Toward “Resistance and Re-visioning”: Exploring the Integration of Community Partnerships and Decolonial Field Methods in an Undergraduate Environmental Justice Program

INTRODUCTION

Since the early 1980s, environmental justice (EJ) scholars have demonstrated that the knowledge, experiences, and voices of Black, Indigenous and People of the Global Majority (BIPGM), as well as low-income groups, have been excluded from the mainstream environmental movement. ^{1 , 2} However, much less attention has been placed on how this societal exclusion is mirrored within higher education.

For example, limited research in this area has shown that EJ course content has yet to be “fully integrated” (p.931) within Interdisciplinary Environmental and Sustainability (IES) degree programs. ³ In addition, a recent study showed that Black, Indigenous, and Students of Color in IES programs reported a lack of interdisciplinary and global issues in their coursework, experiences of discrimination, as well as how limited discussion of race led to feelings of isolation and exclusion. ⁴

These studies support earlier research ^{5 , 6} and theory ^{7 , 8} that point to how EJ knowledge (and those who embody that knowledge) are excluded in higher education environmental programs. From this research, the need emerges to understand why this exclusion continues to exist and its relationship with how faculty develop and implement EJ curriculum and pedagogy. ⁹

Although research on EJ instruction continues, studies are needed to deepen the understanding of how EJ faculty members courses both reflect and or partner with EJ communities of resistance that are actively addressing current and historic environmental injustices.

Studies in and outside of higher education have shown that the themes of community engagement, resistance, and activism play a key role in the EJ teaching and learning processes.

For example, critical community-engaged EJ pedagogies can foster transformative learning among students. ^{10 , 11 , 12} In one study, students participating in critical community-engaged learning projects became more aware of structural instances of environmental racism, demonstrated systems thinking, expressed feelings of agency, and learned to articulate their own positionalities in contemplative ways. ¹³

Community issues can also be brought to students' attention in unique ways, as other work has examined the use of an online EJ Atlas to explore trends and deepen understanding of EJ struggles around the globe. ¹⁴ Because students participating in critical community-engaged learning sometimes interact with and learn from community activists, the role of these experiences in EJ learning is also relevant to understand.

For instance, one inquiry examined the role of activism “during and as a result of Indigenous environmental movements,” (p.96) and illustrated that through their experiences of protest, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists developed insights, including learning that results from tension, activist relationships, and the different kinds of activist learning environments (i.e., rallies, musical or artistic events, walks, etc.). ¹⁵

Another study examined the role of circumstantial activism on adult learning during an EJ movement to resist coal seam gas in Victoria, Australia. ¹⁶ Results showed that the context of activism produced rich informal circumstances for individual and community learning, providing opportunities for listening, interacting with diverse individuals, watching more experienced activists, organizing people, and even learning to use information technology.

In a recent study, I explored the instructional practices of four EJ faculty members within higher education and found that all of them identified as activists, and attempted to employ different levels of community engagement within their courses. ¹⁷ However, one of these faculty members (referred to as Gabriela) stood out.

As part of their EJ program (consisting of four courses), Gabriela partnered with ∼50 community partners and guest educators during one semester, and sought to actively “contribute to the EJ movement” as the primary program objective. This program design also includes the use of what Gabriela calls “decolonial field methods,” which stem from Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), ethnic, feminist, and queer studies, all of which could be described as communities of resistance. Although community partners were from diverse sociocultural backgrounds, there were instances where students could learn and experiment with decolonial field methods from Indigenous guest educators.

Decolonial thought has been defined as an opposition to “colonial modernity, (i.e., global capitalism, nation-state, Enlightenment knowledge, and possessive individualism premised on hierarchy and separation).” ¹⁸ Similar to Gabriela, Thambinathan and Kinsella 2021 describe decolonial methodology as a “critical pedagogy” that “consists of transforming our colonized views and holding alternative knowledge.” In addition, these authors not only center on Indigenous ways of knowing but also call for unity in the struggle against colonial oppression and the creation of a “collaborative space where past and present learnings across oppressed populations can be used to transform qualitative research methodologies” (p.2). ¹⁹

This study seeks to build on the work examining EJ inclusion in higher education, critical community-engaged EJ pedagogy, EJ learning that stems from resistance and activism, and the understanding and application of decolonial methodologies. More specifically, I seek to further explore Gabriela's instructional practices that include partnerships with EJ communities of resistance, and the integration of decolonial field methods as key components of student learning objectives.

