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Un nombre croissant d'études médicales suggère que le contact avec la nature est l'une des meilleures choses que vous pouvez faire pour améliorer votre santé. Découvrez pourquoi ci-dessous.

Explorez chaque système du corps humain afin de découvrir la science qui se cache derrière la nature et votre santé. Cliquez pour plus de détails.

Explorez chaque système du corps humain pour découvrir la science qui se cache derrière la nature et la santé des enfants. Cliquez pour plus de détails.

Explorez votre quartier pour découvrir comment l'accès et la proximité à la nature aide les gens et l'environnement. Cliquez pour plus de détails.

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Prescri-Nature: Une Prescription de Temps Passé en Nature - Pourquoi la Nature?

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Basé sur la science, porté par la nature. Un nombre croissant d'études médicales suggère que le contact avec la nature est l'une des meilleures choses que vous pouvez faire pour améliorer votre santé. Découvrez pourquoi ci-dessous.

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L'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre a des répercussions sur la science, la culture, la politique, la langue, l'intendance environnementale, les droits territoriaux, la réconciliation -- et l'avenir de la planète.

Pour mieux comprendre ce qu'est l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre, il faudrait d'abord déterminer ce qu'il n'est pas. Si vous pensez d'emblée à " des salles de classe à ciel ouvert " ou à " l'école en plein air ", et voilà, c'est si simple : ce n'est pas ça. Du moins, ce n'est pas tout, loin de là. Concept aux multiples facettes, l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre ne se laisse pas définir en une simple phrase, et son sens change selon les personnes. Elle comporte plusieurs dimensions comme l'importance de la langue et de la géographie des récits, la cosmologie et la conception du monde, la protection du territoire et les droits territoriaux, l'interrelation et la responsabilisation, les relations et la réconciliation, et bien plus encore.

Les communautés autochtones peuvent bénéficier de ce modèle, car il donne accès à une éducation adaptée sur le plan culturel, favorise l'échange de connaissances intergénérationnel et crée des espaces sûrs, propices à la guérison et à l'apprentissage. Et en changeant le rapport que bien des non-Autochtones ont avec la terre, il pourrait nous amener à rendre la planète plus saine pour tous.

Dre Amy Parent, Noxs Ts'aawit, est une Nisga'a de Nass Valley dans le nord-ouest de la Colombie-Britannique. Elle se définit comme une étrangère sur le territoire des Premières Nations Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh et Musqueam. Professeure adjointe au département des sciences de l'éducation de l'Université de la Colombie-Britannique, elle croit que l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre est un processus qui gravite autour des valeurs - respect, réciprocité, déférence, humilité et responsabilité - qui sont liées à la terre par les savoirs autochtones. Nous sommes donc très loin de la vision eurocentriste, où la terre est depuis longtemps considérée comme une ressource ou un objet au service des humains, souvent au détriment du monde vivant. Par sa nature même, l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre est à même d'amorcer une transformation qui permettrait à tous les Canadiens de comprendre comment les systèmes éducationnels, économiques, sociaux et politiques renforcent le colonialisme.

Ou plus simplement, comme le dit Parent, ce modèle nous apprend que la terre n'est pas une ressource, mais plutôt " une chère bien-aimée, une proche vénérable qui traverse une crise à l'heure actuelle. "

Alex Wilson, de la Nation crie d'Opaskwayak, est à la tête du programme d'études supérieures en apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre à l'Université de la Saskatchewan. Pour elle, ce mode d'éducation est relationnel; il s'agit de comprendre que la connaissance vient de la terre et lui est reliée; elle vient également de l'eau, du ciel et de tout ce qui en fait partie.

" L'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre est à la fois modèle et paradigme; elle se base sur les conceptions et les croyances autochtones ainsi que sur la transmission des savoirs d'une génération à l'autre, dit-elle. C'est aussi une façon de comprendre où est notre place dans ce grand univers et quelles sont nos responsabilités envers lui. "

Selon Wilson, la classe extérieure, ou simplement le fait d'organiser des activités en plein air, est à une extrémité de ce continuum qu'est l'apprentissage inspiré de la terre (avec la composante autochtone en moins). Cela dit, si le fait de se trouver à l'extérieur est évidemment essentiel pour mieux connaître la terre, cela n'est pas suffisant. À partir de là, le continuum s'élargit, valorisant de plus en plus le rôle de la transmission des connaissances sur la terre pour le développement de citoyens du monde qui prendront soin de la planète. Il y a également dans ce continuum une place pour l'éducation axée sur le lieu. Toutefois, celle-ci concerne surtout l'endroit, et pas nécessairement les connaissances spirituelles et culturelles qui s'y rapportent ou qui s'y sont créées.

À l'autre bout de ce continuum, là où l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre s'entend au sens le plus profond et le plus large qu'il est possible de lui donner, on peut contextualiser les connaissances issues de la terre, mais aussi d'une nation donnée, croit Alex Wilson. Est alors englobée la préservation de la culture, de la langue et de la philosophie, et sont mises à bas les ramifications de la colonisation et de l'épistémicide, soit la rupture des systèmes de connaissances autochtones, conséquence de politiques destinées à limiter ou arrêter l'accès à la nourriture, aux lieux sacrés, à la culture et à la langue.

Dans une même optique, Chris Googoo, un membre de la Première Nation de We'koqma'q, qui habite présentement à Millbrook en Nouvelle-Écosse, souligne que les Aînés ne sont parfois même pas conscients que leurs récits enseignent une science. Il parle de l'importance de reconnaître que la colonisation a contribué à supprimer cette conscience.

" Si on voulait transmettre des connaissances qui allaient à l'encontre de certaines valeurs du monde scientifique ou de certaines idéologies - le catholicisme étant celle qui prédominait -, ces savoirs étaient considérés comme une forme de blasphème, dit-il. Soit on nous ignorait, soit on nous réprimandait. Nos Aînés ont donc appris à ne pas transmettre leurs connaissances. Ce dont on a besoin maintenant, c'est de créer un environnement qui soit non seulement sûr et propice à la guérison de ce que les parents et grands-parents ont vécu, mais aussi propre à raviver ces souvenirs, ces récits, cette science qui sont le fruit de milliers d'années de recherche dans le laboratoire de la vie. "

L'importance de la langue et des récits

En tant que chef de l'exploitation d' Ulnooweg, qui offre une assistance en développement économique et communautaire dans le Canada atlantique, Chris Googoo cherche à illustrer les valeurs des personnes qu'il représente par l'être et les savoirs, la culture, les traditions et la langue, dans tous les projets que Ulnooweg mène. Il estime que le caractère régional est une composante essentielle de l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre.

" Les personnes qui viennent d'ailleurs ne peuvent parler de nos connaissances autochtones issues de notre région à nous, et nous ne pouvons pas non plus parler des leurs, dit-il. La composante autochtone de l'apprentissage inspiré de la terre est régionale. "

Cette régionalité est ancrée dans la langue et la géographie des récits. C'est un sujet qui intéresse particulièrement Thomas Johnson, le directeur général de l'Eskasoni Fish and Wildlife Commission en Nouvelle-Écosse, qui est aussi membre du groupe de l'initiative sur la langue Eskasoni Mi'kmaw. Johnson estime que les véritables savoirs autochtones inspirés de la terre sont imbriqués dans la langue et dans les récits transmis par les ancêtres.

" La narration est une technique ancienne pour retenir l'information. C'est aussi un élément important des traditions autochtones, explique-t-il. C'est essentiel pour nous de parler de ces récits des temps anciens, qui étaient destinés à être contés en langue autochtone, car si nous ne le faisons pas, ils vont disparaître. "

Dans un document de réflexion à l'intention de la Commission canadienne pour l'UNESCO, intitulé La géographie des récits, Johnson explique ce qui se produit quand se perd le lien entre culture, territoire et langue. Il parle notamment de l'histoire de Kluskap, une légende des Mi'kmaq qui raconte les voyages de celui qui était considéré comme un professeur par ce peuple. Il existe plusieurs versions de ces récits; le document de Thomas Johnson présente celle du Cap-Breton qui décrit la traversée du lac Bras d'Or, une mer intérieure située dans cette région de la Nouvelle-Écosse.

