Today my guest is Dr. Kathayoon Khalil, conservation and education professional and the Conservation Impact Manager at the Oregon Zoo. Dr. Kahlil is all the co-author of "Practical Evaluation for Conservation Education and Outreach: Assessing Impacts and Enhancing Effectiveness." In my conversation with Dr. Khalil, we discuss why conservation is a people problem and not an animal problem. We talk about sociology, biology, anthropomorphism, and teaching in informal learning environments. What role does empathy play in environmental education? Let’s find out.
Today my guest is Dr. Kathayoon Khalil, conservation and education professional and the Conservation Impact Manager at the Oregon Zoo. Dr. Kahlil is all the co-author of "Practical Evaluation for Conservation Education and Outreach: Assessing Impacts and Enhancing Effectiveness."
In my conversation with Dr. Khalil, we discuss why conservation is a people problem and not an animal problem. We talk about sociology, biology, anthropomorphism, and teaching in informal learning environments.
What role does empathy play in environmental education?
Let’s find out.
LINKS
Society for Conservation Biology
Effective Practices for Fostering Empathy Towards Marine Life
Measuring Empathy: Collaborative Assessment Project
Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany*
Practical Evaluation for Conservation Education and Outreach*
The People Problem: Including Social Sciences in Wildlife Conservation
Lightning Talk at Seattle Aquarium (Death of Tahlequah)
*Talaterra is an affiliate of Bookshop.org
Social media image of octopus by Jeahn Laffitte on Unsplash
Ep68: Kathayoon Khalil, Empathy in Environmental Education
October 9, 2020
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.
Tania Marien:
Today, my guest is Dr. Kathayoon Khalil, Conservation and Education Professional, and the Conservation Impact Manager at the Oregon Zoo. Dr. Khalil is also the co-author of the book, Practical Evaluation for Conservation Education: Assessing Impacts & Enhancing Effectiveness.
Tania Marien:
In my conversation with Dr. Khalil, we discussed why conservation is a people problem and we also talked about sociology, biology, anthropomorphism, and teaching in informal learning environments. Let's jump right into the conversation.
Tania Marien:
Thank you so much for joining me today to talk about empathy and environmental education. Can I ask you to introduce yourself please to listeners?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yeah. I'm Dr. Kathayoon Khalil. I'm the conservation impact manager at the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon.
Tania Marien:
Your specialty is using empathy to communicate science. I first learned about your work at the spring conference of the Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education. You gave a keynote a couple years ago, titled Empathy in Environmental Education.
You have degrees in Organismal Biology and Environmental Science, as well as Learning Sciences and Technology Design. You have more than a decade of work experience in zoos, aquariums, museums, and nature centers. You embrace nature, you have a solid embrace of nature and everything that you do and that you've done as far as I can go back.
Kathayoon Khalil:
It's been a predominant through-line.
Tania Marien:
Yeah.
Kathayoon Khalil:
[inaudible 00:02:30].
Tania Marien:
What is your earliest... I like to begin our conversation this way, what is your earliest memory of enjoying nature?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Well, I grew up on a farm outside of Portland, Oregon, a 20-acre Christmas tree farm. I think my earliest memories, were just running around that land, right? My parents would put us outside in the summer and don't come back until dinner and just explore what you want to explore. It was rarely guided. It was rarely supervised even. There was a very small creek that ran through the back of the property and I love to go down to the creek and pretend all sorts of imaginary scenarios and cultures and peoples and build these complex, for maybe a child, narratives around the unseen occupants of this natural space. I see that as kind of the first time that I really sought out the outdoors as a place to stimulate and enjoy and recreate and all that kind of stuff.
Tania Marien:
When did nature become important to you?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Well, I think in that line, it always was. My dad's a climate scientist. We were definitely raised with this idea that the environment was important and there were threats to the environment that were worth addressing, but growing up in such a wild and natural space, it was pretty much impossible to not think that this was important or that this was critical to our development in our assessments as humans and a lot of the children in that area grew up in similar spaces. It's a pretty farm-rich area on the outskirts of Portland, outside of the urban growth boundaries, which is pretty unique from an urban planning perspective.
