Research Parts:

Purpose and Methodology

Finding Common Ground

Comparison Chart: MN Forestry and Education

• Desired Outcomes
• What is Going Wrong
• Counter-movements

Counter-movements

• Forestry
• Education

Evidence of Collaboration

• Opportunities
• Challenges

Discussion

Conclusion

Bibliography

Prologue to the Research Project

Before you browse through this research project, I would like to explain a bit about the project's development and my personal interest in the intersections of the two topics. Thank you for reading!

My ES major focus is "human culture and the environment", which leads to questions regarding how and why humans interact with their environments as they do. Within the environmental studies curriculu we learn about how ecosystems could've, would've, should've, can, will, won't, etc. . . work when humans enter into the picture and start messing with "natural" processes. We can easily list "environmental problems", because every person and culture has a different opinion of how humans should rightly live in their environments. However, we can hardly list viable solutions, because that takes confronting difficult "human problems". There is a quote that states:

"Every environmental problem could be more accurately described as an environmental symptom of a human problem."

When we play with solutions of issues, like world population, ecosystem degradation, consumption, environmental justice, climate change, loss of biodiversity, etc., two main methods seem to emerge: politics and education - either formulate a policy or regulation via political means and legal structure to control people's behavior, or teach of environmental issues and ecological values so as to empower people and make them agents of change. The former approach is a top-down, control and command method; the latter is a bottom-up, grassroots movement. Both possess assets, and both carry risks - a common structure versus agent debate.

My interest is in the messy middle - a search for the greatest capacity for change within a system of healthy structure AND agency. So, as we have focused on Minnesota forest conservation and sustainability, my concern has been how do we create a perpetual system where the structure supports the agents and the agents maintain the structure, where forestry serves the forests and people, and the forests and the people create and re-create forestry? What relationships would be life-giving for human populations, forest ecosystems, and the intersections of the two.

Forestry and education systems seems like a good relationship to start with if the goal is to develop "sustainable forestry". Ecosystems are ever-changing, as are generations of humans, so to join the two in a learning relationship engages a relationship of continuous adaptation. Models of this relationship exist. Environmental education seeks to capitalize on sustainability's requirement to teach and integrate science perspectives and humanities perspectives in attempts to cultivate common understandings of humans place in relation to Earth's ecosystems, services, and integrity. Much of the literature I have been exposed to over the past four years seems to focus on a growing ecological education movement within the college community. What about K-12 education?

In this research project, I have explored the relationships held between Minnesota forests and Minnesota K-12 public education to determine the capacity for care, collaboration, and change in relation to the conservation and sustainability of Minnesota forests.