Difficile de faire honneur à ce conte en le résumant succinctement. Disons simplement que le récit parle des aventures de Kluskap, qui le mènent face à des formations géologiques remarquables ou conduisent à leur création : une cave, un archipel de cinq petites îles, un énorme rocher sur littoral et des escarpements rocheux. Ces endroits ont tous reçu des noms Mi'kmaq liés aux événements dans le récit, comme Petawlutik (Table Rock) où Kluskap s'est attablé pour souper, ou Pli'kan (Cap Split) où Kluskap utilise sa pagaie pour creuser un canal, formant ainsi le bassin Minas dans la baie de Fundy.

Johnson écrit que même si la langue Mi'kmaw a été façonnée et créée par ces paysages, certains des mots dans les récits de Kluskap restent inconnus de beaucoup d'aînés et de personnes de la région. Le fait de s'éloigner de la terre a conduit à la perte de la langue, et c'est ce qui est réellement nécessaire pour maintenir une relation réciproque et un sentiment d'interdépendance.

" La perte de la majorité de nos orateurs est une conséquence directe de ce qui se passe lorsqu'il y a déconnexion entre la langue autochtone et la terre. ", dit-il.

L'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre cherche à rétablir ce lien en ravivant la relation réciproque entre les peuples autochtones et la terre. Il englobe différentes formes d'apprentissage : sur le territoire, sur l'histoire du territoire et sur la façon dont les Premières Nations, en tant que groupe, ont interagi avec ce territoire. En fait, selon Thomas Johnson, ces concepts sont si étroitement interreliés qu'il fut un temps où l'on n'avait pas besoin de l'appeler un apprentissage. " C'était juste un mode de vie. Vous le viviez au quotidien. Vous ne vous rendiez même pas compte que vous vous faisiez éduquer. Vous ne faisiez qu'un avec la nature. Il y avait un amour et un respect profonds pour la nature et tout ce qu'elle a à offrir. "

C'est politique

Selon Amy Parent, il est essentiel, pour comprendre ce modèle d'apprentissage inspiré de la terre, de reconnaître les liens qui l'unissent avec la langue.

" Nous avons été mis sur une terre qui nous ressemble et nous avons reçu une langue qui ressemble à cette terre, avec des mots pour la décrire, elle et tous les êtres qu'elle abrite ", dit-elle en mémoire de feu Woody Morrisson des Haïdas, qui fut le premier à s'exprimer ainsi. " Woody disait que chaque terre a sa propre magie. Si vous avez un nom dans cette langue, la terre et les arbres vous reconnaissent sous ce nom. Le nom de l'âme est un nom, et le vent l'emporte vers les sommets des plus hautes montagnes et par-delà les eaux. "

De ce fait, elle estime que l'action de nommer est indissociable de l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre : la régionalité - ce qu'Amy Parent désigne par " caractère local " - est essentielle.

Pour ajouter à cette complexité, cette forme d'éducation implique aussi, inévitablement, ce qu'elle appelle " des conversations très malaisantes " sur les rapports difficiles que les Canadiens ont avec la violence coloniale, la dégradation de l'environnement, la dépossession des peuples autochtones de leurs terres ancestrales et la perpétuation du génocide culturel. C'est pour elle une invitation à " nous engager dans un dialogue sur les revendications territoriales, la réparation, la souveraineté et les pouvoirs autochtones (ou la souveraineté canadienne sur les terres autochtones volées) tout en favorisant des pratiques axées sur la terre qui feront du bien à la Terre mère. "

Elle ajoute que ce processus s'imbrique avec la langue et les noms de lieux. Par exemple, en Colombie-Britannique, la majorité du territoire n'a jamais été cédée, " et pourtant, le paysage a été violemment retracé, redessiné, et renommé avec de nouveaux toponymes qui soulignaient la gloire des empires européens et des présumées "bonnes actions" accomplies par leurs patriarches ancestraux. Ces toponymes bâillonnent les noms autochtones et les effacent des annales, des documents et de la mémoire collective du Canada. Ils redéfinissent la terre sous la loupe de l'eurocentrisme en la faisant objet et ressource. "

En comparaison, les toponymes autochtones livrent un puissant témoignage de la présence continue des Autochtones, reflétant leurs lois, leur histoire, leur gouvernance et leur souveraineté depuis des temps immémoriaux. C'est ce qui est préconisé dans la Déclaration des Nations Unies sur les droits des peuples autochtones, dans le rapport final de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation et dans les appels à l'action de la Commission, qui insistent sur le devoir de l'État de fournir une éducation laissant place à la souveraineté autochtone.

" Et nous savons que le lien est très fort entre le rétablissement des toponymes autochtones et la revitalisation des langues et de la culture autochtones. "

Liens de parenté, protection de la terre et responsabilité

L'un des grands bienfaits mondiaux de l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre pourrait être le pouvoir qu'il a de nous amener à mieux protéger l'environnement, en changeant les rapports des populations avec la terre. C'est là un changement qui pourrait être déterminant pour un monde aux prises avec les changements climatiques, l'extinction de la biodiversité et la dégradation importante et constante de l'environnement.

Alex Wilson estime par exemple que l'apprentissage inspiré de la terre fait partie de l'éducation sur les changements climatiques, et cela touche nécessairement les relations et la responsabilisation. " La protection de la terre est absolument colossale dans tout cela. Si vous comprenez - par vos liens de parenté ou par la façon dont la langue est structurée - que la terre ou les animaux sont littéralement liés à vous, vous aurez une relation différente avec la terre : une relation familiale où la protection joue un rôle essentiel. Je crois que c'est très important. "

Chris Googoo précise que l'idée est de créer un sentiment d'harmonie et un lien profond avec la Terre, une idéologie qui transcende la simple religion. " Je parle plutôt de mots comme l'intuition, le sixième sens, la connexion intime avec la Terre mère. C'est "là", sans que vous puissiez vraiment le comprendre, car c'est difficile de comprendre une démarche scientifique millénaire. "

Le lien avec la réconciliation

Chris Googoo fait un lien entre ces idées et la réconciliation en prenant l'exemple d'une personne qui va en forêt et serre un arbre dans ses bras : pour comprendre parfaitement l'expérience, il faut des connaissances occidentales et autochtones.

" Vous sentirez l'énergie de l'arbre. Il y aura des réactions chimiques et électriques qui vont vous lier à lui. Nous l'avons observé, et ça a été prouvé scientifiquement. C'est ça pour moi, la double vision. ", dit-il en faisant référence à Etuaptmumk, un concept Mi'kmaq qui consiste à voir les choses de deux perspectives différentes pour arriver à un terrain commun.

" Je pense d'ailleurs que c'est une manière de valider les deux points de vue : la science confirme les savoirs autochtones, et les savoirs autochtones confirment la science. Je suis convaincu que c'est là que s'opère la véritable réconciliation : quand l'un respecte les connaissances de l'autre. Nous avons une foule de théories qui ne sont pas encore acceptées, mais on commence à nous demander de mettre nos connaissances à contribution dans l'éducation publique. "

L'apprentissage inspiré de la terre favorise la réconciliation en ravivant les langues et les cultures risquant la disparition, en enseignant l'histoire des pensionnats aux étudiants, en amenant ces derniers à développer par eux-mêmes un lien avec la terre et en les outillant pour qu'ils puissent la protéger et se battre pour elle. Selon Googoo, c'est une occasion pour les peuples autochtones de " revendiquer et reprendre " leurs terres traditionnelles, seulement en étant à l'extérieur.