Tania Marien:
I think people have a general understanding of what empathy is and empathy towards another person. What does empathy for nature look like and sound like?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yeah, empathy is a word that gets thrown around a lot. It gets used in a lot of different contexts, sometimes incorrectly, lots of times correctly. We came up with our own definition and that definition is a stimulated emotional state that relies on the ability to perceive, understand, and care about the experiences or perspectives of another person or animal.
Kathayoon Khalil:
In that, there's a lot that we can unpack but some of the big terms or big word choices that we like to highlight include ability. Empathy is something that you can work on over time. You can be born a more or less empathic person, but it is also a skill that you can develop through practice. It's stimulated, which means it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It can be sparked by something or someone or some situation, you don't just go around empathizing all willy-nilly.
Kathayoon Khalil:
This person or animal connection is based on the idea that a lot of the existing research on empathy that has been done has been done on a people to people scale. That's all very valuable but there is research that has also demonstrated that empathy towards animals occurs along the same neural pathways as empathy for humans, which is very exciting because that means if we are developing empathy for animals, those same abilities can be used later to feel empathy for other human beings. It's not different and one doesn't necessarily need to precede the other.
Tania Marien:
In an interview, you stated that conservation is a people problem, not an animal problem. Can you elaborate on this?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yeah, I think that is a really important thing for us as conservationists is to understand that animal ecosystems, without the presence of humans, would do probably quite well but with the increased competition that has been waged by having such a, I don't want to say invasive species, but such a dominating species in a lot of landscapes.
Kathayoon Khalil:
Conservation really becomes about what people are doing and people's behaviors and people's livelihoods and lives and just like we say that conservation is a people problem, that can be flipped on its head to say that conservation is also a people-based solutions field. That is to say that people hold the solutions to a lot of the big conservation problems. If you want to reframe it, yes, we are the instigator of a lot of the threats that animals face. However, we are also the ones who house the innovative solutions that can be used to live in coexistence with animals and the rest of the natural world.
Kathayoon Khalil:
I say that also, because conservation historically has been very much a natural sciences field. When I was coming into the conservation world, I thought I had to do so as a biologist or an animal behaviorist and something like that and those are great important fields that give us a lot of good information about the natural world. However, the social sciences have a lot of the potential solutions and answers and explanations, the how's and the why's that we might want to include, we definitely want to include when thinking about holistic conservation approaches.
Kathayoon Khalil:
In saying the conservation is a people problem, for me, that's really a leverage point to say that the social sciences are extremely critical. It's redundant, but they're so, so important to the sustainability of a lot of our conservation work and need to be included and honored for their import(ance).
Tania Marien:
How do you, as a social scientist, work with the biologists or traditionally-trained biologists? Do you reach out to them? Do they reach out to you? Who is the liaison between those two fields?
Kathayoon Khalil:
A little bit from column A, a little bit from column B. It just, it really depends. I think a lot of biologists are now seeing that for grant funding and for projects, they need social scientists to help with some of that work. We may enter into that way. We also are just making our presence known more throughout the field, especially in zoos and aquariums, which is kind of the world that I live in and just making sure that people know what we're capable of, what we have expertise in, because there's also a lot of like, "Oh, well, I need a survey." Okay, well, I can do that," but that's not really fair, right?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Survey design is an art and interviewing is a skill that you hone over time, so truly, including the social sciences means including the people who are trained and have expertise in these areas not just doing it yourself. We're trying to make ourselves known as partners, as collaborators as equal members in this inquiry process, so that we can develop these holistic conservation projects that really look at multiple dimensions of a conservation issue.
Tania Marien:
You mentioned also in a different presentation that in your field there's discussion about when it is appropriate to talk about empathy and when it is not appropriate to talk about empathy or to use empathy as a way to encourage understanding of the natural world. What are some examples where you would draw on empathy and in what situations would you not draw on empathy and what would you do instead?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yeah, it's really important to make this distinction because when you, we joke that when you have an empathy hammer, everything looks like an empathy nail, and you go around trying to insert empathy in every single program and project but it's just one in a suite of outcomes. It is a tool in your toolkit.
