Dr. Rupu Gupta is a conservation psychologist at the New Knowledge Organization whose research focus is inclusion and equity in the environmental field. Her interests are in what motivates or hinders people to care for nature and the environment.
Dr. Rupu Gupta is a conservation psychologist at the New Knowledge Organization whose research focus is inclusion and equity in the environmental field. Her interests are in what motivates or hinders people to care for nature and the environment.
In this episode we revisit Dr. Gupta’s paper about the diversity of the environmental field. We also talk about collaboration and bringing attention to the work of independent educators.
This is a two-part episode. Next week we’ll discuss a professional development exercise developed by Dr. Gupta and her colleagues.
Show Notes
Talaterra, Episode 14
Revisit Dr. Gupta’s paper about how many educators work in the environmental field.
National Association for Interpretation
Civic Ecology Lab, Cornell University
North American Association for Environmental Education
Episode 22: Dr. Rupu Gupta, Building Community
August 21, 2019
Tania Marien:
Welcome to Talaterra, a podcast about freelance educators working in natural resource fields and environmental education. Who are these educators, what do they do? Join me, and let's find out together. This is your host, Tania Marien. Today my guest is Dr. Rupa Nita Gupta, an analyst at New Knowledge Organization Limited. We had a wonderful conversation about building community in environmental education. In this episode, we discussed Dr. Gupta's paper, addressing how many environmental educators there are in the field. I talked about this paper in Episode 14. We talk about whether or not the field of environmental education is trying to be about too many things. And we also talk about collaboration and bringing attention to the work of independent educators.
Tania Marien:
This is a two part episode. Next week, we'll discuss a professional development exercise developed by Dr. Gupta and her colleagues. Let's jump right into the conversation.
Rupu Gupta:
I am a conservation psychologist by trade, that's my professional identity. It is an unusual term but what it means is I'm interested in why people care about nature, and why they don't, what motivates them to take care of nature and what are some barriers they perceive in taking actions to take care of nature. So I'm interested in the research to explore that and really, really acknowledging that people come from very different backgrounds and their way of approaching work with the environment towards the environment may vary. So being very mindful about those different cultural perspectives they bring in as well. That is an additional piece of what I'm interested in is how our cultural experiences shape our experiences with nature and how we perceive and conceptualize nature or the environment in very different ways. And different groups have different ways of understanding what nature is or what the environment is.
Rupu Gupta:
And so my work at New Knowledge is really focused on exploring those really broad level interests. And I do it through three ways really, one of them is kind of understanding how people engage with nature in equitable ways. What are some ways in which nature can provide inclusive opportunities for everyone to participate in. That's one. The second is really exploring nature as a pathway to some kind of learning, to some growth in people, whether it be learning, whether it be skill development, whether it just be a natural connection with nature, what does nature provide us? And then lastly, really thinking about this topic of resilience in the climate change realm, and how people in communities are grappling with that. These are three ways in which I've been studying how and why people take care of nature.
Tania Marien:
If you can explain to listeners what the New Knowledge organization is about, what do they do?
Rupu Gupta:
Yeah. And what I was describing is an integral part of my work at New Knowledge Organization. We are a nonprofit research Think Tank. We are a group of interdisciplinary social science folks who are interested in really working with change makers and [inaudible 00:04:20] social change through programs through interventions. And our work focuses on four main pillars, one of which is the biosphere, the environment. The other is health and wellness. The third is media and culture. So these are four pillar areas that we focus on and I lead the biosphere pillar work. We're very collaborative organization, we believe in really being part of a project at any given time, even if we are coming at it from an evaluation point of view. A lot of our work focuses on evaluation and research in certain contexts. But we take on a very constructivist approach to our work where we believe that we are an essential part of any given project or program context. So our presence is making a difference in that setting.