Methodology

While working with Gabriela, I witnessed students experimenting with decolonial methods and interacting with community guest educators with diverse ways of knowing. As a result, I was inspired to engage in critical reflexivity and resist my Western methodological biases stemming from my identity as White man with a Eurocentric social and educational upbringing.

To do this, I draw on scholars that argue for the need to resist biases in education and research toward colonial rational/intellectual epistemology, and call for the inclusion and mixing of socioemotional intelligences, ²⁰ Indigenous, ²¹ feminist, and embodied ways of knowing. ²² For example, Wilcox 2012, relying on feminist theory, argues how the concept of scientific objectivity stems from White, male subjectivity, which critiques the idea of objective research or knowledge. Similar to Gabriela's description of decolonial field methods, Wilcox describes the need to integrate embodied ways of knowing, which “signal an epistemological shift that draws attention to the bodies as agents of knowledge production” (p. 105).

In line with the scholars mentioned earlier and recent discussions of decolonial methodologies, ²³ I seek to integrate a more intentional focus of using narrative storytelling, critical reflexivity, the use of socioemotional intelligences, and the sharing of data and findings with participants. More specifically, I choose to: (1) Transform my researcher's perspective and methodology via critical reflexivity based on my interactions and observations of Gabriela's EJ program (as described above); (2) Tell a rich and descriptive story of the program under study with the use of photographic description to contextualize the program's activities in specific geographic locations, and feedback from Gabriela; (3) Include personal and subjective reflections, and in some cases, rely on non-intellectual ways of knowing such as socioemotional intelligences, as well as feelings and intuition in the discussion of data; and (4) Ensure that this study's findings are shared with Gabriela and her community.

CONTEXT AND METHODS

The data collected for this study were part of a larger study I conducted that explored four EJ faculty member's instructional practices. I collected these data during the Spring Semester of 2021 via Zoom video conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I recruited participants via snowball sampling and through various key informants.

This study focuses on data collected from one faculty member, Gabriela (pseudonyms are used for all people/organizations mentioned in study), who directed and taught an EJ program at City Semester Program (CSP), a non-profit, higher education consortium program in the Midwest that enrolls students from various institutions of higher education from the region.

Functioning like a semester abroad program, students enroll in CSP and choose a specific social change focus. Students also participate in an internship, which serves as one of the courses taken during the semester. The courses offered and taught by Gabriela in this EJ program besides the internship include: Climate and EJ, Socio-Ecological Systems Change, and Field Methods. It is important to note that Gabriela was simultaneously teaching an EJ course at Local State University, which is mentioned in some of the data.

I chose Gabriela, who identifies as a queer White woman, as a participant for this study because of the innovative program that she taught in and her holistic integration of community partnerships into her instructional approach. The data collection procedures that I used included two semi-structured interviews (pre- and post-observations), three 1.5–3 hour classroom observations, the analysis of course documents (syllabi, powerpoint slides, assignment instructions), and photographs and videos of site visits.

Because the COVID-19 pandemic made travel and observations of site visits difficult, the photographs and videos provide a unique window into the classroom-community member interactions. To analyze data, I used ATLAS ti. (a data management and analysis software) to generate codes, and the “query” feature to group and organize codes into themes.

I also shared my interpretations of data with Gabriela on various occasions to verify accuracy, and discussed and shared this article with her before submission. As described earlier, in some cases, the use of socioemotional intelligences such as feelings and intuition is used to describe the data and my research experience.

FINDINGS

After analysis of the data, four areas of findings emerged. They included: (1) Gabriela's description of her process building and prioritizing community partnerships in the program, (2) A description and strategies for the integration of decolonial methods, (3) Partnerships with Indigenous community members, and (4) The impact of Gabriela's White social identity on her instructional process and her role in the EJ movement.