Kathayoon Khalil:
At times, it may not be the right tool, just like any other tool may not be the right tool. I think a lot about the way we interpret and talk about predators and prey relationships that it's very hard to simultaneously hold empathy for a predator and for a prey. You're watching a nature show and they have to make a conscious decision about who they're asking you to root for. Who are they asking you to take the perspective of? Is it the starving lion that's going for the antelope that absolutely needs to make this kill or else he may not survive, or is it the antelope that has a baby that wants to raise it? You have to make these decisions about what is the target of your empathy. Where is the direction in which you want people to focus that empathic energy? That's really important.
Kathayoon Khalil:
We think about that a lot in animal decisions and animal care issues that there is empathy and that can be a wonderful way of trying to understand the animals' experience and how we can provide a better life for them but in some situations, we may need to peel that empathy back to make a decision that's best for the entire community. It cannot be stated enough that once you learn empathy, it is a wonderful tool for activating certain behaviors, for getting people connected to animals but it's not, by any means, the only way, it is one of many and can be a promising pathway to things like behavior change, if that is what you are intending to do.
Tania Marien:
How much does anthropomorphism get in the way of empathy and just any other tool that you have?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yeah, it's funny the way you framed that question because already it makes anthropomorphism seem like a barrier, but anthropomorphism is a very useful tool under certain circumstances for connecting with the natural world, particularly with young children because the way their brains have developed part of that development includes seeing others as anthropomorphic peers and helping that understanding to start to distinguish what is a human, what is an animal, if I hit someone, it feels like this, it feels like this when they hit me, like all of that complexity of existence is based on making buckets and fitting things into buckets the way we process them.
Kathayoon Khalil:
However, anthropomorphism does get into dangerous territory in certain circumstances. When people lack knowledge about an animal, say, they fill in the gaps in their understanding with their own experience. The example we often give is if you have an octopus at an aquarium, octopus are solitary animals, they like to live in the dark and a lot of their exhibits in aquariums reflect that, right? They're not huge, although by octopus standards, they may be palatial and they often include only one animal. People come up to that and they say, "That octopus looks so sad. If I were all by myself, I would be sad. He's got this dark den. If I were in a dark den, I would be really depressed." They don't understand or know all of these things about octopus biology that make this the ideal habitat for that animal. Instead, they overlay their own feelings on top of it and then that gives them what we call unenlightened anthropomorphism, which is the dangerous territory that we want to kind of weave people away from.
Kathayoon Khalil:
We often say that with anthropomorphism, again, it's another tool. Think about how to use it in a way that gets people to understand an animal's experience. We say that when you have an animal that is very different from humans, like a barnacle or a sea star, you can lean more heavily on the anthropomorphism because you're trying to get people to understand that this individual is an animal in the first place, not a rock or a flower, especially also with averse of animals like snakes and spiders, a little bit of anthropomorphism goes a long way to helping people to feel empathy for those creatures.
Kathayoon Khalil:
But when an animal is very similar to us, you want to lean off of that a little bit, because you want people to understand the differences between our experience and their experience like a chimpanzee or an elephant and understand that the human experience is not the only thing that is important to our worldview. Rather than being anthropomorphic, I would caution people against being anthropocentric that saying that humans have dominion over the entire range of emotions that could possibly exist in the world that is far more damaging than saying that animals and humans have common emotional states that may be triggered by similar circumstances.
Tania Marien:
The empathy research that I've read, the articles that I've read out there, involve animals, empathy and animals. But what about the other nonhuman life forms that are not animals, for example, plants, is my thinking. What I used to do was very much a focus on encouraging and interest in plants and of course, there is this issue called plant blindness, where people are more familiar with animals than they are with plants and they tend not to notice the plants in their surroundings. When you're talking about something that people cannot relate to or something that people cannot see themselves in, where can you start to have this conversation, to explain the value of plants in this [crosstalk 00:16:24]?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting because there's a lot of lines, a lot of, a lot of routes to go with this, right? The first one, I'll say, is one that I say over and over again that empathy is not the only tool and it's also important not to conflate empathy with other attitudinal or emotional states, right? Empathy and love are not the same thing. Empathy and curiosity are not the same thing. Empathy and respect, not the same thing. You can hate something and feel a lot of empathy for it.