Rupu Gupta:
And we want to respect them acknowledge that and not be an outsider, or a very external entity that's removed from the process because we really are not. So that's our work in a nutshell. Our main office is in New York City. We have another office in Southern California, or in New San Diego, actually. And we work as I was saying, across disciplines, there are two conservation biologists actually in our organization, but we also have people from human rights background from anthropology, data analysis. So it runs a gamut, political scientists, so it's fairly diverse in composition and in area of interest.
Tania Marien:
Yes, I got that impression when I was studying the website. And it sounds like really nice. The first deep community work. Yeah, totally. I should know I featured on the podcast, your paper about how many environmental educators are out there in the world. And I was wondering what made you ask that question yourself, and how did you even come up with a design to even tackle such a large question?
Rupu Gupta:
That's a great question, and it takes me back to the product context in which the study was designed. We were working collaboratively with Cornell University and the North American Association for environmental education on a project that was trying to understand what diversity in the environmental field looks like. And its goal was to increase diversity in the environmental field. So there was already a premise that led to that product's beginning that the field is not diverse and it started off with the idea that it was mainly racial and ethnic diversity, which was not reflected of the US population in general. And it's very much reflected in professional contracts and professional associations where you see a very homogeneous group, it's mostly older women who happen to be white. And we keep seeing that again and again, and the BI of the product recognized that and wanted to explore that, and we were part of the team as external evaluators.
Rupu Gupta:
It was a multi year project and through our conversations with the leadership team, as they were called, and they were leaders in different organizations that weren't just national associations, but universities, smaller community organizations, people who had affiliations with Native American groups. So it was evident quite early in the process that there were very different ways of understanding what environmental education means in these contexts. And even the term environmental education has a very specific connotation. So we wanted to take that and really see like is this premise even correct, that environmental education is not diverse, we're seeing it in these professional settings. We're seeing it in collegial settings with colleagues from these organizations, but what does that actually mean in the country as a whole? So our study was really asking very simple questions. If you remember one of the first things we asked was, are you an environmental educator, knowing that this term has very specific meanings.
Rupu Gupta:
And what we found was that more people than we expected, said that they were in fact that and when we use our sample to estimate, what that means for the field in general across three groups. One was the formal education field where there are a lot of self identified environmental educators informal education in [inaudible 00:09:35] like zoos, aquariums, botanic gardens, that pool. And then the third one, which we thought was the most unexplored, just people who aren't necessarily professionally affiliated with the field, they're in it either as a vocation, they're doing it in general in their free time, or they're doing it outside of their professional affiliation. So those are the three groups we sort of focused on. And when we did our estimation analysis, it came out to be a much larger number, and especially for that volunteer group as we described it, which was essentially people who weren't being paid to be part of this field. And that group turned out to be many more than we had originally estimated.
Rupu Gupta:
And not only that in terms of demographics, and our sample was weighted to match the US census at that time. There were many more Hispanics who had identified as environmental educators, which is not what you see, and is not what is kind of evident in general experiences through anecdotes, or even in any sort of professional documentation. So that's where we were going with the study. So it was really a desire to understand if that premise was even true that the field is... whether it is diverse or not, and our answer was, it's more diverse than it's evident. It's not as diverse as I think people wanted it to be, but it is definitely more diverse than we had expected it.
Tania Marien:
Yeah, I gravitated toward your paper. Well, I jumped at it when I saw what it was about because I'm trying to describe who is working as an independent educator in the field of environmental education and in natural resource fields. And I agree that the word environmental, I have a problem with the word environmental, and I'm very careful how I use it and use the phrase environmental education, because to me, environmental education equals K-12 classroom. And that's why I'm careful how I use that phrase, and also it's the reason why I included natural resource fields in the description of what I do, in what I'm trying to describe. Since we're talking about the term environmental, in your paper, practitioners perspectives on the purpose of environmental education, it's clear that the field of environmental education is struggling with the question, what's it for?
Rupu Gupta:
Yeah.
