Speaker: Dr. Marijke Hecht is Assistant Professor of Environmental Education in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University. She works collaboratively with educators and youth on design-based research to understand and develop pathways for people to learn about and care for the natural world we are all a part of. She focuses on urban communities and explores questions of environmental identity, environmental literacy about complex ecological issues, and the structure and function of learning ecosystems.
Topic: “O girlie, I’m not saving that”: Using Video-based Interaction Analysis to Explore Relational Processes Between Educators and the Environment
Abstract: Addressing environmental crises through transformational educational experiences requires training educators in practices that move beyond teaching about the environment and towards teaching and learning with and from the environment. This shift requires better integration of Eurocentric and Indigenous approaches towards science and environmental education in ways that reconfigure relations between human and more-than-human beings, including animals, plants, lands, and waters. In this talk I will present data collected during field-based environmental education professional development programs where we used participant-mounted GoPro cameras to record educators engaging with water, macroinvertebrates, nurdles, and other features of Lake Erie. Using ethnographic methods and interaction analysis, we explored how educators position themselves physically and conceptually in relation to the environment, revealing both tensions and opportunities for environmental education that supports a reciprocal approach to care that might repair our world.
In person attendance will be in the Goldthwait Polar Library (Scott Hall 176). To join virtually via Zoom, see the link below.