Kathayoon Khalil:
In fact, a lot of people who feel like spiders or snakes are coming to get them and they want to bite them, that's empathy. They're just projecting their own intentions onto that animal's intentions and it's incorrect, but they're looking at a perspective of that animal in the world. They're just supposing that that perspective is something evil, right?
Kathayoon Khalil:
With plants, I think, I would caution against jumping immediately to empathy, that you want people to feel empathy for plants. We want maybe to start with awareness, and one of the ways that I have loved doing that, in my own teaching, is by asking people to just sit and have close observation of a singular plant for an extended period of time, right? Maybe it's 20 minutes, maybe it's 25 minutes, and the first five minutes are kind of torturous. You're like, "Why am I doing this? This is crazy." Then, your whole microcosm becomes this plant and you start to see the insects that come in and out, you start to see water and veins and buds where you didn't before.
Kathayoon Khalil:
I think one of the best ways to overcome plant blindness is to make people see and really to delve into close observation, which can help people to understand the role of an individual in an ecosystem and pay closer attention to all the different services that that plant may provide.
Tania Marien:
The whole focus of my previous endeavor was to use drawing as a learning tool to encourage an interest in plants. I took that angle with that subject. Years ago, I read a book called Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany. The person who wrote this book, wrote it to provide an in-depth look at the human-plant relationships in western, eastern, pagan, and indigenous cultures. It was a very, very interesting book and really made you think about changing your relationship with plants and his objective was to get people, Matthew Hall, Dr. Matthew Hall is the author, to get people thinking about nature in a different way.
Tania Marien:
He explains the human-plant relationships observed in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism and showing that it's really complicated. It's a complicated subject. It's not just look at the plant, see it, don't see it. It's involved. There's a lot informing that experience, in that relationship...
Kathayoon Khalil:
Absolutely.
Tania Marien:
... with plants in particular and I assume that you find the same with animals as well?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yeah, I mean, all of the empathy work that we have done so far has been from a very western perspective, right? It has been as researchers who are rooted in English-language speaking western cultures, I mean, I am Middle Eastern and Pakistani and Iranian and Pakistani and so I have a little bit of understanding of where my mother and fatherland cultures exist in their relationships with animals and they can be very different from the western perspective but by and large, that is something that we are working towards in the next iterations of this project is trying to be more inclusive in a real way and looking at how empathy translates across cultural boundaries and along spectrums of belief systems, because we know that things like anthropomorphism completely fall apart when you talk about some indigenous cultures that believe there is no difference between a human and a nonhuman animal. Anthropomorphism, that concept doesn't even apply. How can we try and understand some of those complexities? That's a guiding question for the future of our work.
Tania Marien:
You'll be doing this work at the zoo then or elsewhere?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yeah, yeah, in the zoo and aquarium world. The original project was done when I was at the Seattle Aquarium as a joint research endeavor or translating research to practice between the Seattle Aquarium, the Woodland Park Zoo, and the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. Since I moved to Oregon, I've continued collaborating on the project. It's given us a good opportunity to test things out in a new space but necessarily, the work that we do will look a little bit different because we are in different places now, but also because of the COVID crisis and where our institutions are financially resource-wise and personnel-wise. We'll be trying to, now more than ever, be strategic and intentional in our approaches to this work and understanding where our greatest impact can be.
Tania Marien:
It seems to me that right now, environmental educators have the unique opportunity to connect with parents in a more personal way, especially working within their communities, maybe people establishing learning pods or just people be working with their neighbors to help them create programs or experiences for neighbors and the children of neighbors. We have now, then, parents that are involved in a variety of school subjects including science and they're giving these subjects a level of attention that maybe wasn't happening pre-COVID for a variety of reasons, sitting on the freeway in traffic is just one of them, right?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Right.
Tania Marien:
How can environmental educators leverage this attention to establish generous and thoughtful dialogue with parents?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yeah, I think one thing that's happened in the midst of all of this unrest is that we've become more, our nuclear world to become a lot smaller. We've become a lot more community-focused, in some cases, we become a lot more backyard-focused. I think leveraging that and really getting people to pay attention to their local ecosystem to the parks and green spaces that surround them, that's going to be huge for the work of environmental educators, the local exploration because in a lot of places, that's the only thing that feels safe.