" C'est comme si vous plantiez un drapeau, mais c'est plutôt un arbre que vous plantez; vous redonnez à Mère Nature les fruits qu'elle offrait au départ. Cela va de pair avec la nécessité que nous faisons valoir de respecter les traités et les territoires traditionnels, non seulement au Canada atlantique, mais partout ailleurs. C'est une incroyable occasion de faire comprendre aux populations autochtones, mais aussi aux non-Autochtones, le rôle d'allié et les relations découlant des traités. "

Bien que la réconciliation soit avant tout la responsabilité du colonisateur, les efforts autochtones pour avancer dans la décolonisation remettront nécessairement en cause la domination de la pensée occidentale, notamment celle sur la terre. La colonisation, selon Alex Wilson, a imposé des systèmes binaires qui doivent être démantelés pour permettre le progrès. Elle donne un cours sur l'apprentissage inspiré de la terre dans une optique queer à l'Université de la Saskatchewan, où elle traite de ces idées, qu'elle a pu cerner en voyant, dans ses recherches et ses expériences d'enseignement, les gens reproduire systématiquement des schémas issus du colonialisme (mais à l'extérieur) dans leurs pratiques axées sur la terre. Elle s'est alors rendu compte qu'il fallait chercher à comprendre comment utiliser l'apprentissage inspiré de la terre pour démonter les systèmes binaires imposés par la colonisation. "

" C'est là que le facteur queer entre en jeu. Ce n'est pas qu'une simple question d'inclusivité de la communauté LGBTQ2S+, même si cela en fait partie. Mais c'est aussi de comprendre que, puisqu'il y a une telle diversité dans la nature, pour toute idée binaire qui naît dans l'esprit humain, on peut certainement trouver quelque chose dans la nature qui viendra l'invalider ou la rendre queer. J'utilise l'expression "rendre queer" plutôt que "décoloniser" pour centrer la démarche sur quelque chose de positif - comme le queer - plutôt sur la colonisation et les efforts pour la défaire. Cette approche est créatrice, régénératrice et axée sur la vie plutôt que sur sa destruction. "

Regard vers l'avenir

Même si l'apprentissage inspiré de la terre n'est pas encore offert partout dans les écoles du pays, surtout dans les centres urbains, l'intérêt pour ce modèle est grandissant. Alex Wilson explique que plusieurs conseils scolaires - surtout dans les Territoires du Nord-Ouest et le nord du Manitoba, de la Saskatchewan et de l'Alberta - commencent à l'offrir sous différentes formes. Il y a plusieurs exemples d'écoles et de systèmes scolaires entiers qui placent les connaissances axées sur la terre au centre de leur programme de base.

L'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre a le potentiel de créer une nouvelle génération de citoyens canadiens jamais vue, immergée dès le plus jeune âge dans une vision du monde fondée sur le respect. C'est un exemple positif de ce que le futur pourrait nous réserver dans le contexte difficile des bouleversements environnementaux mondiaux.

Récemment, Amy Parent, en tant que codirectrice facultaire du programme de maîtrise en éducation de Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, a pu collaborer avec plusieurs leaders Sḵwx̱wú7mesh. Leur contribution a conduit à la création de Aya7ayulh Chet (Cultural Journeys), un projet pour les élèves de la maternelle à la sixième année à Squamish, en Colombie-Britannique, qui gravite autour de l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre. Ce programme est le fruit d'une collaboration entre la nation Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, le conseil scolaire Sea-to-Sky et le comité de parents de la Stawamus Elementary School. L'école, favorable aux pratiques éducationnelles inspirées de la terre en langue Skwxwú7mesh, accueille également des élèves non autochtones.

" Nous formons des citoyens canadiens comme on n'en a jamais vu avant, dit Joy Joseph-McCullough, directrice adjointe de l'éducation pour la nation Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, qui a grandement contribué à la création d'Aya7ayulh Chet (Cultural Journeys). Les élèves développeront une compréhension et une empathie qu'ils garderont dans leur esprit et leur cœur grâce aux enseignements culturels et spirituels qu'ils acquièrent de la terre. Leur vision sera nouvelle. Imaginez ce qui se passera si l'un d'eux se lance en politique et devient premier ministre du Canada. "

Joseph-McCullough raconte ce que la mère d'un petit garçon du programme, cheveux roux et taches de rousseur au visage, avait dit à l'enseignante culturelle, Charlene Williams. Son fils lui avait expliqué : " c'est comme ça qu'on fait les choses quand on est Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, maman ". Sa mère s'était inquiétée, car son fils s'exprimait comme s'il était un Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, alors que pour elle, ce n'était pas le cas.

" Elle ne savait pas comment dire à son enfant qu'il n'était pas Sḵwx̱wú7mesh. "

Face à cette situation, Joseph-McCullough voulait absolument aider cette femme, sachant que l'apprentissage inspiré de la terre était nouveau. Elle se rappelle avoir conseillé la famille : " La culture, c'est ce qu'on pratique, et votre garçon pratique la culture Sḵwx̱wú7mesh. Cette culture est donc maintenant sienne. Nous n'avons pas à la lui enlever. Il peut cheminer ainsi et ensuite tirer ses propres conclusions avec le temps. "

Un peu plus tard, la mère a rappelé, disant que son garçon était tellement imprégné de la culture Sḵwx̱wú7mesh que tout ce qu'il voulait pour Noël, c'était un panier tressé en écorce de cèdre.

" Elle a demandé à quelqu'un du personnel de lui apprendre comment faire, pour qu'elle puisse offrir à son fils le cadeau qu'il désirait ", rapporte Joy Joseph-McCullough.

D'après Alex Wilson, en fin de compte, la meilleure façon de comprendre l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre est de le voir comme une façon d'enseigner et d'apprendre qui existe depuis aussi longtemps que les humains eux-mêmes. C'est une approche qui, bien qu'ancienne, revêt une importance grandissante dans notre contexte actuel.

" Au moment et à l'endroit où nous sommes, nous avons l'occasion de profiter de ces connaissances, affirme-t-elle. Si les gens avaient prêté l'oreille aux populations inuites 60 ans plus tôt quand elles ont tiré la sonnette d'alarme sur les changements climatiques, comme les choses seraient différentes aujourd'hui! "

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La terre comme école : comprendre l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre

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Qu'est-ce que l'apprentissage autochtone inspiré de la terre et qu'est-ce qu'il n'est pas? Quatre voix autochtones de partout au pays partagent leurs points de vue sur ce que cela signifie pour elles, pourquoi c'est important pour les peuples autochtones et non-autochtones, et comment cela peut soutenir les efforts de réconciliation au Canada.

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Il y a déjà plus de 20 ans, j'ai participé à la fondation du Réseau de recherche et de connaissances relatives aux peuples autochtones (DIALOG). Son mandat : développer un dialogue éthique, constructif et durable entre le monde universitaire et le monde autochtone.

En recevant cette année le Prix Connexion 2021, au nom de l'équipe de direction du Réseau, le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada (CRSH) reconnaît ainsi l'importance de la mission de DIALOG et sa contribution majeure aux initiatives de réconciliation entre la société québécoise/canadienne et les sociétés autochtones.

Forum de partage, de rencontre et de savoir, DIALOG met en relation des chercheurs universitaires, autochtones et non autochtones, des gardiens et des gardiennes du savoir, des leaders, des intellectuels autochtones et des étudiants engagés dans une démarche d'actualisation et de renouvellement des pratiques de recherche et des connaissances scientifiques et autochtones.

Le secret de DIALOG, c'est que nous n'avons pas tenté d'amener les populations autochtones à l'université. Nous sommes allés les voir chez eux.

Renouveler la relation entre l'université et le monde autochtone

DIALOG se caractérise par sa compréhension élargie du rôle moteur de la coconstruction dans l'avancement et la mobilisation des connaissances. Son mode de fonctionnement est axé sur l'ouverture à des formes multiples de savoirs et son existence est ancrée dans la durée ainsi que son rayonnement international.

La mission de DIALOG a toujours été de renouveler la relation entre l'université et le monde autochtone, avec la justice au cœur de ses actions, la volonté de contribuer à l'amélioration des conditions de vie des populations autochtones et la reconnaissance que ces peuples détiennent des droits, dont celui à l'autodétermination. La relation entre l'université et le monde autochtone a trop longtemps été caractérisée par un rapport unilatéral au savoir, engendrant peu de retombées pour les communautés autochtones elles-mêmes.

En construisant cet espace de rapprochement au sein duquel les voix, les langues et les savoirs autochtones peuvent s'exprimer à leur manière, DIALOG a reconnu l'existence et les fondements des systèmes de savoirs autochtones, et documenté l'apport des cultures autochtones au patrimoine de l'humanité.

Un travail de terrain

J'ai la chance de faire partie de la première génération d'anthropologues québécois qui ont souhaité, très tôt, non seulement s'instruire des réalités autochtones, mais aussi apprendre à connaître ces peuples de l'intérieur en travaillant en étroite collaboration avec eux.

Mon premier contact avec les communautés autochtones s'est fait il y a maintenant 50 ans et c'est en travaillant avec eux que j'ai grandi.

La présence au sein des communautés et des territoires autochtones était une composante incontournable de notre formation. Et on ne parle pas ici de visites d'une ou deux semaines, mais plutôt d'années à partager la vie communautaire, à loger dans des familles accueillantes et à s'intéresser à de multiples dimensions de la culture locale. J'aurai passé presque sept ans au sein des communautés autochtones.

