Inquiry Presentation and Reflection

Here is a link to my presentation slides! Wow that 15 minutes zipped by. I presented much slower than I planned. I wasn't able to touch on some of the things I wanted to, I think I spent too long on the activity and too long on the academic outcomes quantitative results.

In terms of the activity, I think I did a relatively poor job facilitating this. There is a lot I would change if I were to do it again! Although, my colleagues seem to think it went well. In the future, I would draw a rough "map" of Vancouver, Canada, and the World, with each being a zoom in from the next. I really wanted to physically see how the outdoor spaces we interact with are connected, so I would have students draw a line, circle, dot, or any shape they want roughly where their location is. We would (hopefully) see a lot of overlap, but also see that some people chose a place far afield. This way, we see both the local connection between each other and also the way that we are all connected to the entire world through this classroom and each other. Another option I thought of after was to specify that everyone should chose a location in the lower mainland. This way we can see the connection between students and we don't have the complications of adding other parts of the world. Admittedly, I did not think deeply enough about the responses I could expect or how exactly to create the effect I wanted. Definitely learned a lesson here! On top of all that, it just took too long! Taking more than 5 minutes of a 15 minute presentation really just doesn't work. Perhaps I could have been talking more while the activity was going on.

As far as the academic outcomes section goes, I probably could have gone a little quicker. I think people got the idea easily and I could have just focused on the meta-analysis. This, plus the activity, meant that I didn't really explain that a lot of the "what can you do" and difficulties in implementing these programs. This is really the section that should have had the most emphasis. I also didn't mention that most of the difficulties and strategies for implementation came from my discussions with the real world of teaching and learning. These conversation were invaluable in teaching me what actually works from the perspectives of people who have seen the amazing benefits of these programs.

Overall, it was a very interesting topic to explore, and one that I feel very passionately about. That said, I sort of feel that a lot of what I learned just reinforced things I already believed. I didn't really have a WOW moment. I think that as I explore this topic more, I am going to shift into actual tangible strategies. One of the papers in my bibliography talks about "active ingredients", or things that are necessary to make these programs effective. The paper I cited didn't go into too much depth, but did reference another paper (and I think those authors have produced a few) which is more directly about the active ingredients. I didn't have time to look into it enough as it wasn't the exact focus of this presentation, however. That is the part that I am now most excited about. What makes the big programs so effective, and what can small programs do to come close. I'm also wondering if there is some "critical mass" of programming that is needed to see significant results. Perhaps it is a linear relationship between amount of environmental education and improvement in key metrics. That would be an amazing result! It's probably something more asymptotic, but perhaps it has a linear part at the beginning.