Kathayoon Khalil:
Being outside is the only way that we can recreate with others in a socially distant manner but even more than that, it's opening up a new world of stimulation beyond the four walls of our houses. I think this is a unique opportunity for those of us who have worked in local community conservation to really step up and say, "Okay, I can help with this. Put me in coach. This is my jam," and connect to our local communities and connect our communities to the ecosystems that we've been so fond of for so long.
Tania Marien:
In your experience, what resonates with the people you interact with at the zoos and the museums and the nature centers and all the places where you've worked with the public, what turns lights on for them or what makes them pause and begin to think about nature and the environment in a different way?
Kathayoon Khalil:
I think, for me, the thing that keeps me working at zoos and aquariums, and that keeps me so excited about that space is just the live animal experience is so difficult to replicate in the virtual world. There is something about and we talk about this in our empathy work, that there is something about a rich experience where an animal is doing something in front of you that makes you feel like this is the only time that's happened today, this hour, maybe ever and you're seeing something truly special. That it's not curated. It's not doing it for your entertainment, right? It is something that is happening because the animal is taking agency to make it happen. The live animal experience is so critical to our formation of empathy and our just connection to the natural world. That's where I really like thinking about how we can do more and do better to use that live animal experience to really deepen that connection between and animals.
Kathayoon Khalil:
One tactic that I like particularly is treating animals as individuals. We often say that when you give someone a name, you give someone a narrative. It can be any tiger in the world or it can be Bernadette, the tiger who lives with her sister Eloise at the Oregon Zoo. All of a sudden, Bernadette is an individual, like Bernadette has likes and dislikes and places she likes to sit and games she likes to play, a mother and a father and all of these things that help us to feel like that animal is unique.
Kathayoon Khalil:
Individuality is such an important way that we latch on to things with our human brain that using that to connect people to animals can be so powerful, even small animals, right? You can try it out with a spider in your house. You could look at that spider and dissociate from it and try to ruin it, where you can look at that spider and introduce yourself and say, I know it sounds a little silly, but it's an interesting exercise, to say this is no longer just a spider, this is Francine. Francine, the spider that lives in my house and see if that shifts anything in your brain about how you feel towards that individual. There's also an interesting choice between male and female or non-binary pronouns and what we choose to ascribe to animals that don't... All of that can be taken into account and use to help create closer connections between people and animals.
Tania Marien:
That's very good. That's a very good point. I used to, when I was in college, in community college, I used to take care of the zoology lab and take the animals out to the classrooms and do classroom visits. The kids always asked what their names were and that was always like the start of a conversation. Yeah, no, that's a very good point. I don't know. I was wondering if that would work with plants, would you think? I don't know. I guess it could.
Kathayoon Khalil:
It could and something I do name their plants, some people name their cars and it gives them that closer [crosstalk 00:27:04].
Tania Marien:
Yeah, I named my car.
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yeah.
Tania Marien:
Yes.
Kathayoon Khalil:
We care about names and our culture. If I introduce myself and you decide like, "You don't look like a Kathayoon. You look like a Stacey." That's a weird and like offensive thing to do to someone. We want to get people's names, right? People's names matter. They're important. When we say that an animal doesn't have a name, what are we effectively saying about that animal's worth and value to us? Is that worth it? A lot of people say, "Well, I don't want to name this animal. It's a scientific, blah, blah, blah," but it's like, "Okay, is it really worth shutting down the emotional connection just so people understand that this animal is not your pet or there are other ways that you can demonstrate respect for this animal and allow the animal to have individuality and a place where people can land and connect with the animal on a narrative level?"
Tania Marien:
A lot of the people listening to this podcast work in informal learning environments and work in community. These are independent educators. They don't necessarily have a nature center, a museum, a zoo and aquarium or anything like that to go to. They work out at all sorts of different community venues. Their engagement with the public it's brief, just like in any other free‐choice learning environment, it's brief, but it's maybe even more brief, I'll dare to say because they don't have this facility that can keep people engaged or in place longer. What tools can they use to engage with people who come visit their booths and their tables to engage with whatever it is that they're doing? What might they consider doing to prolong a conversation?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yeah, I think when we have these short dosage interactions, it's really important to keep our messages simple. Keep them direct and understand what we're trying to communicate. It can be so tempting when you have a mic to say every single thing that you know, feel and want people to do but that is going to be overwhelming, it's going to leave them with no takeaways, and nothing's going to echo in their minds after they leave you right.
