Kate Darby: Using Mapping the Environment with Sensory Perception at Western Washington University
About this course
An upper-division interdisciplinary course.
18
students
Two 110-minute sessions
per week
Non-traditional interdisciplinary college
within a large public, master's-granting institution
Syllabus (Acrobat (PDF) 126kB Jun15 15)
Environmental justice (EJ) is both a mode of scholarship that critically examines the human-environment relationship, and a social movement that seeks to address inequities embedded in that relationship. The modern US environmental justice movement emerged in the 1980s in response to the growing acknowledgement that marginalized communities were bearing a disproportionate burden of hazardous waste exposure. Researchers from academia, government and the nonprofit sector began to document these disproportionate impacts across a range of environmental hazards. Why do these patterns exist in many different geographic and regional contexts? What roles do power and privilege play in environmental decision-making? What can be done to ameliorate environmental (in)justice? In this course, we will explore the history of the environmental justice movement in the United States and the ideas and theories of EJ scholarship, and then we will apply our new understanding of these issues to regional environmental justice case studies chosen by students. In addition to an intellectual exploration of these ideas, this course includes an experiential component, which connects the theories and scholarship of EJ to advocacy and mapping exercises.
Course goals and content: This course fulfills the upper division science core requirement for Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies. The requirement is intended to expose students to the process of science and improve skills in quantitative and scientific reasoning.
Upon completion of the course, students should be able to:
- Think critically and read carefully about the relationships between power and privilege and the "environment"
- Challenge preconceived notions of the relationship between the environment and society
- Understand how people from different backgrounds are differentially affected by environmental problems
- Connect environmental justice theory to practice by engaging in class teach-in and advocacy assignments
- Communicate understanding of environmental injustice through writing and mapping
- Use quantitative and qualitative data to communicate conditions of environmental injustice
To meet this goals, the course covers the history of the environmental justice movement, the research and evidence pointing to patterns and processes of environmental injustice in the United States, and approaches to environmental justice advocacy.
A Success Story in Building Student Engagement
The module was taught within Western Washington University's Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, a nontraditional academic unit characterized by student-driven inquiry and curriculum and narrative assessments instead of grades, and it was taught over three weeks in an upper division Environmental Justice seminar course with 18 students. Most of the students enrolled in the class were pursuing majors or concentrations in Fairhaven, though a small number were environmental studies or science majors from Huxley College of the Environment. Most students entered the class with strong knowledge and concern for environmental and social issues, and little exposure to the natural or physical sciences. Our class met twice a week for 1-hour, 50-minute sessions, and we completed the module over six class sessions.
The module occurred near the end of the ten-week quarter and was linked to previous discussions about the limits of scientific data in representing and drawing attention to the experiences of environmental justice communities.
My Experience Teaching with InTeGrate Materials
Although my class moved through the module mostly as designed, I supplemented the module with short videos depicting environmental justice communities to further foster discussion around the nature of data, and the lived, sensory experiences of people living in environmental justice communities.
Relationship of InTeGrate Materials to my Course
Sensory mapping constituted a unit in the Environmental Justice course titled "The Lived Experience of Environmental (In)Justice)." Prior to this unit, students learned some theoretical frameworks associated with environmental justice, explored ideas of power and privilege, studied the history of the US environmental justice movement, and examined explanations for patterns of environmental injustice. We worked through these sensory mapping exercises starting during the fifth of a ten-week academic quarter. My hope was that after our more academic, theoretical discussions of environmental justice, the sensory mapping activities would make more real the experiences of those living in environmental justice communities while also giving students exposure to data collection and use. The sensory mapping module was followed by a series of teach-ins conducted by the students to connect the two parts of the course—the theoretical/explanatory and embodied/experiential—to local environmental justice issues by educating one another about these issues and providing opportunities for engagement.
Unit 1
- I implemented this unit almost exactly as written.
- Most of my students entered this exercise with a preference for qualitative data and skepticism for the ability of quantitative data to accurately convey conditions related to environmental justice.
- This exercise prompted an engaging discussion about the power of quantitative data in decision-making, which extended the time needed to complete this unit.
Unit 2
- I implemented this unit almost exactly as written.
- Students responded to the sensory log in unexpected ways; almost no one structured this as a data collection exercise. Most students' logs were literary and descriptive; few contained any form of quantification.
Unit 3
- Before embarking on Unit 3, we viewed Majora Carter's poignant TED talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/majora_carter_s_tale_of_urban_renewal?language=en) and used this as a way to discuss their own responses to a visceral, emotional description of the lived experiences of environment (in)justice in the South Bronx.
- Given time constraints, I combined Parts 1 and 2 of this unit into two shortened class sessions. Student groups created their data collection protocols and field plans simultaneously. This left little time for the gallery walk, and groups received minimal feedback before data collection. I would not recommend this approach.
Unit 4
- Prior to this unit, we viewed a Yale 360 video (http://e360.yale.edu/feature/leveling_appalachia_the_legacy_of_mountaintop_removal_mining/2198/) on mountaintop removal coal mining and read aloud selections of Shannon Elizabeth Bell's book, Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed. We used the case studies to again explore the representation of environmental and health information. In the former, these issues are represented visually, with strong emphasis on scientific data and in the latter text, these issues are represented through the stories of women in mountaintop removal communities. I found this to be an effective activity to pair with this module in an EJ course.
- Because of the time spent on the mountaintop removal case study, we ran out of time to fully reflect on the case study unit as a class.
Unit 5
- I implemented this unit as written, though omitted the gallery walk due to time constraints.
Assessments
Utilizing the assessments as written was particularly challenging given the institutional context of the EJ course. Fairhaven College employs narrative assessments rather than traditional grades, and course structures and pedagogical cultures reflect this assessment practice. Consequently, students were resistant to the structured nature of the reflection papers, in particular, and to the rubrics. Many students also wanted more flexibility in the use of classroom time during the module; for example, they wanted to spend a great deal more time discussing alternative approaches to data collection and scientific inquiry. This was particularly challenging as I tested the module during my first quarter working within Fairhaven College. To combat these challenges, in any future use of the module within this context, I would provide students more agency in determining the assessment plan, perhaps by having them examine the module website before we begin and deciding as a class what we would like to emphasize.
Outcomes
At the beginning of the quarter, I had hoped that this module would provide students with a stronger understanding of the nature of data and data collection, especially as it relates to environmental justice studies. I hoped that their work in the module would further their scientific literacy, as this is one of the course goals. And I also hoped that the module content would help give more tangible meaning to the air, water, and soil quality data present in many of the empirical EJ studies we read in the course. The module was perhaps most successful in helping students understand and critique data collection and analysis that is often used in environmental justice studies. This led to productive and lively conversations about decolonizing the scientific process and citizen science within the environmental justice movement. I had not anticipated this application of the module, but will build in readings and discussions of these topics the next time I teach sensory mapping within an EJ course.
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