BUILDING AND PRIORITIZING PARTNERSHIPS FOR EJ INSTRUCTION

Over the course of one semester in Gabriela's EJ program at CSP, students interact with 50–60 guest educators and participate in ∼17 different site visits or field experiences in the community. Locations included sacred Indigenous sites, a National River and Recreation Area, a Water Protector camp, a nature-learning early childhood institute, a women's environmental institute, a farm animal sanctuary, a toxic tour of the city by bicycle, a mural tour of the city by bicycle, an EJ and Indigenous sovereignty tour of the region by kayak, a BIPGM Land Back initiative, an Oak Savanna restoration site, and urban farms. This focus on community partners, guest educators, and in-the-field activities was apparent in all areas of data collection. To see some of these site visits, photos, and descriptions, please see Table 1.

In our interviews, I was extremely curious to understand how Gabriela first created relationships with these community members and organizations, and how she integrates them into the course, “It's been years, at least a decade of building, building, building relationships. It's all happened at the speed of relationships.”

When asked to give more detail about the relationship cultivating process, Gabriela discussed the need to create relationships with partners that are reciprocal where community partners are also gaining resources of some kind:

I found that in academic circles, mutualism might mean different things, but I strongly believe that in a position of power, which is what I occupy at Local State University. I have a responsibility to redistribute the resources that I can access. And so that's kind of the foot I lead with.

Gabriela discussed the importance of prioritizing partnerships in the course to integrate guest educators and community partners. One goal is to make sure that she and the students were contributing to the EJ movement throughout the course:

So, I don't start off with a [community] partnership thinking, ‘What should students learn out of this? Right? Instead, it's how can we service the EJ movement? What are we doing to build the movement?’ And then I go back and say, ‘What did we learn about science from this? Or what did we learn about co-creation or co-governance from this?’ That maybe, is part of the difference between a service learning model and a thoroughly community-engaged model where you're working on behalf of the movement.

An important aspect of implementing a community-engaged model of instruction depends on institutional support or impediments. Gabriela mentioned that she receives financial support from CSP to pay guest educators $100 an hour for their time, and described a lack of bureaucracy there that was often present at Local State University.

Here she explains how engaging in community partnership work is part of the culture of the institution at CSP, “I would even say there's an unstated requirement that we work with community partners, that this isn't about brilliant professor so-and-so imparting their wisdom in that ‘banking method’ ²⁴ of education.”

INTEGRATION OF DECOLONIAL METHODS

In addition to implementing a community-engaged model of instruction in the EJ program, Gabriela also organized a course called Field Methods around what she described as decolonial methods. The course is broken into four trajectories, providing students with the opportunity to critique “epistemologies of ignorance” in the first, develop “praxis” in the second, “experiment” in the third, and engage in “liberatory practices” for the fourth. Within the third trajectory, “experimentation,” six actions indicate class methods: build, feel, play, listen/tell, sense/taste, and paddle. Here, Gabriela describes the process of integrating decolonial methods:

There are so many ways we can talk about colonial research methods and how they still are perpetuated in academia. We spend the first 2 or 3 weeks critiquing that Western lens to set up something different and to experiment with different [decolonial] research methods the rest of the semester. And those research methods are always informed by TEK or non-Eurocentric Northern ways of conducting research. … So, I'm trying to get students to use their bodies and use their minds in rethinking their methodological relationship and how they can apply their intellectual skills.

In Table 1, Gabriela's decolonial “experimentation” methods are highlighted along with some other lessons that included innovative site visits and other non-traditional program activities. In addition, activities with Indigenous guest educators are highlighted.

PARTNERSHIPS WITH INDIGENOUS EDUCATORS

During my experience working with Gabriela and learning about her course, it was apparent that including Indigenous experiences into the EJ movement was very important, as she included the importance of land back, and Indigenous sovereignty in her definition of EJ:

It's the knowledge that we know exactly what kind of future we deserve and it's an environmentally just future. It looks like the Green New Deal, a red deal and a blue deal. And it looks like land back and it looks like Indigenous sovereignty and it looks like green collar jobs in a heavily subsidized green economy… It's this very powerful resistance and re-visioning movement.

