Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street

I've had this tune in my head all day, "Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street...". It's a song about hope and optimism, recorded during a time of great uncertainty following the great depression and prior to the second world war, and it's a song that is still relevant today.

In the world of education for sustainability I often hear people say that there aren't enough positive stories to be shared with children or youth to inspire them to be part of a positive movement for change. In many ways I agree with these comments. There's a lot of literature that describes the phenomenon of 'action paralysis' or 'environmental depression' that occurs when people have been bombarded with information about how terrible everything is in the world, but haven't been given the skills, insight and inspiration to be part of tackling these complex issues.

This is where we have to engage children and youth to create the positive stories for themselves. Knowledge and thought are important, planning is necessary, but only through united action followed by reflection and celebration, will the appropriate skills, insight and inspiration to continue to be part of a positive movement of change be born in the hearts and minds of those engaged in the process.

A great example of this model of youth engagement, which I've personally witnessed lead to empowerment, is the Baha'i Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Program which operates globally wherever there is a Baha'i community. I facilitated a youth group in Perth from 2005 to 2011 and was constantly impressed by the energy, optimism and enthusiasm for service that the youth showed. Other stories about Baha'i junior youth groups are here: http://www.bahai.org.au/Participate/JuniorYouth.aspx

Another great example is the youth organisation Millennium Kids based in Perth, Western Australia. The Millenniums Kids 10-step methodology follows this pattern of planning, action and reflection, and achieves great results in the hearts and minds of the youth they work with. Read some of their own examples here: http://www.millenniumkids.com.au/

It's all about taking action, being part of the process, and thus contributing to the creation of positive stories that are replicable and inspire others to do the same.

Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street...

Who's attacking who

As tragic as last week's shark attack was (and the one the week before and the other one the month before that...) I don't think we should rush to kill the shark.

I don't think we should be hunting a shark when it was just trying to find food to survive. Firstly, this is the time of year that white pointers follow the humpback whale migration south and try to pick off the sick calves, so we should simply be more cautious in the water between September and November. I moved here 7years ago and noticed this pattern and now I don't dive or swim much around this time of year. Secondly, we should be turning the finger towards ourselves and consider why these pelagic sharks might be more frequently coming closer to shore to find food... We are overfishing their usual food source! Fish stocks are being depleted around the world, what else are these top predators meant to do? 

Don't kill the sharks: reduce the extent of unsustainable commercial fishing by being a conscious shopper and buying fish caught from sustainable fisheries (see the Australian Sustainable Seafood Guide) and be more careful in the water at this time of year.

Sustainability education at school and home

Fancy a trip to Europe in the Autumn? Well I certainly did.

Last week I returned from Europe where I attended the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) conference in Lyon, France. Needless to say the whole trip was great and the little bit of sightseeing we did was good fun too :) Lyon is a beautiful city a couple of hours southeast of Paris. It's very green and quaint. We loved the daily walk from our hotel to the conference venue, which took us through a big inner city park, and the 3Euro per week bicycles we hired to ride around various parts of the city. The ESERA conference boasted 1,200 attendees and 14 different strands of science education for people to choose between. I attended sessions in the Environmental Education strand, as you might imagine.

On the final morning of the 5 day conference I gave a poster presentation that featured my work on intergenerational influence and pro-environmentalism. The results and conclusions I presented were based on my analysis of 18 sets of interviews with parents and their children, from two sustainable schools in Perth. My research addressed the question, 'Do children influence the environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of their parents?'.

The poster (seen below) was a great success! I had over 25 conversations with other researchers about my work, and a direct invitation from the Editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Science Education to write an article for his B journal. What a compliment! :)

If you're interested in a handout or discussion regarding my research please be in touch.

Hot and Dry, a gardening recipe for disaster?

A lot of heat and no rain certainly can be a recipe for disaster in any garden, but as a gardener you've gotta be resilient and plan a little... My hubby and I bought our own home in late 2009 and since then I've taken a great liking to the garden. Although at the moment with this ridiculously dry heat in Perth it's really difficult for my plants to grow let alone for me to get outside and do much with them. All I end up doing is sweating like crazy and trying not to get sunburnt. Oh well... a casual trip to the beach or a quick shower always do the trick ;) But we've recently discovered the benefits of compost -a natural water saving wonder! A few months ago I set up a 240L compost bin, which although we don't add that much veggie waste to is already helping improve the water retention capacity of the very sandy soils we have here in our garden :) 


