Research Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1996 - Dr. Stirling McDowell ...

Hearing from Our Kids: An Environmental StudyLorraine Stephanson and Louise JonesThe Brightwater Science and Environmental Center is a facility outside Saskatoon that isused by the school system to instil environmental awareness in middle years students. Agrade 7 teacher, who visited the center with her students three times in the fall, winter, andspring of 1995-96, worked with the center’s program coordinator to investigate the impactof the visits on her students. Naturalistic inquiry was used to discover how the studentsviewed the environment before and after they had been immersed in the environmentalprogram at Brightwater.Through students’ reflective journals, small group and individual interviews, and observationalfield notes, Stephanson and Jones identified a wide range of student learnings - fromintrapersonal to societal - that emerged from the Brightwater experience. They discoveredthat to focus only on the views that the students held about environmental issues constitutedtoo narrow a perspective to develop an understanding of the growth occurring in thestudents’ minds and hearts. They categorized the students’ learnings under four headings:understanding of environmental issues, self-knowledge, peer interaction, and the impactof the Brightwater site.1. Students’ Understanding of Environmental IssuesPrior to their first visit to Brightwater, students participated in a survey designed to probeboth their knowledge and opinions on environmental issues. The survey, which wasThe Grade 7 class conducts water studies.Learning from Practice 23