During interviews, Gabriela spoke about the importance of beginning her program with a site visit to Bdote, a sacred area of land for the Dakota nation, which translates to “where two waters come together.” A photo of this activity is included in Table 1 above:

So it's very important to me to start the entire program at Bdote, and to start it through a Indigenous storyteller at Bdote. That's the Dakota culture's origin story. It starts here. I'm living in a home on Dakota land right at Bdote. I mean, this whole space is…this is the land that holds the stories. So it's very important to set the precedent that we start there.

Later, in a Zoom class observation, I was able to interact with a Potawatomi forestry professor at Local State University. During this class, he provided a history of Tribal Land and detailed his involvement facilitating trustworthy research, restoration, and economic relationships between land Grant Universities and Tribal Nations.

Also, students participated in a series of events at a Water Protector tar sands pipeline resistance camp. Welcomed and led by women and two-spirit Anishinaabe Water Protectors and their allies, they experienced an Indigenous-led prayer ceremony, direct action training, a body movement resistance activity with a local behavioral artist, and a dance performance led by members of a local company.

They shared meals with students, healers, activists, and artists from across the region, and they facilitated a participatory art installation. Later in the semester, Gabriela united students with a Seneca elder from a local Indigenous food sovereignty organization for an evening of snowy-weather storytelling around a bonfire and had students interact with various Indigenous educators and leaders from the Ojibwe Nation and engage in the mirror shield ceremony while engaging in a pipeline resistance activity.

GRAPPLING WITH WHITE IDENTITY

In doing EJ work with community partners from diverse sociocultural backgrounds, Gabriela grappled openly with how her White identity caused her to shift her pedagogical strategy and her role in the EJ movement:

But the more and more I got into EJ, especially as a White educator, it struck me that this was not enough. The content wasn't enough, like me waxing on about how amazing EJ theory is or how incredible EJ history was, or is, it's great. But it's not true to what the movement is because the movement is a verb, a practice, a doing, and I cannot speak from first-person experience of environmental injustice. So that changed. That meant that I would have to take on a different kind of role. I'd have to be a facilitator; I'd have to be a redistributor of power. And that's frankly the only way I can justify my position in this field.

In addition, Gabriela mentioned issues regarding White saviorism in higher education and in the nonprofit world, and her need to continue to struggle and reflect on her participation in the space of EJ education, “…and I struggle with whether or not I should even be here doing this. I've made good relationships and good friendships, and I've succeeded in being able to redistribute resources. I still don't know if that's enough…I grapple with this.”

DISCUSSION

The primary objective of Gabriela's EJ program is to contribute to the EJ movement “by redistributing power through physical, scholarly, and financial contributions.” From this lens, the program re-envisions the purpose of academia by prioritizing commitment to community partners, then developing emergent opportunities for student learning from them.

During interviews, Gabriela described her decade-long process of building community partnerships, creating relationships through mutuality, funding to pay guest educators for their time, and student contributions to EJ organizations through different forms of labor like the physical labor of farming and restoration, or the scholarly labor of producing requested projects co-created with EJ community.

This model of community-engaged instruction has aspects of what can be described as a critically oriented approach that moves from mere transactional, “parachuting” or “servicing” relationships to a model of shared governance, social change, redistribution of power, and authentic relationships. ^{25 , 26 , 27}

I was unable to directly evaluate how this program contributed to local EJ community issues, and it was difficult to gauge the extent to which the EJ program activities were co-created by community partners. ^{28 , 29} A future study could explore the perspective and experiences of community partners, and their potential contribution to program activities or design.

In addition, there is a critical need to examine the role that social identity contributes to a faculty member's instructional approach, as Gabriela describes how awareness of her White identity motivated her to change her instructional methodology and build partnerships with communities that can share their unique expertise regarding local EJ issues.