Tania Marien:
And you and your co authors, John Frazier, also from the New Knowledge Organization and Marian Krasny from the Pacific ecology lab at Cornell. You see when you state that at the center of this debate is about what EE is for. EE, being environmental education and whether EE is about advocacy, behavior change, science, education, democratic decision making, or critical thinking about social transformation. In all your work in this sphere is the field trying to be about too many things do you think?
Rupu Gupta:
Yeah, great question. So I'm going to respond based on what we've seen, not only in the study you are citing right now, but across other products and other contexts that we've seen this work happen. It is a fact that environmental education, the field by itself is a behemoth in this realm that is the kind of the main discourse that's prevalent out there. And that seems to subsume a lot of other very nuanced ways of doing the work. What the people you're citing found was that when you ask people... and this was a range of people in different capacities working in the E field, so these were people affiliated with the environmental field, but also that included people who were working with community based organizations also. So it was fairly diverse. And what we found was that there are... when you ask people, what is the purpose? What to you is the purpose of environmental education? We found that across their responses, and we did this through a very fun card sort of activity. That there are five ways in which their interests, the purposes they site fall into.
Rupu Gupta:
The first one is looking at environmental education very broadly and understanding that there is a role for it for sustainable living and as you can tell that's very overarching and that cuts across any kind of environmental work, not necessarily what the field of environmental education quote unquote describes it to be. The second was about the role of EE in helping with spiritualism, like really having that be a connection with nature and thinking about ourselves as part of a larger being. So that's also a very personal emotional connection. So the third one was really looking at environmental education as a moral imperative, like this is something you have to do, this is something... this is a right for us to sort of be bought off to change the environment for our selves. And then the fourth one was about environmental education's role in really building skills in building capacities and helping organize. And the last one, which was the most interesting to us was it focused on youth as one of the core interests that guided the work.
Rupu Gupta:
The fact that this was a way to engage youth in not only environmental work but other larger purposes. And that when you look at those five different ways or different reasons why people are in environmental education, there is more in common than there are differences and that's something that's... the larger picture is something people lose sight of when they're talking to each other when professionals in EE or in community based education are talking about their work because they're using nuances, they're using terminology that resonates with that particular way of doing the work. But if the greater purpose is environmental change in some form or another, it is something you want to be working toward, like there is a possibility for a common ground. I'll give you an example to bring this point home. In this project, in particular, the one about increasing diversity in the environmental field. One of the programs was facilitating collaboration between groups of between people who describe themselves as environmental educators, meaning they were directly affiliated with the field.
Rupu Gupta:
And those who were from community education who came from smaller, very localized community groups. And so the point was to kind of have them try and figure out some way to work together. And one of the examples we saw was, there were people who worked at informal learning centers like zoos, or aquariums, which have a very specific focus on animals as a way to talk about nature. And on the other hand, there were people from, say, local groups that are doing civic ecology practices, where they're doing local river cleanups, for instance. And when they're talking about each of their respective works, it seems very divergent. They have very different models or worldviews that are guiding them. But once they start talking to each other, the possibility that they might be interested in youth that maybe the Joe [inaudible 00:18:08] at the zoo is interested in working with kids. And the educator who's leading the clean ups may also want to help youth foster their advocacy skills. So can youth be a way to actually start a collaboration, is that a possibility?
Rupu Gupta:
So what we learned in that project was, there are ways in which you can start to find common ground, and it's usually when you realize that there's something much broader, something larger than your specific interest that is really where you start to build on.
Tania Marien:
And so, seeing as there are so many little groups, realms within the field overall, do you think the field would benefit from a definitions project, like one that was led by the National Association for interpretation? In 2006, NAI helped lead a conversation with... I'm going to read here from the website with representatives from over two dozen federal agencies, nonprofit organizations and not for profit organizations. And their aim was to agree on definitions of common terminology used by interpreters, environmental educators, historians, and others in non formal settings such as parks, aquariums, zoos, nature centers, historic sites and museums. Given the broad nature of the field of EE, do you think the EE field would benefit from a project like this?
