NATURALISTS’
PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHING, SCIENCE,
Heather Harkins,
Introduction
The
goal of this study was to extend a consideration of culturally responsive
teaching to a specific informal science educational experience. Defined as
using “the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of diverse
students as conduits for teaching” (Gay, 2002, p. 106), most considerations of culturally
responsive teaching have concentrated about formal educational settings, and
typically focus upon preservice teachers (e.g., Gay & Kirkland, 2003). For
this study, the “teachers” were naturalists providing instruction during a
public environmental awareness event.
Implicit
emphases of this event were biodiversity and environmental awareness. As such,
there was a tacit expectation that public involvement in the biological
inventory would promote awareness beyond scientific knowledge and also accommodate
issues of culture, history, and geography (Jenkins, 2003). Biodiversity is of
considerable concern at the international level and studies of people’s
perceptions have been reported for citizens of
Within
an extensive review of environmental education research, Rickinson (2001)
identified gaps in the literature, two of which closely relate to the focus of
the present study. First, Rickinson noted the lack of studies within
environmental education that considered interactions among students and their
peers, teachers/educators, and family members. This would seem to signal a
largely individualized view of the learning process within the extant
environmental education literature. In a similar vein, Rickinson called for
research examining influences of social factors (culture,
Background
In her study of the production of scientists
with different contexts, Eisenhardt (1996) found that environmental biologists
working within an academic department created an identity of ‘scientist’ that
resisted the hegemonic dimensions of laboratory science (advocating instead the
superiority of field work over controlled and abstracted experimentation) while
embracing the power accompanying the accumulation of empirically-grounded
knowledge. In contrast, conservation biologists employed at a nonprofit
corporation had identities shaped by a desire to be regarded as credible
scientists but tempered by the need to have business savvy (e.g., making
budget-based decisions) and political know-how (e.g., resolving differences
through compromise). The structural forces of these two science settings
contributed to the formation of contrasting scientist identities. Unlike Buxton
(2005) who used Eisenhardt’s dialectic between structural and individual forces
to investigate the production of identity, we did not endeavor to make this
distinction. Instead, we gathered data focusing exclusively upon individuals’
perceptions but without claiming that these findings would extend to
naturalists in general; in short, we do not wish to insinuate the data reported
here in some way describes the repertoire of practice within the community of
naturalists (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003).
The
context of this study was unique. The event itself was an intensive
biodiversity inventory of a 2.5-mile radius centered upon a magnet middle
school. Over 150 professional biologists from universities and non-government
organizations invested twenty-four hours in an effort to catalog as many
species as could be found. The announced total was 1791 species of organisms, a
number which is especially significant because the site contained a substantial
slice of an urban environment. Although this was an annual event, it was the
first time where a deliberate educational component was included. For example,
twenty students from the magnet school, some of whom were residents of
inner-city neighborhoods, spent twenty-four hours at the school participating
in fieldwork with the scientists.
Design
of the Study
Data
were gathered via a participant-observer approach in conjunction with
presentations made by naturalists. The naturalists were experts within a
certain realm of biology (e.g., trees, mammals, insects) and had been recruited
to provide one-hour tours to interested members of the general public. Prior to
the tour, the naturalists were approached by a member of the research team and
asked whether they would be willing to be interviewed following the tour.
During the tour itself, the researcher was an unobtrusive member of the
audience and participated in bird-watching, tree identification, or whatever
else occurred during the tour. Following the tour, the naturalist participated
in a one-on-one, semi-structured interview (see Table 1).
The
interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and examined for revealing patterns.
The date we report here came from two of the researchers’ interviews of three
naturalists each. In an effort to frame this study, we posed three alternative
hypotheses through which we planned to evaluate the data. We speculated that
each naturalist would express a viewpoint that would fall into one of these
categories. This was done in an effort to clarify our efforts to analyze the
data. The three competing explanations are outlined in Table 2.
We
aimed to assess the influence of non-mainstream students upon the naturalists’
perceptions about and implementation of their respective nature walks. In
intentional yet subtle ways, we sought to uncover glimmers of culturally
relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995) or culturally congruent instruction (Au
& Kawakami, 1994) within the beliefs and actions of the naturalists.
Results
In what
follows, we present our findings about the naturalists’ perceptions about the
goals of the nature walks; we subsequently describe what happened as we tried
to uncover their thinking about teaching diverse student populations.