Based on classroom observations, and photograph analysis of field experiences, this critically oriented community-engaged approach fosters a unique context for student learning. Recent research on EJ community-engaged teaching and learning demonstrates how this model of instruction can aid in various kinds of learning. ^{30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34}

However, student learning was not directly measured in this study. A follow-up study in a similar context is needed to better understand how student engagement with community partners and activities of resistance can contribute to student learning. More specifically, future questions could follow up on recent research to explore how community-engaged EJ instruction contributes to transformative learning, student agency, ³⁵ or self-efficacy for climate action. ³⁶

In addition, there is a need to continue exploring how informal or circumstantial experiences in EJ activism helps generate new skills and knowledge among all learners, students, and professors, as much as community educators. ^{37 , 38}

The integration of decolonial field methods and the invitation of Indigenous guest educators and other BIPGM community partners allows for previously excluded knowledge, and those who embody that knowledge to be centered within the program's structure.

More research is needed to better understand how practices like this can work to reverse continued EJ exclusion within environmental programs, ^{39 , 40 , 41} and how these practices could help foster a more inclusive environment for BIPGM students.

These innovative instructional practices may address a critical need to include Indigenous Peoples and their knowledge in EJ work, whether in the educational, community, or governmental context. Recent research on Indigenizing EJ has shown that EJ does not sufficiently take Indigenous principles nor knowledge into account. ⁴²

Other scholars believe there is a need for a distinct Indigenous Environmental Justice to address the challenges and violence experienced by Indigenous communities all over the world. ⁴³ More specific to decolonial knowledge, discussions on how transdisciplinary education can decolonize climate change education argue for the need to blend disciplines, incorporate multiple forms of knowledge (i.e., TEK, socioemotional competencies, technical knowledge) and reciprocal relationships with both human and more-than-human communities. ⁴⁴

Pedagogies with these components can actively resist colonial ways of knowing, revitalize marginalized epistemologies, and create culturally sustaining, and revitalizing environments for learning. ^{45 , 46} From this lens, it is vital to learn more about how Indigenous partners and decolonial methods may contribute to transdisciplinary approaches for EJ and climate change education, and may also foster a more inclusive environment for student learning.

Future studies could seek to partner with Indigenous guest educators and share more detailed understandings of how their knowledge and participation in EJ education may help resist traditional academic structures, and re-vision new approaches to address past, present, and future EJ dilemmas.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EDUCATORS

Environmental educators in higher education can draw inspiration from the instructional practices in this study as an exemplary model for pedagogical innovation within their own courses. Most notably, Gabriela comprehensively integrated community partnerships and guest educators throughout her program, which provided students with the opportunity to learn directly from local EJ activists, community members, and guest educators.

More specifically, educators can learn from the process of building relationships, prioritizing the impact on community partners in the course objectives, integrating alternative ways of knowing into knowledge production, and practicing critical self-reflection of one's social identity and their role in communicating EJ knowledge.

Because Gabriela spent a decade building community partnerships, and refining this instructional framework, when implementing aspects of this pedagogy, prospective faculty members should take a long-term, process-oriented approach. Critical aspects of this approach should be to start small (in one course, e.g.), focus on trust and relationships first (deeply listen to the needs of your partner), share power (how is the partner included in decision making), and view the relationship as an impact in itself (how can a strong relationship create change in community or the classroom).

Implementing a justice-centered community-engaged model for EJ instruction is a long-term and complex endeavor that must have a focus on relationships that are mutually beneficial. Gabriela described this as moving “at the speed of relationships” and “leading with mutuality.”

In the construction of a framework for justice-centering relationships, Quan 2023 explains that these two concepts are critical, as many community-academic partnerships tend to lack a mutual understanding of either benefits to student learning or impact on the community organization.

In addition, creating and cultivating relationships should be viewed as the most crucial part of the process as strong relationships can facilitate impact by helping rebuild trust, better including community partners, or sharing power, but also be viewed as an impact in itself.

For example, Quan 2023 also discusses how educators should consider initially prioritizing the relationship itself first before discussing how partners would support student learning or research. Relationships should also pay careful attention to how community partners are given access and included within the campus community, which opens up questions of power, and how institutions of higher education do not always operate with community impacts in mind.

It is important to start small, where community partners and instructors co-design a course as a first step, and then are slowly integrated more into the larger curricular or programmatic structure within a department or across programs. Focusing on the qualitative aspects of relationships critiques what it means to measure impact, where the quality and strength of relationships is not often quantifiable through numerical data.

