The destructive impact that human societies continue to have on Earth’s interconnected and life-sustaining systems has led us to an ecological crisis with associated problems in social, cultural, political, and economic spheres (Bell et al., 2009; Holbrook & Rannikmae, 2009; Hollweg et al., 2011; Laugksch, 2000). To understand and respond to this crisis, scholars are examining human relationships with nature and, significantly, how those relationships are conceptualized and reinforced. Western approaches to science are underpinned by human /nature binaries, in which human relationships are seen as “not only distinct from nature but as effectively independent of the web of life” (Moore, 2017, p. 3) and these perspectives have undoubtedly shaped our approach to science and EE in the United States.
For schools to foster student understanding of the anthropocentric causes and effects of the current ecological crisis and prepare them to respond to the problems that jeopardize the ability of our biosphere to thrive (Colucci‐Gray et al., 2006; Stibbe, 2009), we must prioritize goals for sustainability literacy. Sustainability literacy moves beyond science and environmental literacies to include emphases on local and global human and environmental relationships and supporting the knowledge and skills students need to make positive social and environmental contributions that pertain to equity, responsibility, accountability, and solutions to our most challenging social and environmental issues. NOAA, the Chesapeake Bay Program, and others have been working to advance environmental literacy education in K-12 schools, efforts that are underpinned and driven by the Chesapeake Watershed Agreement. Each stakeholder in this project has also been working to advance these goals and this project allows us to come together for collective impact.
This project takes a unique approach to environmental literacy and MWEEs that is inclusive of indigenous peoples and their epistemological perspectives on the roles and responsibilities of humans within natural systems. While vast and extremely diverse, indigenous perspectives situate human beings in the center of an intricate web of micro and macrocosmic relationships which they are guided to navigate by their non-human relatives who inhabit their ecosystems. These relationships are deeply examined through place-based experiences to determine the multitude of effects of any one human action seven generations into the future. Indigenous epistemologies position humans, nature, and the natural world framed as teachers engaged in reciprocal relationships for mutual benefit. The approach to designing and implementing sustained, systemic MWEEs that will be developed by our team will be grounded in the hypothesis that engaging students in science and science learning experiences that align with indigenous epistemologies that promote ecological relationships and stewardship and that frame nature as an integral component of our humanity.