La différence principale entre mes débuts comme anthropologue et aujourd'hui se situe dans la prise de parole des Autochtones eux-mêmes. Bien sûr, il y a longtemps que les propos des politiciens autochtones sont relayés par les médias. Cependant, aujourd'hui, d'autres paroles se font entendre de la part des jeunes, des femmes, des personnes aînées, soit des paroles citoyennes, portées par des gens de tout âge et de tout genre, qui ont à cœur l'identité, l'éducation, la culture.

Aujourd'hui, on insiste avec raison sur l'importance pour les chercheuses et les chercheurs de privilégier la coproduction des connaissances. La recherche se fait avec les Autochtones, et non pas sur les Autochtones.

Respect, équité et partage

Des valeurs de respect, d'équité, de partage, de réciprocité et de confiance animent les membres du Réseau, quels qu'ils soient, selon leurs trajectoires respectives et leurs contributions spécifiques au savoir. Ils explorent ensemble divers chemins de connaissance et font appel aux épistémologies et aux ontologies autochtones afin d'apporter de nouvelles réponses aux défis communautaires auxquels font face les populations.

DIALOG mise également sur le potentiel d'innovation et de transformation sociale que recèlent les instances qui œuvrent à leur mieux-être, autant au sein des communautés autochtones territoriales (réserves) qu'en milieux urbains où la présence autochtone est de plus en plus nombreuse.

Ériger des passerelles entre savoirs scientifiques et autochtones

Dans cette optique, la démarche de coconstruction des connaissances, à la source des passerelles à ériger entre savoirs scientifiques et savoirs autochtones, ne peut être qu'une œuvre collective ancrée dans le relationnel, contrairement à une orientation prédéterminée et déjà calibrée à l'image d'une science impersonnelle, distante et dominante.

La première caractéristique de la coconstruction en matière de recherche sociale est en effet de reconnaître le rôle incontournable du lien de proximité qui unit ses actrices, ses acteurs et les mènent par la suite à s'engager vers de nouvelles avenues de compréhension et de décolonisation.

La seconde caractéristique est de favoriser la prise en compte des compétences et des expertises, souvent complémentaires.

Enfin, il ne saurait y avoir de coconstruction sans une participation de toutes et tous à la régénération des héritages culturels et pédagogiques, des modes de pensée, d'apprentissage et de transmission, des marqueurs sociaux qui sous-tendent la vie collective ; autant de systèmes de valeurs et d'action autochtones ébranlés par l'entreprise coloniale, mais dont les principes directeurs et l'essence même ont transcendé les époques et les générations.

Je suis aujourd'hui une kokom (aînée) qui souhaite apprendre encore longtemps des humains en général et des cultures autochtones en particulier. Je me sens privilégiée de pouvoir poursuivre mes travaux de recherche, tous aussi intéressants les uns que les autres, de travailler tous les jours avec des gens qui m'inspirent et de séjourner encore très souvent en milieu autochtone, un ressourcement essentiel à mon existence de femme et d'anthropologue.
Note de la rédaction : Ce reportage fait partie d'une série qui comprend également des entretiens en direct avec certains des meilleurs universitaires canadiens en sciences sociales et humaines. Cliquez ici pour vous inscrire à cet événement gratuit coparrainé par The Conversation/La Conversation et le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines.

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Bâtir des ponts entre savoirs scientifiques et savoirs autochtones

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Il y a déjà plus de 20 ans, j'ai participé à la fondation du Réseau de recherche et de connaissances relatives aux peuples autochtones (DIALOG). Son mandat : développer un dialogue éthique, constructif et durable entre le monde universitaire et le monde autochtone.

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Accueil " Environnement " Le biais qui conduit à sous-estimer

Photo: iStock - kappaphoto

Agence Science-Presse

Alors que ceux qui nient le réchauffement climatique les accusent encore d'être des " alarmistes ", les climatologues ont plutôt cette mauvaise habitude de continuellement sous-estimer les risques, si l'on en juge par l'histoire récente des sciences.

Ils " minimisent " les menaces,  résume l'historienne des sciences Naomi Oreskes dans la dernière édition du  Scientific American. Elle rappelle par exemple qu'en 2008, le politologue Roger Pielke Jr  avait déterminé que la hausse du niveau des mers était plus élevée que ce qui avait été prédit dans deux des trois précédents rapports du GIEC (le groupe d'experts des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques). De la même façon, en 2009, une synthèse de centaines d'études sur le climat  avait identifié  plusieurs sujets à propos desquels les scientifiques avaient " sous-estimé " ce qui allait se produire, mais aucune où ils l'avaient surestimé.

Oreskes ne vient pas de faire une découverte : comme elle le rappelle,  dès 2013, une de ses collègues de l'Université de Californie à San Diego, Keynyn Brysse, avait écrit que " ces sous-estimations représentent une sorte de biais ".

" Les scientifiques tendent vers la plus basse projection, parce qu'ils ne veulent pas être accusés de faire des allégations dramatiques et exagérées. "

Le problème s'est-il estompé avec le temps ? Ce n'est pas si sûr, si l'on pense à la fonte des glaces de l'Arctique, ou aux nouveaux records de température. Plusieurs fois par année, apparaît un nouveau bilan qui révèle que les estimations précédentes avaient sous-estimé  la vitesse  de ces changements.

Ce n'est pas si différent des biais inconscients dont a parlé la littérature sur la discrimination ces dernières années. Un biais inconscient peut être causé par des préjugés inconscients, mais il peut être aussi un réflexe défensif, écrit Oreskes : " encore aujourd'hui, les scientifiques continuent d'être accusés d'exagérer les risques climatiques par des figures influentes qui obtiennent une attention médiatique disproportionnée ". La crainte d'être ciblé peut alors conduire à choisir inconsciemment les scénarios qui sont prudents, tellement prudents qu'ils en sont irréalistes. Avec tous les risques que cela implique : " des estimations trop basses peuvent créer la fausse impression que nous avons plus de temps pour régler le problème ".

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Accueil " Environnement " Le biais qui conduit à sous-estimer Agence Science-Presse Alors que ceux qui nient le réchauffement climatique les accusent encore d'être des " alarmistes ", les climatologues ont plutôt cette mauvaise habitude de continuellement sous-estimer les risques, si l'on en juge par l'histoire récente des sciences.

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Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability

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This book examines the importance of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and how it can provide models for a time-tested form of sustainability needed in the world today. The essays, written by a team of scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, explore TEK through compelling cases of en...

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Réclamer la terre ¹ est une prise de conscience autant qu'un cri de ralliement. Cette exposition collective s'appuie sur un constat de sa conseillère scientifique, Ariel Salleh : "Rassembler écologie, féminisme, socialisme et politiques autochtones signifie renoncer à la vision eurocentrique pour adopter un regard véritablement global ².". Désirant penser le monde au-delà de la division entre nature et culture, l'exposition suit la trace d'artistes qui travaillent autrement les éléments (terre, eau, feu, air, végétaux, minéraux...), irréductibles à leur simple matérialité. Ils sont à la fois médium et outil, des vecteurs culturels, historiques et politiques revitalisés dans un contexte d'urgence écologique.

Quatorze artistes, de différentes générations et origines culturelles, examinent ainsi les liens entre le corps et la terre, notre relation primordiale au sol et à tout ce qu'il nourrit, la disparition de certaines espèces, la transmission de récits et savoirs autochtones, le glanage et la collecte, ou encore la justice sociale et la guérison collective. Ces artistes nous montrent que nous ne sommes pas "face au paysage", ni "sur terre" mais qu'au contraire nous faisons corps avec elle, créant cette "communauté du sol" dont parlait Rachel Carson, à l'origine du mouvement écologiste ³. Nous devons remplacer les rapports de domination et de subordination, par ceux de parenté et d'alliances, car " la Terre n'est ni une réserve naturelle, ni une ressource agricole, c'est un écheveau de relations entre les minéraux, les plantes, les animaux et les humains " ⁴. Il est temps d'abandonner le modèle obsolète d'une société extr activiste et de remettre les humains à leur place ; non plus des individus séparés de leur environnement, mais des " entités relationnelles " ⁵.

