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Contributed Talk

Session: : Education: Pedagogy 1

COS 81-1 - Cultivating Anti-Racism in the Classroom and Beyond Through Collaborative Learning in the Environmental Sciences

Tuesday, August 8, 2023
10:00 AM – 10:15 AM PDT
Location: D140
Abstract: Spurred by nationwide protests against anti-Black violence in the summer of 2020, ecological organizations and academic departments across the United States saw an uptick in efforts to integrate belonging, diversity, equity, justice, and inclusion initiatives into their programs. In this vein, graduate students in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley, developed and led a semester-long course, “Critical Engagements in Anti-Racist Environmental Scholarship.” The course was targeted towards faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate students in environmental science, and cultivated anti-racist mindsets across scales through collaborative learning and action projects. Here, we draw on our experiences from two years of developing and teaching this class to present a summary of core lessons that would be useful for others seeking to implement similar courses. We first outline our theory of change, envisioned as a tree—rooted in our pedagogical approach with a multi-layered trunk composed of interacting individual, organizational, and institutional layers of the tree trunk’s structure—that ultimately bears fruit of anti-racist action. We then provide an overview of our pedagogical approach, which includes attending to the roots of curriculum, classroom structures, and teaching practices. To conclude, we highlight the five key branches of the course’s success: (1) Centering Black voices and experiences, (2) Flattening academic hierarchies, (3) Fostering a community of learners, (4) Developing action-oriented mindsets, and (5) Sustaining long-term anti-racist praxis. Overall, we offer a model for other ecological departments or organizations seeking to implement anti-racist praxis through coursework and long-form professional development training.