Naturalists’
Perceptions of Goals
For the
most part, the naturalists viewed their “teaching” as an awareness building
exercise which was often explicitly connected to the concept of biodiversity.
While we expected some of the naturalists to perhaps be somewhat didactic in
their approach and advocate for a relatively formal purpose to the nature walks
(e.g., engaging people in “real” science) we did not detect such highbrow
dispositions. One scientist expressed her view in terms of helping people
recognize that they can inquire about the natural world. As a result of her
amphibian tour, she hoped that:
“when they are in their backyard and they hear a
bug calling or they hear a cricket calling, they think: ‘What is that? Let me
go look for it.’ So many people have no concept that when you hear something
and you see something, you can walk up to, you can look at it, and you can
figure out what it is.”
Similarly, a naturalist who led
bird walks wanted to build his audience’s appreciation for the diversity and
marvels of nature:
“They had no idea there were this many different
types of birds. They didn’t have any idea that they were so beautiful. And,
they really are listening to a bird that they have never heard of, but actually
are very common.”
Regarding the perceived
benefits to the children by participating in the nature walks, the naturalists
described connecting this experience to the overarching them of the BioBlitz:
biodiversity. For one of the naturalists, the benefits a birder perceived took
the form of improved environmental stewardship:
“The other thing about birds is the connection
they have with everything else. The species problems, the habitat problems, a
lot of the birds that you see here are disappearing from the face of the earth.
Not just from our local area. So a lot of the education I do is trying to get
people to understand [this].”
The individual who led the butterfly walk
expressed similar sentiments:
“Look at the habitat around here: it is coming
back slowly. I butterflied here about seven years ago and if you looked at an
atlas this was bare land. We’ve just got to get new people interested and have
them out there saving the habitat.”
The woman who led the amphibian
tour put it this way:
“If three kids, if one kid out of this set goes
away with a real good understanding of why [we need to] have diversity –
biodiversity in your town and in your home, around your yard – it’s worth it.
It’s worth every penny that they … it’s worth all the effort that goes into
this. I think one of the things that they [i.e., the organizers] really want to
show as being important, the whole point of the BioBlitz is to say: ‘Hey look,
this is your backyard.’”
Multiple naturalists expressed
concern about what they perceived as the public’s diminished exposure to
natural environments. Therefore, they saw there participation in the BioBlitz
as a mechanism to introduce people to the natural world. A botanist described
his purpose in this way:
“I guess most people are completely unfamiliar
with plants, especially young students. It’s really not taught in schools and
people don’t go outside nearly as much as they used to. And there’s not many
people around to teach kids any of the plants – what they are or where they
grow. So I guess I just try to have some, try to get the students to have some
experience with plants. Even if they walk away knowing one plant, it is
probably one more than they knew before.”
To
summarize, the naturalists, to a person, regarded the nature walks as immersion
experiences. They were quite expressive about the regard they hold for simply
being in nature and held onto the belief that students could become captivated
by the environment through such exposure. An anecdote we found especially revealing
was told this way:
“I’m always reminded that something has changed
my life which was a walk I took. A man went to my school when I was about nine
years old and just went to the school yard like we are right now and it was the
middle of the day. I was just astonished at the things I could see that I had
no idea where right around the school where we are. And, it made me much more
aware.”
As it
turned out, this “man” was Roger Tory Peterson who happened to live near this
school. But the fame is only secondary to the story: the significance is that
this awareness building event experienced by a grammar school student
translated into a lifelong interest in and respect for his natural world.
Significance
of Diversity
Throughout
the preparations in the weeks preceding the BioBlitz, the urban setting was a
constant source of conversation among the participating biologists. The
headquarters for the event was a magnet middle school which was just a couple
of hundred yards away from a major highway. Although the school grounds were
distinguished by grasses, brush, and trees, it was just a short walk from the
school to reach the banks of the Connecticut River which afforded a clear view
of the city of Hartford. Whether this area should be considered wild or unkempt
is an open question. Regardless, there was a distinctly urban feel to the
place.
Despite
the biologists accurate expectation that the urbanicity would result in lower
species counts than had been made at other, more natural locations in previous
years, the opportunity to engage a more urban human population was expressed as
an important benefit. The host magnet school reports a 50% minority student
enrollment and the BioBlitz organizers expected that this would contribute to a
very diverse participation during the public hours of 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. on
the Saturday of this event.