" Il y a plus d'idées sur terre qu'on ne l'imagine ; des idées à même la terre, à même les choses, à même les formes du vivant. "

Marielle Macé, Nos cabanes, Verdier, 2019

Les artistes de " Réclamer la terre " nous aident à penser et à ressentir une nature chargée, intensifiée et active. Iels fouillent la terre au sens propre comme figuré, transformant des racines souterraines en racines aériennes, (re)mettant en avant des récits oubliés, réduits au silence, ou même à inventer. Léuli Eshrāghi, conseiller·e scientifique de l'exposition, montre ainsi le besoin de réparation, soin et guérison des cultures autochtones discréditées par le colonialisme. S'éloignant d'une vision eurocentrique, les artistes développent de nouvelles connexions avec l'environnement. Leurs actions forment un assemblage de pratiques et d'échelles de relations : à la terre, aux ancêtres, à la vie humaine et non humaine, ainsi qu'à la culture visuelle. Il s'agit d'évoquer notamment les rapports autochtones au territoire, des cultures engagées, mais aussi des recherches sociales, culturelles ou spirituelles, témoignant de la résurgence décolonial e de savoirs : savoir-penser, savoir-faire mais surtout savoir-être au monde.

Notes de bas de page

(1) Titre inspiré par le premier recueil de textes écoféministes : Reclaim the Earth: Women Speak Out for Life on Earth, édité par Leonie Caldecott et Stephanie
Leland (The Women's Press, Londres, 1983)
(2) Ariel Salleh, Ecofeminism as Politics: nature, Marx and the postmodern (Zed Books, Londres, 1997/2017), p. 153.
(3) Rachel Carson, Printemps silencieux (Wildproject, Marseille, 2020), p.98 (publication originale Silent Spring, 1962).
(4) Barbara Glowczewski, Réveiller les esprits de la terre (Dehors, Bellevaux, 2021), p. 266.
(5) Arturo Escobar,Sentir-penser avec la terre. Une écologie au-delà de l'Occident (Seuil, Paris, 2018), p. 136

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Éditorial : Réclamer la terre

Éditorial de la saison " Réclamer la terre " par Guillaume Desanges.

Explorer la Tokyothèque

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L'exposition collective " Réclamer la terre " rassemble écologie, féminisme, socialisme et politiques autochtones au Palais de Tokyo, du 15 avril au 4 septembre 2022.

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Overview of TEK - Traditional Ecological Knowledge (U.S. National Park Service)

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Hubert Reeves nous explique T.2 : La forêt Par Hubert Reeves | Bande dessinée | Jeunesse | leslibraires.ca | Acheter des livres papier et numériques en ligne

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Hubert Reeves nous explique la forêtLa forêt est la maison de nos plus lointains ancêtres, elle est le lieu de notre passé et nous relie à loi. Nous y retournons pour nous pénétrer de notre…

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Hubert Reeves nous explique T.1 : La biodiversité par Hubert Reeves, Nelly Boutinot, Daniel Casanave, Claire Champion | Bande dessinée | Jeunesse | Leslibraires.ca

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Hubert reeves nous explique la biodiversité

Après avoir passé des années le regard tourné vers les étoiles, Hubert Reeves se passionne aujourd'hui pour l'avenir de notre planète.

Le plus sympathique des astrophysiciens nous entraîne dans un voyage surprenant qui nous fera comprendre l'importance de la protection des êtres vivants.

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Hubert Reeves nous explique T.1 : La biodiversité

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Hubert Reeves nous explique T.1 : La biodiversité par Hubert Reeves, Nelly Boutinot, Daniel Casanave, Claire Champion | Bande dessinée | Jeunesse | Leslibraires.ca Hubert reeves nous explique la biodiversité Après avoir passé des années le regard tourné vers les étoiles, Hubert Reeves se passionne aujourd'hui pour l'avenir de notre planète.

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Bande-annonce Nous sommes les protecteurs de l'eau

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Avec l'aide des enseignements de sa grand-mère, une petite fille incite les siens à se tenir debout afin d'empêcher la construction de pipelines désastreux pour l'environnement. Inspiré par les nombreux mouvements autochtones à l'échelle de l'Amérique du Nord, cet ouvrage à la fois audacieux et lyrique lance un cri de ralliement pour protéger l'eau de notre Terre contre la pollution et la corruption.

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La boutique Bayard Jeunesse - Nous sommes les protecteurs de l'eau

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Avec l'aide des enseignements de sa grand-mère, une petite fille incite les siens à se tenir debout afin d'empêcher la construction de pipelines désastreux pour l'environnement. Inspiré par les nombreux mouvements autochtones à l'échelle de l'Amérique du Nord, cet ouvrage à la fois audacieux et lyrique lance un cri de

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Le Muscadier / Collection / Rester vivant

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Le Muscadier publie des livres traitant de questions de société (littérature ado, débats, essais) ainsi que des livres de santé publique en partenariat avec l'Inserm.

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Chapter 1 Summary: "Skywoman Falling"

Kimmerer recounts the Indigenous Creation story of Skywoman. Skywoman falls from the Skyworld, bringing light with her. Caught by a flock of geese, she steps onto the back of a turtle. After many creatures try, the muskrat sacrifices himself to fetch mud from the sea floor. It is spread on the turtle's back and the woman dances upon it, creating Turtle Island, the original land mass. Skywoman plants seeds and grows plants. Of all these flourishing plants, sweetgrass (or wiingaashk) is "the very first to grow on the earth" (8) and is one of the four sacred plants of the Potawatomi nation. It has many uses: "[I]ts value is both material and spiritual" (5). Braiding sweetgrass to make baskets can be like braiding hair, the author writes. Both are acts of reciprocity and tenderness.

As a lecturer in botany and ecology, Kimmerer teaches students how Skywoman's gardens-known to scientists as "global ecosystems"-function. While most of her students believe humans and the environment do not mix well, she believes otherwise. She compares those raised with the story of Skywoman against those raised with the story of Eve in Eden; the latter individuals learn of how humanity was "instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast" (7).

This is a pertinent dichotomy between ancestral gardener and exile-between those who embrace the living world and those who are banished to it.

The teachings of Skywoman are more a compass than commandments. The author compares the story of Skywoman with the story of immigrants arriving in America. Being Indigenous, she says, "means living as if your children's future mattered" (9). By listening to the origin story of the land, the current generation might discover a more sustainable future.

In 1895, two "young willow whips" (11) cross the prairie and go fishing. The boys head home, having caught nothing. En route, one boy stubs his toe on a ripened pecan nut. They gather as many as they can and take them home. One of these boys is the author's grandpa, "living in a shanty on the Oklahoma prairie when it was still 'Indian Territory'" (12).

The word "pecan" is etymologically derived from Indigenous languages. After the Potawatomi's forced removal from the Great Lakes region on the Trail of Death, the author's ancestors were moved to reservations in Oklahoma. They lost their lands, names, and history, and many lost their lives. During one of these removals, they came across the "pigan" tree, which would eventually become "pecan" in English. Full of protein, nuts are "poor man's meat" (13), the author writes.

Though harvested intermittently, pecan nuts ripen during the winter when food is scarce. All pecan trees bear fruit as one. This "boom and bust cycle" (14) allows them to be stored by animals and thus propagate more successfully, though science differs on the exact reasons why. The author sees a lesson in this: "All flourishing is mutual" (15).

As part of the US's Indian Removal and assimilation policies, the federal government separated Indigenous children from "their families and cultures, sending them far away to school, long enough, they hoped, to make them forget who they were" (17). Children were kidnapped outright, or their parents were coerced, blackmailed, or threatened into giving them up. Eventually, the Indigenous peoples were given the choice between becoming US citizens and surrendering "their allegiance to land held in common" (18). To decide, they met at a place named Pecan Grove. Many accepted and headed to Oklahoma. Unlike the pecan trees, they did not remain unified. Soon, many lost their land anyway. Decades later, their descendants gathered in Oklahoma and tried to stand together "for the benefit of all" (21), just like the pecan trees.

The author describes herself as being "raised by strawberries" (22), in that the nearby fields of wild strawberries provided "[her] sense of the world" (22) when she was growing up. She describes playing in the fields after school; even now, fresh strawberries feel to her like "an unexpected gift" (23). In the Creation myth, Skywoman's daughter died during childbirth; strawberries and the other "most revered plants" (23) grew from her buried body. Like the gifts harvested from nature, the author's family gave one another almost exclusively homemade gifts. Her mother baked her father a strawberry shortcake each year on his birthday, for example.

The author notes the difference between items bought as a commodity and those received as a handmade gift: "A gift establishes a feeling-bond between two people" (26). For this reason, she adds, "we do not sell sweetgrass" (26); it should only be given. Those who pick it should do so "properly and respectfully" (27), giving a gift back to the earth in return.