Kathayoon Khalil:
I think this is really important when we think about evaluation is thinking about your outcomes and what you want people to know, feel and do after any interaction, be it 30 seconds or a whole summer, and matching your outcomes realistically to the dosage that you have to the exposure that you have to someone. If you want to make the most of that time, honing in on one specific message and maybe what people can do to learn more resources that they can use to delve deeper, don't expect that they're going to, but sometimes having the resources you hear it enough, eventually there's a tipping point.
Kathayoon Khalil:
That's the other part of it is trying to work together as much as possible, trying to overlay and find out who are the people who are giving the same message and how can we amplify and echo each other so that one of us can serve as the tipping point for that person's understanding or for their intention, moving their intention to actual action.
Tania Marien:
Here, I have this thought, this question that always floating around my head ever since this whole COVID thing started and in everybody's head as well, but how to be as meaningful as possible, I mean, create as meaningful connection as possible at a distance, at six feet or more and through Zoom and all that? Where, at some point, or by now we should, I'm thinking we are just absolutely maxed out on our... We don't have any more bandwidth for learning something online, at least looking through a screen. Schools are starting to open up, of course, there's these learning pods. What can be achieved at the distance of six feet or more realistically, do you think?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Well, some of that interpretation that we talked about, that occurs outdoors, on beaches, in forests, things like that, we know that, I mean, I'm not an epidemiologist but from what I understand COVID does not survive as well outdoors. There's a lot more dispersion that can occur. Guiding people into those experiences can be really powerful, especially for families that may not feel comfortable taking their kids out into nature by themselves, offering opportunities to be that guide, to be that kind of that link for folks between the inside world and the outside world can be a really powerful place.
Kathayoon Khalil:
Also, it's important to remember that this isn't going to last forever, that this may be a wonderful time for us to sit down and think and regroup and figure out how we want to approach the new reality when it comes because this is a temporary state that we're in right now. As environmental educators, I feel like we often are moving at a million miles per minute trying to make sure that we do as many programs as possible, we get the funding and getting people outside, et cetera, et cetera.
Kathayoon Khalil:
But maybe this is our opportunity to slow down, take a step back and make sure that our approaches are still what we want them to be and start to think about changing things that are just being done because that's the way it's always been. That's the death of every great idea is, but we've always done it this way. Where can we challenge ourselves during this time to think about how we can come out stronger on the other side and be even more impactful, because people will be craving these real-life experiences? What can we offer them on the other side instead of right now that can really maximize our impact?
Tania Marien:
If this pause, if we reframe this pause as a gift, what in your work might you do differently?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Well, we've been thinking a lot about inclusivity and about our diversity and equity initiatives, and trying to understand how we can make bigger strides and the directions that we want to go, thinking about how we can create programs that dismantle some of this racist systems that conservation was built on. That's been a big thing for us at the zoo is really considering the part that we play in those systems, the part of the conservation plays, and all the needs of the various audiences that we have in helping to break those systems down and create more equitable approaches to conservation in the future.
Kathayoon Khalil:
We're not able to fly around the world right now. We're not able to go to conferences, in person, any of that. We're really sitting down and working with the people we have here in Portland and thinking about the folks that are coming through our facility in this, even in a limited capacity and trying to understand what are the core priorities, the core responsibilities that we have as a visitor-serving community-based institution to do work that furthers all people's involvement in conservation.
Tania Marien:
What do you think might change at the zoo then? The signage, the language, the text on the signage or what exactly?
Kathayoon Khalil:
Sure, yeah, the signage, the text, the presence or absence of signs, maybe signs don't serve us anymore in a lot of areas. I think a big thing that'll change or that we need to think about are the stories that we tell. Often, we tell stories of animals that are very disconnected from any stories of humans, not everywhere, of course. Some institutions do this very well but we tell stories about animals as though they live in this Edenic wild or on the other hand, as though they live in this completely ravaged place but we don't think a lot about the people who live alongside these animals and rangelands, what their perspectives might be, what their cultures may look like.