Partners also described how a transformed relationship between the institution and community organization can be the most critical outcome where the relationship helps the university see the community as a core participant in co-creating learning, research, and or policy. ⁴⁷

Partners expressed that the ideal change in relationship would be where academic institutions view community organizations as vital contributors to institutional endeavors and “part of the community, not apart from it” (p.150). ⁴⁸ In some cases, this change in relationship can establish more open boundaries between campus and community; can institutionalize centers for community partnerships and make community organizations much more visible to students, staff, and faculty; and transform the very notion of how teaching, learning, and research are conducted.

It is also important for instructors to take steps to engage in critical reflection of the intersections between their own social identity with how, and what kind of knowledge is communicated in their course. According to Gabriela, the awareness of her White identity and her lack of first-hand experiences with environmental injustices led them to begin integrating knowledge from community members, and reimagining the process of knowledge production within her course.

Instructors need to reflect upon and become more aware of the problematic bias in higher education where professors are seen as the sole expert, and often refrain from building meaningful relationships with students or community members. ⁴⁹ Other biases include the use of mainly White or male authors, relying heavily on lecture, centering abstract theory instead of practice, and believing that those within academia possess knowledge that is more accurate or useful than communities.

As Gabriela explained in our interviews, these critical pedagogical practices begin with reflection and critique of institutions of higher education and their role in perpetuating colonial knowledge and practices that have contributed to the climate crisis and environmental injustices in a variety of ways. ⁵⁰

Finally, because teaching EJ in a community-engaged, critical, and reflexive way is complex and can seem overwhelming, it is important to provide more specific action steps for prospective educators to integrate this kind of pedagogical approach. First, start with including authors or sources from diverse sociocultural backgrounds within the course.

For example, Gabriela utilizes the book All We Can Save ⁵¹ prominently in her courses, which features climate activist women and women of color authors. Second, practice decentering oneself within the classroom and making sure to allow for students to share their own knowledge, experiences, and reflections on EJ issues. Third, start small with community engagement, and begin by inviting a guest educator friend to speak in your class.

From there, see how the relationship can blossom over time while truly listening to how your partner could reciprocally benefit. Lastly, start rethinking how knowledge is communicated within the course. Does it always have to be tied to rational or intellectual forms of knowing? Can you ask students to discuss, share, or show their emotions?

Or is it possible for students to tell stories, or communicate and express ideas through building, design, or artistic processes? By engaging in these practices, it is possible to not only co-create EJ solutions with students and partners, but it is also possible to foster a more inclusive and ant-racist classroom for students. ^{52 , 53 , 54}

CONCLUSION

This study sought to explore one faculty member's instructional practices that include partnership with EJ communities of resistance, and the integration of decolonial field methods as key components of student learning objectives. Findings demonstrate the use of a decade-long experience to build community partners “through mutuality” with a focus on Indigenous guest educators, how decolonial field methods and site visits were integrated throughout the program, and Gabriela's critical reflection of her White identity and its impact on her teaching philosophy.

I felt welcomed into Gabriela's program, and I witnessed a student-centered and engaged classroom. I sensed meaningful relationships between students, instructors, and community partners. I participated in multiple discussions with students, learned about Tribal lands, and analyzed dozens of photographs and videos of field experiences with community members.

However, there is a critical need for future research that will more clearly measure the impact of this instructional model on student learning, the community partner experience, and EJ problems.

Gabriela has worked extremely hard to transform the act of learning and teaching in higher education by blurring the lines between EJ community voices and academic knowledge. This EJ program may represent a fairly small project in the larger scope of EJ problems and solutions. However, it is an intentional and reflective attempt of an educator partnering with dozens of community members and striving to reverse a century-long practice of colonial knowledge that continues to perpetuate environmental injustices for BIPGM groups.

As EJ issues continue to intensify in parallel with the climate crisis, exploring ways for EJ educators to “resist” colonial systems of academia and “re-vision” new instructional approaches by tapping into communities of resistance is of paramount importance.