This might sound funny but I've also enjoyed learning about pests and diseases since I started in the garden. Some of you might remember I had a batch of tomatoes last year? Well they all got struck with powdery mildew so I had to cull them *sad face*. But after that I planted out some capsicum seeds, literally from my cooking offcuts, and now I've got three rows of thriving young capsicums plants! And with the mildew experience under my belt I learned that we should only water our crop in the mornings so that water doesn't sit on the leaves over night. However, we often only find time (and motivation) to water them in the cool of the night, so I'm  now much more careful not to get water on any leaves... *fingers crossed, no mildew this time*. Capsicums generally like the heat and are deep rooted but we're also making efforts to give them a little extra water from that occasional bath or bucket in the shower, in addition to the compost and mulch of course ;)


Another good water saving tip we've come across is to plant succulents and hardy plants in preference to the delicate ones. Some may say they don't look as pretty but why not spruce them up a bit with some pretty rocks!? They sure don't need no water! Last October when my Mum, Dad and brother came to visit, Mum and I made a little rock garden. It really adds to the courtyard and helps retain some of that precious water too :)

Our rockery (left) and leafy capsicum plantation (right)

How to write a better thesis

Apparently there are ways, tried and tested, to improve one's thesis. Or so says a book I'm reading at the moment by Evans and Gruba. It's actually turning out to be a very helpful read and anyone who's seen my copy lately can testify to my allegiance just from glimpsing the many colourful tags sticking out from every other page.

All these helpful hints have jogged my thinking in related ways... I've been praying and reflecting a lot lately about the many distractions that seem to crop up all the time in a PhD student's working week. And so I've decided to cut back on some of the weekly volunteer commitments I've found myself embedded in recently as well as set up and stick to some boundaries for my work hours. No doubt you can tell I'm starting to feel the one-year-to-go crunch? And it's crunching... I can't believe it's the end of January already! Where did the past few months go?

I know this is a feeling shared across many occupations, but I can't help saying that it really is different for a PhD student. The self-discipline required to keep regular office hours, despite the friends who need help or other work that seems to need doing only during the day. The motivation and vision required to understand and manage your own research process, to see an end in sight and work diligently towards it every day. And the creativity required to write, write, write... It's not just any old creativity I'm realising, it's a creativity that has to be coupled with logical structure. A creativity which only a fresh, well-rested brain can muster.

So this year's resolution is: personal email disabled during work hours and from my iPhone permanently, no volunteering or errand running during work hours and minimal activities on weeknights, followed by weekends that still involve volunteer/service activities plus time for friends and family just as long as I'm not exhausted by Monday.

Wish me luck ;)

FarmVille in the flesh

Who needs online games when you can create a farm in real life for free!? Okay so I don't have cows, sheep or other farm animals, or any animals (except fish), but I am getting stuck into my home grown veggie garden! And I definitely feel better for it too. Time spent outdoors in my own garden is a weekly aspiration for me.

Yesterday I managed to fit in a few hours working away in our garden. I had many plans like weeding the patio, mulching a few garden beds and planting succulents along our fence-line but got carried away with the tomatoes instead... Many months ago fifteen little tomato plants sprang up from the soil surrounding a rosemary cutting we were given. At first I thought they were weeds but decided to let them grow out of curiosity. Soon enough they were taller than the rosemary and the shape of their leaves resembled tomatoes, baby tomatoes. So I re-potted them and planted a few next to a well-lit north-facing wall until they all started competing for root space and light. That was until yesterday when I dug out the old coriander patch and transplanted these gorgeous little fruit bearing vines to their new home. I've attached a picture here for you all to admire them as well ;)


For our small area of garden I'm quite proud of these plants and have high hopes for their productivity. Especially since the price of tomatoes is expected to soar in the retail market. But more than that it's such a great feeling watching these plants grow and give life and then completing the cycle by eating their produce. Yuuumm! :P

On a related note some of you will be interested to know that my composting efforts are still going strong. I've learned through trial and error that a 20L bucket isn't large enough to facilitate the heating up of the compost or to allow enough air flow, hence the trouble I had with rotting veggies. So now I've moved to the traditional approach: a heap. The heap is brilliant! No bad smells, easy to turn, and plenty of natural oxygen exchange. It's also adaptable and can expand to any size we want, which is especially useful after a big party or when raking up lots of fallen leaves. Another awesome thing about my compost, although I'm not sure if this is meant to happen, is that a few little signs of life are springing up from the soil beside it. I've got a feeling they're baby pumpkin plants... same deal as the tomatoes I guess, I'll just let them grow and see what results...

Reviewer, reviewee

It's an interesting process reviewing someone else's written work. This week I was asked to peer review a conference paper for the Australian Association of Environmental Education. This was a first for me, and I honestly enjoyed the process. I had to read and critique the twelve page article, then summarise my comments according to criteria in the Reviewer Assessment Form.