Kathayoon Khalil:
I think a lot bringing that into our work will be more important but also thinking about, we talked about a one health approach to conservation that really demonstrates how we all are interconnected. We're seeing this now in this pandemic that there is evidence to suggest that all of this is starting because of some pretty troubling relationships that we have with wildlife that have led to wildlife trade and trafficking. If that is true, then those issues are no longer 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 miles away, they're right here in your house. How do we get people to understand? How do we get people to really connect not just with the animal but with the whole picture, the whole interconnectedness of people and ecosystems and animals and cultures and recognize their part in that web and how important it is to approach a relationship with nature in a new way.
Tania Marien:
In conservation biology or really field biology in general, field biologists, they're their frontline interpreters, if you will, for the field. What can they do or what I don't want to say should, but what might they do differently in the work that they do when they work with companies, with developers or with the transportation departments to build a new highway? I mean, there's always a biologist that's involved for surveys of whatever, wildlife surveys, botanical surveys. How might they change what is become the same old, same old, same old process?
Kathayoon Khalil:
I think it's important to look at who has the mic. Who is doing all of the talking? That's kind of where it starts, right? If the same people are telling the same stories over and over and over again or sharing the same information, where there are opportunities to pass the microphone on to someone else who may not be as well represented in the dialogue and see if they have something new to add, a new perspective, right?
Kathayoon Khalil:
We know from the business literature that diversity leads to more innovative solutions to problems, can offer cost savings and higher profits, et cetera, et cetera. Just like biodiversity in the natural world, these two resilient communities, diversity in our problem-solving worlds can lead to more resilient solutions. We should take that lesson and make sure that we understand the voices that are being shared and the stories that they're sharing. I think that's a big place to start.
Kathayoon Khalil:
It is also, we often talk about science, communication, and helping scientists to communicate their stories better and that is excellent but it is also important to recognize the professionalism inherent in environmental education. It is a field of study that requires a deep level of knowledge, expertise, skills that are developed over years, decades, theoretical perspectives that are grounded in psychology and sociology and it often gets brushed aside as like, well, I mean, it's just teaching kids out in the woods, how to make a pine cone wreath but we, as environmental educators, have a responsibility now to elevate the professionalism of our work.
Kathayoon Khalil:
A lot of that comes from taking the stand, taking the mic where it's important for us to speak up, but also making sure that we are accountable to ourselves and to each other, to integrate the best practices in our field into our own practice instead of saying, "Well, I really like doing things this way," when that's not how you achieve conservation action or that's not how you foster empathy. It is our responsibility to understand what we are learning about environmental education and integrate that into our own work.
Tania Marien:
Yes, and the field is diverse in that people work in it in so many different ways. My focus, my attention goes to the people who work independently, who started something on their own, saw something that needed to be fixed, and they work in their communities and all sorts of different ways outside of the traditional venues.
Kathayoon Khalil:
That's great. I think education at large has really suffered from this idea of it being women's work, and this issue with feminization and the feminine being seen as less than or secondary to the masculine or the hard sciences, I hate that term. There is patriarchy behind a lot of this. I think when you recognize that, then it's like pulling the curtain back on the Wizard of Oz, that like, "Oh, well, that's just that doesn't need to be that way." That's not as scary as I thought it was like. We can dismantle that. I mean, it's going to be challenging but it's not just this thing that's so rooted in our consciousness or it's not an absolute truth that education is easy or simple, right? It is a purposeful oppression of a subject because it is seen as being more feminine in a patriarchal society.
Tania Marien:
Yes, you've mentioned in a different presentation I saw of yours the hard sciences and the soft sciences on how the soft sciences are often dismissed.
Kathayoon Khalil:
Yes.
Tania Marien:
Yeah.
Kathayoon Khalil:
That terminology is very troubling as well because hard is seen as being absolute and truth and masculine and soft is seen as being squishy and uncertain and vague and not serious and feminine. I don't mean necessarily boy or girl, I mean, like the academic definitions of masculine and feminine. That's really troubling, right? It's also not the way it has to be.