Unfortunately,
the participation by students of color and their families was very sparse. In
addition, most of the naturalist tours, which ranged from four to twenty
participants, only rarely included children. Despite this shortcoming, we still
used this event as an opportunity to explore the salience of student diversity
on the naturalists’ perceptions; the deeper issue of the lack of minority
participation in the BioBlitz will be a source of considerable speculation
within the discussion section of this paper.
Of the
half dozen tours upon which we accompanied the naturalists, only a few students
of color were in attendance. From one of the researcher’s field notes we have
this reflection:
“[I]n the first tour I went on, an adolescent
African-American male was accompanied by a Caucasian father. While they stayed
with the trip the longest out of everyone, they left halfway through to visit
another event at the BioBlitz. The boy seemed restless and anxious not to miss
the event which conflicted with this one, even though his father had
established their early departure with the trip leader at the beginning of the
trip. In a later tour, an African-American mother brought two of her daughters.
They trailed behind or got ahead of the group at various times as we stopped to
look at insects. Eventually, they left without having said a word to anyone. I
believe they went on ahead and took a self-guided walk through the woods.”
Consequently,
there was little we could use as prompts for the naturalists regarding their
interactions with minority children during the nature walks. Nevertheless, when
one of the researchers thought to ask the naturalist “Does it matter if they
are in an urban school setting or a rural school setting in terms of what they
know?” we received a somewhat unexpected response:
“It used to, but it doesn’t much anymore.
Unfortunately what has happened is that they have a little chance to go outside
anymore. We are shocked about how little rural kids know the environment that
they are in.”
The
reason this comment was surprising was that the respondent noted past
differences that he perceived between rural and urban students in terms of
their familiarity with nature. But he no longer feels as if he can safely
assume that rural students have any more prior knowledge than do students who
don’t live in the country. But aside from this insight, there was nothing
revealed in the naturalist interviews that allowed us to surmise anything
regarding their views about teaching science to diverse students.
Discussion
The
intent of this study was to use this informal science education experience as
an opportunity to build upon others’ efforts to apprehend conceptions of
teaching that occur at the confluence of individual’s understandings of science
and their perceptions of diversity/equity issues (Bianchini, Cavazos &
Rivas, 2003). However, without having minority students involved in a
substantive way with this event, the best we could accomplish, which is far
from acceptable, would be to speculate about how the naturalists might have
acted.
Despite
this shortcoming, other issues have come to mind, namely the lack of much
involvement by non-white families in the BioBlitz. What began as hunches have
subsequently been informed by other research along similar lines. Perhaps the
most instructive was an article appearing in the Journal of Environmental Education in 1995. In their view, Lewis
and James (1995) postulate that there are several misconceptions that
contribute to the erroneous supposition that environmental education is not
aligned with the needs and interests of a more racially and culturally diverse
populace. They cite multiple studies demonstrating equitable levels of concern
about threats to environmental quality even as these groups are much more
likely to be exposed to environmental hazards, such as urban incinerators.
Others have suggested that the apparent lack of engagement with environmental
education by urban and minority populations may be a direct result of an
asymmetrical emphasis upon natural settings that are decidedly rural (Agyeman,
1998). Perhaps the professional biologists, and the scientifically enthusiastic
educational researchers, did not adequately appreciate these disparities.
Although
we began with the question about how naturalists might interact with minority
student populations, we found ourselves faced with a more profound question:
What might explain the lack of diversity among the public participants in an outdoor
biology event? Despite the problems we’ve expressed, the scientists were
pleased to have included a more explicit educational component and have
advocated for an expanded role in the next BioBlitz.
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Table 1. Interview Prompts used in
Naturalist Interviews
o
How
would you compare your expectations for the tour to how it actually went?
o
Are
there adjustments you would make if you had the chance to do this again? Could
you talk about how the kids seemed to respond to the tour: were there
particular individuals who you felt were especially intrigued and interested by
what you were presenting?
o
How
would you describe your impressions of this as an educational activity: do you
feel as if it was rewarding? frustrating? fulfilling? discouraging? Can you
supply specific details that contributed to those feelings?
o
Were
there any particular surprises about your audience given the location of this
school and setting?
Table 2. Competing Hypotheses
about the Data
a. Perceptions of tours were that they were
purely about science and diverse participants and/or the urban setting were not
significant features.
b.
Naturalists
acknowledged the diversity of participants and/or the urban setting but did not
articulate how those influenced their instructional decision-making.
c. Naturalists noted the diversity of
participants and/or the urban setting and made an effort to adjust their
instruction in response.