This ethnographic case study of eight environmental teacher educators who collaborated in a four-state watershed education partnership was focused on processes of social constructions of region and regional partnership. Participant observation in meetings, interviews, and spatial representations were used as data for the eleven-month study. Spatial representations at two intervals were analyzed for documentation of conceptual change. A metaphorical model was used as the interpretive frame for analysis of interview and partnership meeting discourse features. Participants identified central features of place, diversity, and scale as they elaborated upon their sub-watershed valley regions as "home." Participants identified experiential learning as the foundation for watershed education, and reported that grounded experience was their own most essential way of knowing the watershed. The participants valued collaboration, networking, learning about one another's work, and the opportunity to make professional connections as benefits of partnership. In an examination of discourses of "self" and "the environment," analysis of partnership discourse strategies yielded evidence of prosodic phenomena such as raising questions and laughter as means of maintaining synchrony and coherence in meetings. Over the study period, the participants' spatial representations demonstrated tensions between political and bioregional boundaries and growing similarity across representations of the partnership. Issues of support for multistate regional partnerships were considered. Conclusions were that cultural and folk concepts of region are useful in determining scale to inform watershed education policy initiatives and implementation. In partnership meetings, democratic practices were considered most practical for "getting something done." Implications for education included expanding applications of metacognitive approaches, a focus on experiential learning in watershed education, and the place of "place" as an interdisciplinary educational focus. Finding a cultural taboo on conflict, the researcher recommends further development of curriculum environmental conflict resolution, and calls for intergenerational community watershed councils trained in conflict resolution and mediation as foci for regional watershed education efforts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-1452 |
| Date | 01 January 1997 |
| Creators | Alibrandi, Marsha Louise |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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