Without saying much about the article, because it's all an anonymous process, I will simply say that I particularly enjoyed seeing similarities to mistakes I've made in the past and sometimes still make. Things like active vs passive sentence structure, keeping sentences dynamic and trying not to overstate things or say things in a long-winded way. And defining the terms used to avoid ambiguity or confusion for the reader. I guess it's like being a teacher, you usually learn more through teaching and helping others improve their work than if you were the student getting those reviews. 

Oh, and for those interested I did finish that article I was working on two weeks ago. It's probably being reviewed right now :)

Writing cleanse

For the past few months I've been working towards submitting a research paper for publication, my first for this area of research, and it's come to the fore in the past two weeks... ie. It's almost due and I've got to get the darn thing finished! lol. I'm enjoying the process though. Writing is a great way of synthesising those thoughts that have been floating around in the spaces of my mind. I find writing cleansing. It's like that day you've been meaning to tidy up your office, bedroom or the shed, to finally put things in their right place and make homes for the newly collected tid-bits. It's also the day you've procrastinated about the most... :)

The running title of my paper is Tapestry of Relationships: The Millennium Kids Approach to Sustainability Facilitation. I guess you'll be able to read it once it's done (wink wink), but basically I'm looking at the dynamics of accompanying a school to achieve it's goals in education for sustainability. It's important here to note that education for sustainability as described by UNESCO in outlining the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) and as agreed by other researchers in the field, should encompasses a range of environmental, economic and socio-cultural perspectives. These three areas need to go hand in hand to engender true sustainability.

It makes sense really. For example if a school decides to start a veggie garden, well that's great! They can integrate it into their teaching and learning across various curriculum areas. The kids can count seedlings that germinate or bugs that co-habit, write about different aspects, create artwork to decorate the garden, cook the food they produce, one year group can even learn about composting and then build a compost for the garden! Woohoo! :) But how much more significant would it be to the students', teachers' and perhaps indirectly the parents' holistic understanding and potential for personal behaviour change, if they were to incorporate indigenous ideas of food gardens? ...or perhaps they have a large greek or chinese community at the school? Why not invite those parents in so the kids can learn about different types of foods that are found in various cultures. Or perhaps the children could compare the price of different foods at their local store with the time and money it's taken them to grow their own foods. They could explore to some extent what factors a farmer needs to consider when deciding if it's cost effective for them to grow a certain food. But that's not all! The school could develop links with a rural or international school. They could learn about each other's cultures and even help the poorer school to develop a food garden of their own, by helping to fund-raise, etc. Or the school could link with a local community garden and thereby encourage children and parents to form their own personal links with the garden after school hours... There's really so much a school can do. But! Like the garden, it has to be organic... Students and teachers together should drive the project ideas because it needs to be relevant to their interests and concerns. The Principal can provide infrastructure, encouragement or connections to support the process. Parents can get involved where they feel comfortable. What a lovely whole-school vision, eh?

I guess this all sounds like quite a lot of work, but in reality it's fairly simple as long as the process is organic and allowed to grow in it's own time and direction. The key is helping to add the right amount of encouragement, guidance, professional support, curriculum links, self-assessment tools, clear links to different educational providers and resources along the way. That's where an unbiased external facilitator can work really well. They can help the school keep pushing the envelope, not to become satisfied with ticking boxes (eg. veggie garden = done.). They can provide perspective and simply be there with the tools or resources or unbiased listening ear as needed.

In fact, it's very much about capacity building. Sound familiar to some of you? Well yes, it's very similar to the approach underpinning the world-wide Baha'i community's efforts towards community building in every neighbourhood and locality. It's about tapping into and building every individual's capacity for contributing to the betterment of society, including caring for our environment, valuing the culture and beliefs of all people, and working to minimise extremes of wealth and poverty. This whole sustainability thing has a lot to offer, don't you think?

Hmmm... okay that's enough of my reflections for the day. Now I want to share a silly article I happened across this morning that made me laugh. It's about one clear day when a cuttlefish mistook a seahorse for a blade of grass and promptly began to lay it's eggs on the seahorse! Awkward... ;)
http://wildoceanblue.co.uk/2010/03/31/seahorse-versus_cuttlefish/

It's not easy being green...

Like many people, I have a list of 'green' behaviours that I'm working on, one of which has been to start composting veggie waste. So, about a month ago I started my first ever attempt at composting at home. Hooray!