According to the author, the offensive phrase "Indian giver"-a pejorative to describe a person who gives something away and later asks for it back-"derives from a fascinating cross-cultural misinterpretation" (27). The settlers, with their concept of private property, saw gifts as valuable items that should be retained. The Indigenous people understood "the value of the gift to be based in reciprocity" (28) and expected the cycle of gift-giving to continue. In the paradigm of private property, the gift is free. In the gift economy, the gift "creates a set of relationships" (28). The author imagines a market square that operates under the gift economy; any attempt to pay is refused, the author feels a natural sense of self-restraint, and there is an understanding that the givers can expect gifts in kind.

Such a change in perception alters "our human relationship with strawberries" (30); in gift economies, objects remain plentiful "because they are treated as gifts" (30), transforming the fundamental comprehension of a commodity. The author advises readers to reject the buying and selling of gifts and to choose instead a gift economy over a market economy whenever possible.

The author spends her childhood summers "canoe camping in the Adirondacks" (33). Every morning, her father makes coffee and then pours some out on the ground to run into the lake-an offering for "the gods of Tahawus" (34). Tahawus is the Algonquin name for the highest peak in the Adirondacks, Mount Marcy. On these trips, the author learns about the public names for mountains and bodies of water, which differ from their "true names." She also learns that places were "home to others before we arrived and long after we left" (34). Whenever they leave a campsite, they ensure that it is "spotless." They also leave firewood and kindling for the next arrivals.

When other children are in church, the author's parents take the family out into the natural world. On reaching adolescence, however, these trips begin to "leave [the author] angry or sad" (35), as though they are recreating a lost memory. This confusion gradually passes; later, she finds people with similar beliefs, built upon the same foundation of mutual respect for these connections with the natural world.

This understanding informs the author's life and work. Rituals like pouring coffee onto the ground are "a vehicle for belonging" (37), connecting her to a lost lineage and reminding her of gifts and responsibilities. Years later, however, she learns that her father's coffee ceremony is probably not rooted in ancient Indigenous traditions. According to her father, it may have begun simply as a way to pour out the grounds which got caught in the spout of the kettle. Nevertheless, he continued this ritual because it felt right-a "kind of thanks [...] you could call it joy" (37). This is how ceremony "marries the mundane to the sacred" (37).

The author recalls her first days as a college freshman majoring in botany. In her rehearsed answer during her intake interview, Kimmerer says she always wanted to know "why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together" (39). This-and many similar questions-are "not science," says her advisor, who views botany as a purely empirical concern.

According to Kimmerer, the laboratory is a different world that asks different questions than the ones that initially interested her. It is "reductionist, mechanist, and strictly objective" (42). At first, the author struggles with this, but she later thrives in a laboratory setting-so much so that she progresses to a master's degree and a PhD. Then, she takes a faculty position. Feeling as though she is still missing something, she begins a "long, slow journey back to [her] people" (44). She returns again to the question of asters and goldenrod, discussing the scientific reasons for why they look so good beside one another. The scientific answer is that to the human eye and the bee's eye, purple and gold are complementary colors. Kimmerer writes, "Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone" (46). This is a major revelation for the author. It speaks to her growing awareness of the importance of reciprocity in nature, and it helps reconcile her dual approach to the natural world, which is equal parts scientific and spiritual.

The author describes the process of becoming native in a place by speaking its language. On learning the Indigenous word "puhpowee"-"the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight" (49)-the author delights in the possibility of names and languages beyond the world of science. Many Indigenous languages, including the Potawatomi language, were forcibly suppressed and now have few fluent speakers. The author makes a concerted effort to relearn the language of her ancestors.

Learning nouns is easy enough for the author, but verbs are more complex. While around 30% of the English language is made up of verbs, 70% of Potawatomi words are verbs. Whereas many romance languages divide words into different genders, Potawatomi divides words into the animate and the inanimate. This grammar of animacy is not found in English, which reduces words to "either a human or a thing" (56). As a result, one of Kimmerer's students argues, "[S]peaking English, thinking in English, somehow gives us permission to disrespect nature" (57). Along those same lines of thought, Kimmerer writes, "Learning the grammar of animacy could well be a restraint on our mindless exploitation of land" (58).

The opening chapters of the book establish the main theme that will be addressed by the author: how Indigenous teachings can inform modern science and community-building, particularly when it comes to efforts to preserve the natural world and fight climate change. Throughout the book, the author explores tension between traditional Indigenous conceptions of biology and the modern, scientific modes of addressing this subject. As a descendent of the Indigenous Potawatomi people, the author recalls the small ceremonies that were practiced by her family, as well as the language that they used in order to conceive of the world in a different manner. The Indigenous interpretation emphasizes the symbiosis between the natural world and humanity-a concept the author repeatedly returns to known as "reciprocity." Kimmerer finds examples of reciprocity everywhere she looks, from the complementary colors of the asters and goldenrod, to the push-and-pull involved in braiding sweetgrass, to the pecans that perpetuate their own survival by feeding squirrels and humans.

By recognizing and appreciating reciprocity in nature, humans may eventually replicate these patterns in their social and economic structures, writes the author. In another important theme, she argues that market economies based around private property should be replaced by the "gift economies" evident in many modern and ancestral Indigenous communities. Through the set of responsibilities that emerge through giving and receiving gifts-as opposed to buying and selling commodities-humanity may learn to appreciate the preciousness of the earth's bounty and to practice restraint in extracting those resources. This is merely one way the author believes Indigenous teachings may help slow or stave off the ruinous consequences of climate change by cutting down on overconsumption.

Language also becomes both an important motif and a valuable tool for living in greater harmony with Mother Nature. In comparison to English, for instance, Potawatomi divides the world into the inanimate and the animate. The animate is everything natural: humans, animals, plants, fire, rocks, rivers, winds, and a great deal more. By treating these different things as equal in a linguistic sense, they are given greater agency and respect. This reverence leads to a closer bond with nature and a willingness not to overharvest or overuse natural resources. Combined with the cultural idea of a gift economy, the book promotes a paradigm shift, suggesting that humanity alter the way it conceives of the world in order to help save it.

Despite the author's tendency to look to Indigenous cultures for solutions to 21st-century environmental dilemmas, she remains a committed scientist with a vast knowledge based in the empirical study of the natural world. Yet this balance between Indigenous wisdom and traditional modern science is part of what makes her such a unique and valuable voice among both mainstream ecologists and proponents of more ancient traditions. Kimmerer also combines these two strands of inquiry with a fascination with remaking modern economies, as each discipline is likened to one of the three weaved rows that make up a sweetgrass basket.

While diagnosing contemporary issues and providing solutions for the future, the text also tells historical stories. The author skillfully weaves elements of history, such as the federal government's atrocious treatment of Indigenous people, into her own biography. By taking a moral stance on issues of the past, the author establishes a clear moral framework for contemporary issues, further illustrating her point and justifying her ideas.

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Braiding Sweetgrass Part 1, Chapters 1-6 Summary & Analysis

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Kimmerer recounts the Indigenous Creation story of Skywoman. Skywoman falls from the Skyworld, bringing light with her. Caught by a flock of geese, she steps onto the back of a turtle. After many creatures try, the muskrat sacrifices himself to fetch mud from the sea floor.

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Auteurs : Michel Piquemal, illustrations Philippe Lagautrière
Editeur : Albin Michel-Jeunesse, Paris
Année : 2010
Prix : 13,7 €
ISBN : 978-2-226-20954-2

Ce recueil de mythes, fables anciennes et modernes, contes de toutes origines aborde les notions de responsabilté, de modération, d'équilibre autour des relations de l'homme et de la nature. Chaque récit est accompagné de questions, de mots-clés et de repères.

Pouvons-nous continuer à vivre comme si nous étions les seuls maîtres d'une Terre aux ressources supposées infinies ? Pour y réfléchir et questionner nos habitudes, voici 50 fables anciennes ou modernes, mythes ou contes de sagesse... Un court commentaire philosophique suit chaque fable, invitant à une réflexion autour des notions de partage, d'équilibre et de solidarité...

Une manière agréable de se forger un enthousiasme écologique !

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Auteurs : Michel Piquemal, illustrations Philippe Lagautrière Editeur : Albin Michel-Jeunesse, Paris Année : 2010 Prix : 13,7 € ISBN : 978-2-226-20954-2 Ce recueil de mythes, fables anciennes et modernes, contes de toutes origines aborde les notions de responsabilté, de modération, d'équilibre autour des relations de l'homme et de la nature.

