Theses and Dissertations Collection

This dissertation is a multidisciplinary inquiry into the role of environmental education in complex social-ecological system dynamics. The work is a timely application of relational world views within natural resource management and environmental education. A pragmatic approach of relational pedagogy (land and place) is engaged to understand how environmental education connects to complex SES relationships. Critical Indigenous Research Methodologies and Conservation Social Science techniques resulted in the two-part study “Landscape Lessons” in collaboration with a class of 4th graders in Lapwai. Participants engaged in a process of co-design of a curriculum that followed student interest and leveraged a learning environment focused on developing people-nature relationships. Arts-based and conversational methods created meaningful data on how participants related to land during field explorations in a nearby nature area. Participants demonstrated sensory observation and exploration during the field days. The relational pedagogy of land resulted in participants about observation and surprise, safety and danger, authority and autonomy, and social-cultural dynamics. The conclusion of this work is an approach to EE that works with a complex SES research framework and an application of land education pedagogy to address the power dynamics of knowledge creation in environmental education.