However, it wasn't as easy as I'd hoped... From the beginning I started doing a few important things wrong. I went to a course on composting last year, how could this happen?! Well, I guess having never made the common mistakes myself those important lessons went right over my head.

Firstly, for about two weeks I made sure I was watering the compost every few days. For some reason I honestly thought compost had to be really wet! That is, until it became too sludgy to mix. I was a little confused for a while but after a few moments reflection on my second year microbiology unit the principles of aerobic and anaerobic microbial decomposition started coming back to me... hmmm... no, compost doesn't need to be soaking wet all the time, if it's too wet the whole thing will turn anoxic, whoops! lol. Okay, now I remember, compost actually needs to be dry enough and turned regularly to provide enough oxygen for the microorganisms to do their jobs properly, whilst also being damp enough for the water to be released as steam once the microorganisms start generating heat through all their hard work. I was on track now, or so I thought.

Pretty soon the veggie waste was getting near to the top of my little bin and too difficult to turn with the stick I'd been using so I decided to buy a special compost turning tool from Bunnings. It's a tool that literally winds down into the compost (just like a corkscrew only larger) and with one pull brings all that is down at the bottom up to the top. Vwallah! What a brilliant invention! In only one go I found that some of the waste from our last batch of carrot juice (made four weeks ago) was still in large clumps down at the bottom of the pile, still bright orange and not at all composted. Using a stick to mix it definitely hadn't been good enough. I was in business now! For sure my compost was going to get cranking from here!

And so i continued to be optimistic about my little compost bin until yesterday morning, when I opened the bathroom window for fresh air but all I got was fresh stench! Piieeew! What was wrong now? Compost isn't meant to smell bad... Uh oh... This time I went outside to find a few flies buzzing around the little bin and more bad smells. I was stumped. I'd been doing everything right; mixing thoroughly, not over watering, putting dirt and dried leaves (carbon) in between each layer of veggie waste (nitrogen). I'd even dug the bin 5cm into the ground like the guy at the course suggested in order to avoid bugs or vermin getting into it. Why was it smelly and what could I do to de-smell it? Hmmm... After a quick call to Dad, who's been composting for years, we figured it out. There still wasn't enough oxygen exchange. You see, in my stinginess I didn't buy a proper compost bin, with only two of us in the house and so little veggie waste we didn't need a large expensive compost bin. So instead I bought a tall 20L bucket with a secure lid and simply cut the bottom off.  $8.50 versus $100 plus, brilliant! Well, it could have been more brilliant if I'd thought to drill holes in the sides of the bin before I got started... Instead I've learnt the hard way and currently have rotting veggies instead of compost. lol.

But it's not over yet, I'm determined to succeed. The thought of reducing our household's contribution to methane, created from anaerobic decomposition of organic matter in rubbish dumps, and the added bonus of revitalising our sandy nutrient poor soil for zero dollars is more than enough incentive to keep at this composting thing. Then there's also that little matter of social norms, I can't just say I believe in living sustainably... 

So just like Kermit very poignantly said, "it's not easy being green", but I reckon it sure is worth it :)

Who really is the agent of change?

"Becoming acquainted with a people as an agent of a development organisation or a bearer of charity is profoundly different from working among friends for a common purpose. In the latter case, one's perception of reality is not shaped simply by academic theories that describe, from the outside, the needs and aspirations of the great masses of humanity." Farzam Arbab in 'The Lab, the Temple, and the Market'. 

I think this statement also applies to teachers and students, program providers and their audience (eg. young people), educators and the educated, we and they... This thinking is prescriptive and disempowering. In my opinion, challenging this thinking and the ego behind it is where sustainability education still needs to grow...

I attended a couple of meetings last week that got me thinking more about the importance of genuine relationships in the field of Education for Sustainability, in particular with young people (10-15 year olds,  my area of interest). By this I mean relationships that involve truly listening to the voices and opinions of young people, the very audience to whom one is reaching out to and trying to 'educate'. Relationships that can put aside any expectations or vested interest in the outcomes of a project, and instead be flexible to the design that emerges through consultation first among the young people themselves and second among all stakeholders. Relationships that nurture the capacity and speak to the potential of young people to rise and meet their challenge with integrity, careful thought and enthusiasm. 

This kind of approach, as referred to in the quote above, requires stepping back from the teacher / student model of education and moving towards the mentor / participant model. In this model the mentor can still have more experience, knowledge and insight in a particular subject area, but in order to empower the participants to become agents of their own education the mentor must allow them to own and drive the process. Young people that I've observed experience this in an authentic way are the same young people rising up as agents of change in their local community. 

So who really is the agent of change? Honestly, I say it's the young people themselves, not the teacher or even the mentor...