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ILLUSTRATION BY LUISA RIVERA/YALE E360

From Alaska to Australia, scientists are turning to the knowledge of traditional people for a deeper understanding of the natural world. What they are learning is helping them discover more about everything from melting Arctic ice, to protecting fish stocks, to controlling wildfires.

While he was interviewing Inuit elders in Alaska to find out more about their knowledge of beluga whales and how the mammals might respond to the changing Arctic, researcher Henry Huntington lost track of the conversation as the hunters suddenly switched from the subject of belugas to beavers.

It turned out though, that the hunters were still really talking about whales. There had been an increase in beaver populations, they explained, which had reduced spawning habitat for salmon and other fish, which meant less prey for the belugas and so fewer whales.

"It was a more holistic view of the ecosystem," said Huntington. And an important tip for whale researchers. "It would be pretty rare for someone studying belugas to be thinking about freshwater ecology."

Around the globe, researchers are turning to what is known as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to fill out an understanding of the natural world. TEK is deep knowledge of a place that has been painstakingly discovered by those who have adapted to it over thousands of years. "People have relied on this detailed knowledge for their survival," Huntington and a colleague wrote in an article on the subject. "They have literally staked their lives on its accuracy and repeatability."

Tapping into this traditional wisdom is playing an outsized role in the Arctic, where change is happening rapidly.

This realm has long been studied by disciplines under headings such as ethno-biology, ethno-ornithology, and biocultural diversity. But it has gotten more attention from mainstream scientists lately because of efforts to better understand the world in the face of climate change and the accelerating loss of biodiversity.

Anthropologist Wade Davis, now at the University of British Columbia, refers to the constellation of the world's cultures as the " ethnosphere," or "the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions, brought into being by human imagination since the dawn of consciousness. It's a symbol of all that we are, and all that we can be, as an astonishingly inquisitive species."

One estimate says that while native peoples only comprise some 4 or 5 percent of the world's population, they use almost a quarter of the world's land surface and manage 11 percent of its forests. "In doing so, they maintain 80 percent of the planet's biodiversity in, or adjacent to, 85 percent of the world's protected areas," writes Gleb Raygorodetsky, a researcher with the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at the University of Victoria and the author of The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change.

Tapping into this wisdom is playing an outsized role in sparsely settled places such as the Arctic, where change is happening rapidly - warming is occurring twice as fast as other parts of the world. Tero Mustonen, a Finnish researcher and chief of his village of Selkie, is pioneering the blending of TEK and mainstream science as the director of a project called the Snowchange Cooperative. "Remote sensing can detect changes," he says. "But what happens as a result, what does it mean?" That's where traditional knowledge can come into play as native people who make a living on the landscape as hunters and fishers note the dramatic changes taking place in remote locales - everything from thawing permafrost to change in reindeer migration and other types of biodiversity redistribution.

The Skolt Sami people of Finland, for example, participated in a study that was published in the journal Science last year, which adopted indicators of environmental changes based on TEK. The Sami have seen and documented a decline in salmon in the Näätämö River, for instance. Now, based on their knowledge, they are adapting - reducing the number of seine nets they use to catch fish, restoring spawning sites, and also taking more pike, which prey on young salmon, as part of their catch. The project is part of a co-management process between the Sami and the government of Finland.

Food Insecurity: Arctic heat is threatening indigenous life. Read more.

The project has also gathered information from the Sami about insects, which are temperature dependent and provide an important indicator of a changing Arctic. The Sami have witnessed dramatic changes in the range of insects that are making their way north. The scarbaeid beetle, for example, was documented by Sami people as the invader arrived in the forests of Finland and Norway, far north of its customary range. It has also become part of the Sami oral history.

It's not only in the Arctic. Around the world there are efforts to make use of traditional wisdom to gain a better and deeper understanding of the planet - and there is sometimes a lot at stake.

Record brush fires burned across Australia in 2009, killing 173 people and injuring more than 400. The day the number of fires peaked - February 7 - is known as Black Saturday. It led to a great deal of soul searching in Australia, especially as climate warming has exacerbated fire seasons there.

Land managers in Australia have adopted many of the fire-control practices of the aborigines and have partnered with native people.

Bill Gammage is an academic historian and fellow at the Humanities Research Center of the Australian National University, and his book, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How the Aborigines Made Australia, looks at the complex and adept way that aborigines, prior to colonization in 1789, managed the landscape with "fire and no fire" - something called "fire stick farming."

They used "cool" fires to control everything from biodiversity to water supply to the abundance of wildlife and edible plants. Gammage noted five stages of the indigenous use of fire - first was to control wildfire fuel; second, to maintain diversity; third, to balance species; fourth, to ensure abundance; and five, to locate resources conveniently and predictably. The current regime, he says, is still struggling with number one.

"Controlled fire averted uncontrolled fire," Gammage says, "and fire or no-fire distributed plants with the precision of a flame edge. In turn, this attracted or deterred grazing animals and located them in habitats each preferred, making them abundant, convenient, and predictable. All was where fire or no-fire put it. Australia was not natural in 1788, but made."

While the skill of aborigines with fire had been noted before the giant brushfires - early settlers remarked on the "park-like" nature of the landscape - and studied before, it's taken on new urgency. That's why Australian land managers have adopted many of the ideas and partnered with native people as co-managers. The fire practices of the aborigines are also being taught and used in other countries.

Scientists have looked to Australian natives for other insights into the natural world. A team of researchers collaborated with natives based on their observations of kites and falcons that fly with flaming branches from a forest fire to start other fires. It's well known that birds will hunt mice and lizards as they flee the flames of a wildfire. But stories among indigenous people in northern Australia held that some birds actually started fires by dropping a burning branch in unburned places. Based on this TEK, researchers watched and documented this behavior.

"It's a feeding frenzy, because out of these grasslands comes small birds, lizards, insects, everything fleeing in front of the fire," said Bob Gosford, an indigenous rights lawyer and ornithologist, who worked on the research, in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2016.

Another recent study down under found that an ancient practice of using fire to clear land to improve hunting also creates a more diverse mosaic of re-growth that increases the number of the primate prey species: monitor lizards and kangaroos.

"Westerners have done little but isolate ourselves from nature," said Mark Bonta, an assistant professor at Penn State Altoona who was on a co-author on the paper on fire and raptors. "Yet those who make a point of connecting with our earth in some form have enormous knowledge because they interact with a species. When you get into conservation, [that knowledge] is even more important." Aboriginal people "don't see themselves as superior to or separated from animals. They are walking storehouses of knowledge," he said.

The Maya people of Mesoamerica have much to teach us about farming, experts say. Researchers have found that they preserve an astonishing amount of biodiversity in their forest gardens, in harmony with the surrounding forest. "The active gardens found around Maya forest villagers' houses shows that it's the most diverse domestic system in the world," integrated into the forest ecosystem, writes Anabel Ford, who is head of the MesoAmerican Research Center at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "These forest gardeners are heroes, yet their skill and sophistication have too long been set aside and devalued."

Some native people have the ability to adopt the "perspective of many creatures and objects - rocks, water, clouds," a researcher says.

Valuing these life ways is an important part of the process. For the Skolt Sami, writes Mustonen, "seeing their language and culture valued led to an increase in self-esteem and power over their resources."

It may not just be facts about the natural world that are important in these exchanges, but different ways of being and perceiving. In fact, there are researchers looking into the relationship between some indigenous people and the very different ways they see the world.

Felice Wyndham is an ecological anthropologist and ethnobiologist who has noted that people she has worked with can intimately sense the world beyond their body. "It's a form of enhanced mindfulness," she says. "It's quite common, you see it in most hunter-gatherer groups. It's an extremely developed skill base of cognitive agility, of being able to put yourself into a viewpoint and perspective of many creatures or objects - rocks, water, clouds.

Environmentalists at Risk: An e360 special report on the recent rash of killings of environmental activists worldwide. Read more.

"We, as humans, have a remarkable sensitivity, imagination, and ability to be cognitively agile," Wyndham says. "If we are open to it and train ourselves to learn how to drop all of the distractions to our sensory capacity, we're able to do so much more biologically than we use in contemporary industrial society."

Among the most important messages from traditional people is their equanimity and optimism. There "is no sense of doom and gloom," says Raygorodetsky. "Despite dire circumstances, they maintain hope for the future."