Rupu Gupta:
Yeah. I mean, at first glance, when you think about what that project is trying to accomplish, it's trying to... and I'm not just talking about that particular project, but the principle as a whole, because your question was about, is it helpful to sort of come to a common understanding of definitions. And I think that goal is really for people to come together to start to share different ways in which they see the world, whatever that word might be, like you mentioned NAI. So it's the world of interpretation, so what are some common ways in which people affiliated with this field, are talking to each other, are communicating with each other? And I think it's really important to create that space where people can come together to really share their unique their distinct ways of looking at the world. But it's also an opportunity to see if there are ways in which they can come to consensus on a specific definition. And I imagine that process is more complicated than what... and how we're describing it because there are definitions in different contexts.
Rupu Gupta:
And it's just a subset of people who represent various aspects of that field, whether it be environmental education, whether it be interpretation, conservation, education, Natural Resources Management. So I mean, there will be representatives from that field, but what happens to the people who are not affiliated to be able to be part of that conversation, right? So I mean, I think there- it's not, it's very difficult to appease everyone. And it's very difficult to find that consensus, but what I think is possible is finding some overlap in your work. So you acknowledge that there are different ways in which I'm looking at the world. But can we work beyond that to find a common ground on which to work together? I'll give you an example of this. A few years ago, we were part of this program, we were the external evaluators for a project called a summit seekers project. It was funded by the National Parks Foundation, and there were five national organizations who were involved.
Rupu Gupta:
And their interest in the project was to really ensure that outdoor engagement is being more inclusive and really providing access to a wider group of racial and ethnic groups than is currently the case. So that was the premise of the project. And there were five different organizations involved in this. They all cared about outdoor engagement and advancing racial and ethnic diversity in that. But the mission of each of these organizations was very unique. Two of the organizations focused on explicitly celebrating racial and ethnic diversity in outdoors, outdoor Afro, Latino outdoors were part of it. Another organization was very youth focused, Student Conservation Association. Another organization's groundwork was more focused on community led environmental work. And the fourth one Appalachian Trail Conservancy was focused on a very localized outdoor recreation opportunities, right? So their model for the work is very different, as you can tell from their interests, but the partnership was really for them to come together and develop a professional development program through which educators in each of their organizations could build skills to draw in more people to engage with the outdoors.
Rupu Gupta:
And it was an amazing project because what we were looking at was what was happening with the professional development program on the ground, with the people who would directly be talking to community, people who would potentially be using the backgrounds. But the collaboration was also happening at the organizational level. In the sense each of these organizations were getting to know each other as well. So that was a really rich learning experience for them because they had never really done a collaboration of that scale with a group that had several different philosophical view of the work. And so that took time, but it was very fulfilling because leadership decided to really take the time to get to know each other, even though they knew that their pathways and their strategies, that's sort of change for the program was going to be very different, right? But they still wanted to learn from each other, and kind of leverage each other's collective expertise.
Rupu Gupta:
So that to me sort of signifies why you really need to be collaborating with others in this field, even if you have a very specific program or theoretical background in the work. So that was very fulfilling to be part as well.
Tania Marien:
Yeah, no, I'm sure. And so how do you think these different entities who should best collaborate? In the process of reaching out what do you think is the key move or a few key things to remember when reaching out to an organization who's clearly different than you and your work? How did this collaboration that you just mentioned start? Was that it's someone on the outside say, hey, we're doing this, who wants to participate? Or did you find that this group was already kind of inching towards each other in different ways?
Rupu Gupta:
Yeah, you have gone to the crux of the matter, Tania, because I'm talking about it in terms of collaborations, partnerships, but recognizing that there has to be some initiation by one group with another at some point, and that's so key. Very generally, and I'll go into specifics, what we've seen is that it's typically very established organizations, well resourced organizations that are the ones reaching out because they see that there is a need for their organizational interests and not in any nefarious way or anything. But because that's part of their values or something they want to pursue, to bring in more voices than is currently informing their programming. If you think of the visitor-ship of informal learning centers, like zoos, aquariums, botanic gardens again, who's visiting these spaces is not very racially and ethnically diverse.
