportunity to increase engagement and academic outcomes while strengthening students’ connections to their environment and inspiring future conservation. In most instances, classroom teachers must independently choose to implement PBE, such as when discussing topics surrounding wildlife and the environment. Environmental values orientations of teachers may explain teachers’ implementation of PBE. Through thematic analysis of phenomenological interviews with 11 middle and high school science teachers in Colorado we identified their environmental value orientations. We found that teachers with predominantly mutualist environmental value orientations were associated with high levels of implementation. Our findings can inform professional development of teachers learning about the relationship between PBE and pro-environmental value orientations and behaviors among future generations.

Keywords:

• Place-based education
• environmental value orientations
• phenomenology

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS:

• SDG 4: Quality education

Acknowledgements

We thank the teachers who participated in this study, which was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also thank the Center for Collaborative Conservation, advisors from the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Department, and graduate student members of the Balgopal science education research group for helpful feedback during the design and implementation of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflicts of interest were reported by the authors.

Data availability and deposition

To protect the identity of respondents, data are not made publicly available.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #1950290 and the Center for Collaborative Conservation at Colorado State University.

Notes on contributors

Miranda M. Conlon

Miranda “Andie” Conlon is an Outreach and Education Specialist for the Natural Resource Ecology Lab at Colorado State University. Her masters research on place-based education explored the relationship between implementation and value orientations.

Meena M. Balgopal

Meena Balgopal is a Professor in the Department of Biology and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Colorado State University. Her research group explores how people make meaning of natural science concepts with a focus on writing, reading, quantitative literacies, and place-based education.

Brett L. Bruyere

Brett Bruyere is a Professor in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. He also serves as the Academic Director of the department’s Conservation Leadership Through Learning program.

Diane S. Wright

Diane Wright is an Assistant Professor of Experiential Education in the Department of Biology at Colorado State University. Her research on environmental literacy investigates the impact of using place-based education curriculum in K-12 classrooms.

Kevin R. Crooks

Kevin Crooks is a Professor in the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at Colorado State University. He is Director of the CSU Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence, focused on integrating transformative science, education, and outreach to minimize conflict and facilitate coexistence between humans and carnivores.

Jonathan Salerno

Jonathan Salerno is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. He is an ecologist who studies people, focused on how and why humans make decisions, particularly in response to environmental changes.