Tania Marien:
Yeah, because in my project, I have the initials survey. When I started this project, I have, 43 people took the survey, and they provide a really thoughtful long-form answers, which gives me lots to talk about, lots of talking points, but to some people, 43 is not a sample size. For me, it's huge because they provided such deep responses and more than I could have hoped for. I'm always partly, live on the defense waiting for that pushback. It's like [inaudible 00:42:01].
Kathayoon Khalil:
Qualitative scientists are always on the defensive. I mean, my entire dissertation sample was 40 people but it was hours-long interviews and surveys coupled together and deep analysis and coding for themes. Yeah, we get really attached to these ideas of big data and the quant being the thing that has all the answers but quantitative has some answers and qualitative has some answers. The best research is really mixed. The best research has both so that we understand not only the who's, the what's, the where's, but also the how's and the why's.
Tania Marien:
What do you feel is not understood about conservation efforts?
Kathayoon Khalil:
A couple things. I think one thing that has plagued us for a long time in environmental education is this idea that the more we tell people, the more information we give people, the more likely they'll be to care and then to act, that idea that like, "Well, if I just tell them every cool thing that I know about this animal, how could they not think this animal is the coolest thing in the world and want to save it?" That's just not the way behavior works, right? I beat this drum over and over again, as many of my colleagues do, that knowledge, attitude, and behavior are not linearly related. That if you actually want to achieve behavior change, it's a lot more complicated than just telling people all the cool facts about an animal. That's a big one that I keep seeing over and over people using knowledge and then hoping for behavior instead of actually targeting the behavior that they want to see changed.
Kathayoon Khalil:
I think the other thing that really troubles me is this idea that saving animals is a luxury or that saving nature is an elite activity. That is extremely problematic for a variety of reasons but it often comes into form when people say, "Well, there's so many things going on with people in the world. Why should we think about animals in the environment?" That's where it gets back to that holistic approach where we need people to understand that it's not an either-or. It's not saving animals for animals' sake. It's saving eco or protecting ecosystems so that we can all coexist on this planet, that we are not, and again, I hope this pandemic helps us to understand this but we are not apart from nature. We are not immune to natural forces and that our actions in the world have consequences not only for animals, but for ourselves as well.
Kathayoon Khalil:
That is something that I feel like we need to detangle and that comes to the issues of equity and access and where we're doing our programming and how we are accessing our audiences who is doing the educating, who is at the table, all of those are tied in with this, but it has become, we're getting to a critical point now where we need to help people to understand that conservation is a priority across cultures, across peoples, across landscapes and not just relegated to a select few.
Tania Marien:
Yes, That's beautifully said. I don't know what else to say to that.
What's next for you?
Kathayoon Khalil:
I think about that a lot. My heart is always going to be in zoos and aquariums. This is the space in which I want to work. I think right now is a time when I have try not to emphasize the plans that I had for my life and try to spend more time listening to the needs of the world as they start to evolve. Zoos are going to play a critical part in the rebuilding of communities, in people coming together and feeling safe amongst others, and in people feeling like, what I said before, that they are connected to the natural world. I'm excited for the role we're going to play but I think next comes a lot of conscious and intentional thought about what our activities look like in service of those goals.
Kathayoon Khalil:
I think that's one of the powers of the social sciences is thinking about people at the center of solutions. I plan, with my fellow social science colleagues, and also our nonsocial science colleagues, to really flex those muscles and think about how we can come together and collaborate not as one institution and another institution, but as groups of people working towards a common goal, who all have a passion for saving animals. Some of that may look like empathy. Some of that may look like equity work. Some of that may look like something that I don't even know yet but I think the themes of collaboration and inquiry and listening will be pervasive throughout no matter what form they end up taking.
Tania Marien:
Thank you, Kathayoon. Thank you for your leadership and for the research that you've done and for your time today and for introducing listeners to your work. I so appreciate it. I'm absolutely thrilled to have this opportunity to learn from you again, to spend more time with you. Thank you so much.
Kathayoon Khalil:
Well, thanks for the opportunity. It was really wonderful to chat and a great chance to have some of these big conversations.
Tania Marien:
To learn more about Dr. Khalil and conservation education, please visit the show notes for this episode. Here, you will find links to articles, Dr. Khalil's book, and videos as well.
Tania Marien:
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.