Rupu Gupta:
And for the most part, they're always striving to expand and be more inclusive in their programming. So it's typically these larger organizations that are initiating these partnerships and that from the get go, introduces like a bar dynamic, a power difference, right? Because these are already well resourced organizations and you're reaching out to community groups who are probably part of your professional network, and with whom you see common areas of interest, and that's where it begins. But they are coming from it... the community based organizations, the smaller organizations, if you will, are coming at it from a very different point as well because if they are to join the partnership, they have to get something out of it, right? So I think the acknowledgement is that there is a mutual need to come together. And to the extent that there is alignment, there is the start to a partnership like that. So that's one thing like being aware that right from the start, there are these power differences.
Rupu Gupta:
But in that process, you also have to be... so the premise now being that the informal learning, the bigger organizations are the ones that will have to do a lot of the work in fostering that relationship, if you will, because they may be set in the agenda or they may be perceived as setting the agenda. If that makes sense. So as they are going about that process of building relationships, you really need to be mindful that the groups in there are coming at this product from very different worldviews, and that the environmental education may mean nothing to them it may be more about a community gardening project in their locality or providing green spaces in an area where there aren't any, there's like hardly any natural areas. So they're coming at it from a very different area. So the conversation is going to be very emotional because people care deeply about their piece of nature, environment, whatever it may be, whether it's the botanic garden that you are the director of, or if it's the community garden that you are just beginning to plant.
Rupu Gupta:
So you're in it for very, very personal reasons. And the reasons that bring you to a partnership are also different. So there has to be allowed time and space to understand what those different areas are. And to allow space for emotional conversations, what you're saying might come across as a personal attack to someone else if you're being very effusive about your particular way of going about environmental work, right. And what we've seen is it takes time to really create space and allow for those difficult conversations. And typically, a lot of prep work has to be done when you're having these conversations, you could have a facilitator who's there to kind of guide the conversation, who is more or less independent, external who's not vetted to the topic, but who can see signs of when things are getting heated up and bring things back to the point. Or when it's being organized by the teams themselves, if there's adequate prep in advance, you could think of creative ways to manage the process.
Rupu Gupta:
So one of the examples we saw, which we talk about a lot is, again, collaborations between the environmental educators within [codes 00:31:42] and those who are more affiliated with community based organizations coming together. They decided okay, we will use a safe word in case things are getting too distressing. And so there was one person who used the safe word which was red tailed hawk, which had significance for everyone because it was a local species and people recognize that okay this is something we all care about so it kind of brought them out of that moment. So even strategies like that can really help prepare. And at the end of the day it is really about openness and willingness to hear about each other's perspectives and respect that and knowing that there is a lot you can offer to someone else's way of doing the work or learn from someone else to do the work.
Tania Marien:
See, I ask and this topic is of interest to me because one of the objectives of my project is to bring attention to the work that these independent educators do in their communities, but also to describe what they do so with the hope that anyone looking for a community partner, would recognize them as a potential partner, instead of automatically going to a Nature Center, a museum or something like that. And so when I had the chance to ask, I always ask, what do you think will help with that collaboration or with the initial point of contact, help make that contact? Or what matters to the larger organization, the larger of the two the one with the higher status and more sources and all that. What are they looking for in a community partner? And from your experience what do you think is valued or what gets a larger organization to say, oh, okay, I'll talk to you. It might be interesting to talk to you. What do you think... besides trust, okay, there's a lot of trust in that.
Tania Marien:
There's a lot of trust here that I understand needs to be established beforehand. But when you have an independent professional who has a body of work, but doesn't have the name doesn't have a building doesn't have that type of thing. How to bring attention to their work, how to get them to get a larger organization to look their way?
