UW-Madison scholars have been collaborating with the Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition (SEMIS) and their parent organization, the Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative (GLSI), to investigate the potential of Place-Based Stewardship Education (PBSE) for developing rural and urban students’ understanding of and commitment to the environmental commons—natural resources on which life depends (air, water, land) and the public spaces (schools, parks, town halls) where people gather and negotiate how and why they will care for those resources, for one another, and for the communities they inhabit. Gender analysis provides insights that can inform approaches more broadly applicable to marginalized people. Though the focus is not specifically on women, this is another important way that 4W can contribute to wellbeing.
A 7th grader wrote, “This is me, I’m giving back to my community, bettering it. I should keep this up. I go home and started planting trees. Worked with my neighbors, they came out ‘cause they found it interesting that I was doing it.”
Activities and Impacts
In the rural community, analyses documented significant increases in students’ environmental sensitivity, environmentally responsible behaviors, community attachment, and civic efficacy (Gallay, Marckini-Polk, Schroeder, & Flanagan, 2016). However, urban youth, especially those in low-income communities, have fewer opportunities to enjoy nature and the dependence of their community’s wellbeing on natural systems may be less obvious. Nonetheless, analyses before and after participation in the stewardship projects for 175 urban students point to significant increases in:
• Awareness of nature as part of the urban ecology and of human impact on the environment;
• Confidence in their capacities to gather/analyze data and make plans to address environmental issues;
• Knowledge of adults and organizations dedicated to improving the local community;
• Sense of efficacy in communicating with and organizing others to care about the environment;
• Beliefs that solving environmental problems takes a team effort, including working with people with whom they disagree; and
• Knowledge about ways to improve water quality, in positive attitudes toward science content and in interest in a job that involves using science.
Next Steps
As the project continues to learn more about how to increase interest in science careers, 4W will continue to integrate findings from the project into their understanding of women and girls’ contributions to maintaining the environmental and community commons.