What is your research focus?

education for sustainability + eco-village / eco-community / intentional community

The research is focus on investigating how children grow up and educated in intentional communities, and investigating alternative schools education in rural areas in an eco-villages —— a case study in Zhejiang, China.

What is your research aim or big question for investigation?

The overall aim of research is to advance an understanding of the explore of education for sustainability in intentional communities.

Central to this research is the need to answer the question,  how can children grow up and educated well in eco-villages?

Why is this question worth answering or issue worth investigating?

1. Chinese countryside is in decline because of the urbanization. Every year a large number of rural schools in China are merged. Despite some policy support, rural education resources are gradually lacking.

2. Modernization has brought some problems. Nowadays people are more rich in material than before, but their happiness is reduced. Also, traditional education model in Asia (exam-oriented education) has led to an increasing pressure on children. This kind of education in common school is usually not lead to sustainable and occupy much of children's free time which makes them gradually away from the natural life.

3. For various reasons, like more spare time, good environmental condition and happier life, some urban elites want to return to live in the countryside, but their kids' education has become a problem because of few high quality school and resource in rural areas.

4. Community education in eco-villages provides solutions for families wishing to return to rural life.

What research has already been done related to this issue?

1. Ecovillage: a group of people choose to live together to enhance sustainability at a small-scale community level. Many researches identified how to build an ecovillage in culture building, community engagement, economy arrangement, and ecological technique aspects

[wen xian zong shu  highlight]

2. Education in the nature surroundings

The concept of a forest kindergarten started from Nordic countries. And the benefits of outside learning and exploring are many: the more children stay outside, the healthier they get. And they combined all pedagogics.

3. Community education and  co-parenting

Co-Parenting: A Review of the Literature. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED454975.pdf

Community Education: From Program to Process.

There are a thousand possibilities of how parents can co-operate and create a community or ecovillage atmosphere anywhere. The Gaia Education 4-aspect wheel can help a lot. It is a good thing to take as a base to think how can we make our, let’s say, kindergarten more ecologically, socially and economically sustainable, and what kind of a worldview we would like to pass on to our children.

A[what is different or important?]

What are you research objectives?

The research is to

1.Identify approaches /theories  of EFS in ecovillage and the barriers of education in the case community.

2.Evaluate parents and teachers' experience of educating children in their community in a sustainable way.(activities)

3.Explore the view of villagers to assess the change of education model.

4.Formulate recommendations for the informal school in the rural area.

What are your research questions?

1. What are the approaches /theories  of EFS and the barriers of education in the case community?

2. What are parents and teachers' experiences of educating children in their community in a sustainable way.(activities)?

3. What are the view of villagers and how do they understand the change of education model?

4. As a result of these research questions,  recommendations would be made to improve the experience of teaching in informal school in the rural area?

Methodology: interpretive research, and why have you chosen this approach?

Understanding at the level of ordinary language and action.

Discovering the meanings and beliefs underlying the educational actions of those families .

Who or what will be the research subjects?

Teachers/couple parents/Families living in the case village

Narrative interview: teachers living in the case community (new villagers)

questions about their experience and understanding of EFS in the eco-village.

(documents analysis: lecture drafts of teachers)

How many people will you involve in your research?

4-5 people

What techniques (methods) will you use to produce data?

• Interrogating informants ( interviews)

• Discourse analysis (e.g. examining historical traces and records)

What are you going to as whom, when and where?

whom: reseacher/ villagers / volunteer

when: March 15-21

where: Xuling, Zhejiang

Whose behavior are you going to observe doing what and how?

parents / teacher

by listening their common seminar(once a week)

What texts are you going to examine, for what purpose and how

reflections by teachers in their online blog

How will you analyse the data?

1. record what they say, and translate them into English; collect the lecture drafts and reflections of teachers in school.

2. find some key points to identify their theories of EFS

3. link the data to the literature, research aim, objective & questions

Timeline for the project

Dissertation activity        Duration in weeks          Month

clarify aims/objectives                2                              Jan

literature review                          4                              Feb-Mar

data collection                              3                              Mar

research methods                        2                              Mar

Data analysis/Findings              3                              Mar-Apr

Conclusion                                    2                              May

What are the important references for your work?

A good literature review:

Andreas, Marcus, and Felix Wagner (eds.), "Realizing Utopia: Ecovillage Endeavors and Academic Approaches," RCC Perspectives 2012, no 8, p. 135-48 Book. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/perspectives/2012/8/realizing-utopia-ecovillage-endeavorsand-academic-approaches

Breton, P. -E., & Connell, D. (2010). Organizing for sustainability at a small scale: A case study of an ecovillage. doi:https://doi.org/10.24124/2010/bpgub683

https://arcabc.ca/islandora/object/unbc%3A16079?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=eded5f446d6a28f17e64&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=2&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=9

Greenberg, D. B. 1993. Growing up in community: children and education within contemporary United States intentional communities. Ph.D. diss.

https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=5731767

C. H. and K. H.（2012）.The Alternative Education Movement in China and its Challenges https://www.chinasource.org/resource-library/chinese-articles/ti-zhi-wai-de-jiao-yu-mo-shi-de-fa-zhan

John B. Cobb Jr. (2015)For Our Common Home: Process-Relational Responses to Laudate si' (Toward Ecological Civilization Book 7)

Louv, Richard. (2005). Last child in the woods: saving our children from nature-deficit disorder." SCHOLE: A Journal of Leisure Studies and Recreation Education, 21(1), pp. 136–137

Madhu Suri Prakash (1995) Ecological Literacy for Moral Virtue: Orr on [moral] education for postmodern sustainability, Journal of Moral Education, 24:1, 3-18, DOI: 10.1080/0305724950240101

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0305724950240101

Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World (1992)

https://books.google.com.hk/books?hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=aiRBTwqDvZ0C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=post+modern+ecological+education&ots=-gY1q0u3oc&sig=5cuAE5Mnh-B2qVGZlFNpK-2aGgU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=post%20modern%20ecological%20education&f=false

Holleman, M. 2011."Individually in community: at the ecovillage of Ithaca."Master thesis, Vrije University of Amsterdam

https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~franker/EVI/EVIdissertations/HollemanEVIdissertation2011.pdf

Loezer L.2011. Enhancing Sustainability at the Community Level: Lessons from American EcoVillages. Master thesis, University of Cincinnati

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/pg_10?0::NO:10:P10_ACCESSION_NUM:ucin1321368949

Tolle, J. 2011. Towards Sustainable Development in the Countryside? A Case Study of the First Eco-Hamlet Under Pembrokeshire Planning Policy 52. Master thesis, Swansea University.

http://www.lammas.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/J-Tolle-Towards-sustainable-development-in-the-countryside.pdf

How will you get approval to do your work?

First I will finish the application form for ethical review.

Then I will send a written application to the president of the case school to get permission to investigate the school and invite teachers to join the project.

After that I am going to contact the teacher by e-mail, wechat and face-to-face conversation (semi-structure interview).