Rupu Gupta:
Yeah, yeah. That's a tough one. I'm giving it some thought. One thing we've learned from our work is really the power of groups and being part of a collective, and how that's really empowering. Even if it's a slightly different way of being... slightly different way of doing the work. And I think networks, I just stopped myself from seeing professional networks because that has its own condition, but even like a network, whether it be a Facebook group or some way to forge a community could be really empowering in that at least it's bringing all these freelance educators from different areas of interest, together. And then really branching out, being that hub to begin with, and then really thinking about bringing in each of their individual professional networks into the mix as well. So I mean, that's a very simplistic way, perhaps, of looking at it. But that's something and it's easier said than done, because it means a lot of organizing. And I think the positive and the counterpoint to that of being part of these larger professional associations, even if your philosophical bent of doing environmental work is slightly different.
Rupu Gupta:
There's the positive and also the negative to that because it's through those you get to know who else is out there and connect with people who are affiliated with, quote, unquote, larger organizations. That's something I can think of from the point of view of the independent educators, which again, I'm acknowledging is much tougher than I make it out to be. But on the flip side it is an imperative and this is what we're seeing in informal learning centers to start thinking about a more diverse audience than they had before. And by diverse I don't just mean racial and ethnic diversity, but also different discipline reviews of doing the work. And that's why I think there is the push to try and engage with other organizations beyond the ones that they have direct contact with at all times. And again, it falls on the more resourced organization to some extent to do this, which again, could be a negative but also has positive implications for the work because there are opportunities to engage with them around common interests.
Rupu Gupta:
I'm trying to think of examples from our work. We work extensively with the New England Aquarium in Boston. And they have a lot of very focused community projects that are trying to really make sure that any, any environmental issues surrounding preparing for sea level rise, preparing for creating resilient communities is happening with them that it's not just the aquarium dictating what's happening. So, that product, for example, is allowing or is enabling, not only the aquarium to reach out to local groups who are interested in building their capacity, but it's also helping the aquarium to kind of learn what the community needs. And that is moving forward and again, in a way as I was saying like it's relationship building that's happening because none of the groups involved... And by none, I mean, like the aquarium and these small groups have never engaged before. So there is some time needed to really get to know each other. And it takes time, but we've seen like, it takes at least a year for there to be some kind of common language that they can use, a common interest that comes out of it.
Rupu Gupta:
So that's where we've seen some of these partnerships happening.
Tania Marien:
This has been a wonderful conversation, and so informative. Do you have anything that you'd like to tell the independent educators working in environmental education today?
Rupu Gupta:
I think, for the work we've been involved in the last few years, the main lesson I think I can think of very generally is really to be open minded about the different perspectives and the different reasons why people are doing this work and kind of be mindful that people are in it for different reasons. And there might be more in common with other educators than seems from a first glance and in the spirit of building community in the spirit of really building partnerships, I think that's something to be really mindful about. We get so excited about our own work and while we are in it, that we may not pay attention to how we are communicating and exchanging information with each other. So I think it's always helpful to be sort of mindful that what you may be saying in your excitement may come across almost as conflicting with someone else's viewpoint. But if we can prepare ourselves to be open to others way of doing the work, that's a great start to future possibilities together.
Rupu Gupta:
What really reassures me because this field that we're in is challenging, there's always moving parts, the environment is changing at a frightening pace. And so, to be able to have a community of like minded people who are part of this process is key to moving forward in a way that not only helps the work but also helps us as individuals as people, because we need to take care of ourselves as well. And being part of that community of people who are on the same page about these and who care similarly, it is super important.
Tania Marien:
After Dr. Gupta and I spoke for the podcast, we had a conversation about the methodology that she and her colleagues use to investigate practitioners perspectives on environmental education. This will be the subject of next week's episode. See you next week. Talaterra is a podcast for and about independent educators working in natural resource fields and environmental education. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and colleagues. Thank you so much for joining us today. This is Tania Marien.