Awareness of the sustainability of our natural resources is a continuing concern. Initiatives promoting environmental adult education (EAE) through professional development (PD) workshops ensure educators' have the knowledge and skills to inform their audience about environmental literacy and stewardship. However, these workshops have rarely been monitored. Specifically, it appears no researchers have focused on the reflective experiences of an EAE PD workshop on educator participants at least 5 years after participation. This basic qualitative study used telephone interviews of 8 past participants to explore whether and how they perceive their behavior changing in relation to natural resources conservation years after the EAE PD, and how they shared these changes with others. Through the contextual lens of EAE with a focus on outdoor experiential learning and transformative learning theories, five major themes emerged including: (a) becoming a more effective educator; (b) becoming more aware of the importance of conservation; (c) experiencing positive emotional effects; (d) changing behaviors that impact the environment; and (e) experiences of the EAE PD location. Implications for positive social change were found in the expressed experiences, content, and application of the EAE PD that ignited new means for approaching curriculum- specific content with a heightened focus on the importance of the conservation of natural resources.

This dissertation examines localization of Open Educational Resources (OER) in Himalayan community technology centers of Nepal. Specifically, I examine strategies and practices that local knowledge-workers utilize in order to localize educational content for the disparate needs, interests, and ability-levels of learners in rural villages. This study draws on insights from non-formal education (NFE) stakeholders in Nepal, including government, UN, international and national NGOs, local knowledge-workers, and learners from different villages. I specifically focus on a sample of seven technology centers to better understand how localization is defined, designed, and executed at a ground level. I illuminate obstacles knowledge-workers face while localizing content and strategies to overcome such barriers. I conclude by offering key principles to support theory development related to OER localization. This study is anchored in hermeneutic inquiry and is augmented by interpretive phenomenological analysis and quasi-ethnographic research methods. This qualitative study employed interviews, focus group discussions, observations, and artifact reviews to identify patterns of localization practices and themes related to localization of critical content in Himalayan community technology centers of Nepal. This dissertation provides valuable evidence not only why localization matters (a statement that has been hypothesized for the past decade); but also provides proof of how localization is executed and concrete ways that localization could be improved in order for OER to reap efficacious learning gains for more rural people in developing countries and in other rural communities across the globe. The full text of this dissertation may be downloaded for free from http://etd.byu.edu/

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T15:00:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Giovanni Grassi.pdf: 471255 bytes, checksum: 5aa23c00a2f039c90d2dad26f7cf8301 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-05-05 / The objective of this study was to analyze contextually how impressions of visitors to the Information Center of the Regional Center of Nuclear Sciences of the Midwest (CI-CRCN-CO) in the anniversary month of twenty years of the accident with the Cesium-137 in Goiânia, September 2007, in others words, qualitatively analyze the actions of popular science pursued for this space non-formal education. Using some of the theoretical references, we discuss the formal and non-formal, communication and popularization of science and functions of museums and science centers to analyze the activities of an institution which, besides carrying out research and make the monitoring of environment near the deposits where the garbage generated by the accident with cesium-137, is visited in order to inform the population about the episode occurred in September 1987. The data collected through documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews allowed a qualitative analysis taking into account the cultural, political, social and academic actions performed by the Information Center CRCN-CO. Respondents consider that the aforementioned institution is helping to expand scientific knowledge of the population, raising the critical sense of scientific production and generating developments of its activities in schools that visit. / O objetivo deste estudo foi analisar de maneira contextualizada as impressões dos visitantes ao Centro de Informações do Centro Regional de Ciências Nucleares do Centro-Oeste (CI-CRCN-CO), no mês de aniversário de vinte anos do acidente com o Césio-137 em Goiânia, setembro de 2007; ou seja, analisar qualitativamente as ações de divulgação científica exercidas por este espaço não-formal de educação. Utilizando-nos de alguns referenciais teóricos, discutimos a educação formal e não-formal, a divulgação e popularização da ciência e as funções dos museus e centros de ciências para analisar as atividades de uma instituição que, além de realizar pesquisa e fazer o monitoramento do meio ambiente nas proximidades dos depósitos onde está o lixo gerado pelo acidente com o Césio-137, recebe visitas com o intuito de esclarecer a população sobre o episódio ocorrido em setembro de 1987. Os dados coletados por meio de análise documental e entrevistas semi-estruturadas permitiram uma análise qualitativa considerando os aspectos culturais, político-sociais e acadêmicos das ações exercidas pelo Centro de Informações do CRCN-CO. Os entrevistados consideram que a citada instituição está contribuindo para a ampliação do conhecimento científico da população, despertando o senso crítico sobre a produção científica e gerando desdobramentos de suas atividades nas escolas que a visitam.

This paper interweaves narrativized readings and experiential narratives as personal and cultural resources for counterhegemonic cultural critique within our historical context of globalization and ecological crisis. Framed by perspectives on epistemology, everyday life, and place, these reflections seek to engage and revitalize our notions of community, creativity, and the individual, towards visioning the human art of community as a counternarrative to globalization. Such a task involves confronting the meanings we have come to ascribe to work and economy which so deeply determine our social fabric. Encountering the thought of key 19th and 20th century social theorists ranging from William Morris, Gregory Bateson, and Raymond Williams, to Murray Bookchin, Martin Buber, and Wendell Berry, these reflections mark the indivisible web of culture in the face of our insistent divisions, and further, iterate our innate creativity as the source for a vital, sustainable culture that might reflect, in Bateson’s terms, the pattern that connects.