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Native Knowledge: What Ecologists Are Learning from Indigenous People

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From Alaska to Australia, scientists are turning to the knowledge of traditional people for a deeper understanding of the natural world. What they are learning is helping them discover more about everything from melting Arctic ice, to protecting fish stocks, to controlling wildfires.

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Join us in a Study Circles Online Conversation and the exploration the book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2015). Each session will use Kimmerer's book as a foundation for the conversation while exploring the impact of the opportunity gap on our Native American students in the state of Wisconsin.

About the Book

Updated with a new introduction from Robin Wall Kimmerer, the hardcover special edition of Braiding Sweetgrass, reissued in honor of the fortieth anniversary of Milkweed Editions, celebrates the book as an object of meaning that will last the ages. Beautifully bound in stamped cloth with a bookmark ribbon and a deckled edge, this edition features five brilliantly colored illustrations by artist Nate Christopherson. In increasingly dark times, we honor the experience that more than 350,000 readers in North America have cherished about the book-gentle, simple, tactile, beautiful, even sacred-and offer an edition that will inspire readers to gift it again and again, spreading the word about scientific knowledge, indigenous wisdom, and the teachings of plants.

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings-asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass-offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

Participant Outcomes

As a result of participating in this Study Circles Online Conversation, participants will:

have an opportunity to read and discuss selected American Indian themed books with participants from across Wisconsin.

learn about diverse aspects of Native American histories and cultural concepts.

address bias, myths, stereotypes and misconceptions of Indigenous peoples, communities, and nations.

engage in discussion with colleagues and explore multiple perspectives about First Nations Studies and the education of American Indian students.

Training Format and Schedule

Each Study Circles Online Conversation will consist of one MANDATORY 60-minute orientation session followed by three 1.5 hour discussion sessions.

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Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants - Study Circles Online Conversation - The Network

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Join us in a Study Circles Online Conversation and the exploration the book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2015). Each session will use Kimmerer's book as a foundation for the conversation while exploring the impa

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Introduction

To achieve a sustainable future for all, the United Nations ( 2015) declared its Agenda for Sustainable Development to fight complex present and future social and environmental challenges. Especially regarding environmental education and sustainable development, students must understand complicated ecological issues like biodiversity loss. This is already addressed in international curricula at the primary school level, and integrated into advanced classes (e.g., Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority 2017; National Research Council 2013). Children learn how to identify ecosystems in their environment, analyze and predict their behavior, and understand why preserving ecosystems is highly relevant for the future. To facilitate this, international science standards emphasize analyzing the interplay of biotic and abiotic elements within ecosystems (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority 2017; National Research Council 2013). Since ecosystems are complex, challenges in understanding them are often investigated from a systems thinking perspective.

However, Grotzer and Basca ( 2003) found that promoting systems thinking alone is insufficient for fostering students' ecosystems understanding. Research on ecosystems reasoning reveals challenging patterns not only from a systems thinking perspective, but also in dealing with knowledge, students' conceptions, and understanding subject-specific ecosystem representations. This paper investigates the factors that influence students' reasoning about ecological systems and how these factors interact. In this way, this study takes a step towards the conceptualization of cross-sectional systems thinking by investigating how systems properties influence students' reasoning during systems thinking.

Reasoning About Ecosystems: a Systems Thinking Perspective

In biology, systems thinking is heavily emphasized, as it supports scientists' daily work (Jacobson and Wilensky 2006). Systems thinking is necessary to solve ecological problems and challenges, which require considering and understanding many elements and their direct and indirect effects. As ecological issues like global warming and extinction are striking and ecosystems are part of science curricula in many countries, we see ecosystems as a relevant area for investigating and supporting students' systems thinking (United Nations 2015; National Research Council 2013; Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority 2017). When analyzing the effects of changes in an ecosystem, it is insufficient to look only at individual organisms. Rather, effects on the level of population interactions, such as predator-prey relationships, must be considered. This often involves analyzing indirect and cyclical effects like feedback loops, mediated consequences, and potential side effects. Frequently, these effects only gradually become apparent.

In science education research, systems thinking skills are defined as the ability to consider super-ordinated principles when understanding and predicting the interplay of elements in complex systems (Jacobson and Wilensky 2006). From a systems thinking perspective, students' ecosystems understanding has been investigated at all school levels (Ben Zvi Assaraf and Orion 2010; Evagorou et al. 2009; Hmelo-Silver and Pfeffer 2004; Hokayem and Gotwals 2016; Sweeney and Sterman 2000; Sweeney and Sterman 2007). Studies reveal that primary school students already engage in systems thinking with respect to ecosystems, especially monocausal reasoning (Fraune 2013; Hokayem and Gotwals 2016). Furthermore, feedback processes do not seem particularly noticeable for primary school students (Evagorou et al. 2009; Hokayem et al. 2014).

On the one hand, frameworks in systems thinking research have focused on identifying and conceptualizing skills students need to understand complex systems (Mehren et al. 2018; Orion and Libarkin 2014; Sommer and Lücken 2010), and on the other hand they have emphasized how students develop their abilities in the sense of learning progression research (Hokayem and Gotwals 2016; Lee et al. 2019; Mehren et al. 2018). We rely on Mehren et al.'s ( 2018) framework, as it is a validated model for describing systems thinking, its levels, and the skills involved. This framework is developed to describe systems thinking in geography and comprises relevant findings on systems thinking from different fields of educational research like geography (Mehren et al. 2018), earth sciences (Ben Zvi Assaraf and Orion 2005, Ben Zvi Assaraf and Orion 2010; Batzri et al. 2015), and biology (Grotzer and Basca 2003; Hokayem and Gotwals 2016), involving research on systems thinking from major research groups e.g., Ben Zvi Assaraf and Orion ( 2005, 2010), Sommer and Lücken ( 2010), and Jacobson ( 2001). The research group of Mehren et al. ( 2018) was furthermore able to validate the framework in a large-scale assessment. We consider it appropriate and valid to use Mehren et al.'s ( 2018) framework to determine students' systems thinking skills in biology, as it incorporates and builds on the latest insights of systems thinking research.

The framework describes three skills used in systems thinking: systems organization, systems behavior, and system-adequate intention to act. Systems organization describes students' identification of essential systems components. In a forest, for example, students can identify foxes, birds, mice, and plants. To analyze systems behavior, students interrelate the relevant populations within an ecosystem and analyze how they interact, e.g., how a rising fox population influences other forest organisms. Students predict a system-adequate intention to act by identifying long-term effects, such as how current influences might impact a forest ecosystem in the future. These systems thinking skills can exist at different levels ranked by various causal relationships students consider in their reasoning, such as (a) monocausal relations in simple systems (Level 1), (b) linear relations in moderately cross-linked systems (Level 2), and (c) complex relations in highly cross-linked systems (Level 3) (Mehren et al. 2018).

Young Students' Abilities in Systems Thinking

A great variance exists between the conceptualizations, topics, and cohorts investigated in the field of systems thinking from primary to early secondary school (age between 8 and 12). Relevant studies reveal that students are able to identify essential components of complex systems (Ben Zvi Assaraf and Orion 2010, Sommer and Lücken 2010). Most children can identify interdependency between two components of a system. A deeper investigation of students' ability to analyze dynamic relations was conducted by Grotzer and Solis ( 2015), who examined spatial and attentional discontinuity in students' cause and effect reasoning in systems. Thereby, students across grades two, four, and six showed a prevalence for local cause and effect reasoning. They were unable to analyze the temporal and spatial delays at an abstract level. These results were supported by Hokayem and Gotwals ( 2016) and Hoakyem et al. ( 2014). Based on a qualitative approach, they investigated students' systems thinking reasoning skills from first up to fourth grade. It was identified that students' reasoning at primary school level was mainly based on anthropomorphic conceptions as well as everyday life experiences (practical reasoning). Furthermore, research reveals that students showed a major improvement in abilities through formal instruction at this early science education level (Ben Zvi Assaraf and Orion 2010; Sommer and Lücken 2010; Grotzer and Basca 2003), therefore indicating that there is great potential for learning systems thinking at the primary and early secondary school level.

Reasoning About Ecosystems: the Role of Knowledge, Conceptions, and Representations

Besides students' systems thinking skills, other factors also influence their understanding of ecological systems. Here, we examine students' prior knowledge and conceptions, as well as the representation of the ecosystem itself.

Knowledge

Content-related knowledge seems beneficial for understanding ecosystems. Studies reveal that interventions, which emphasize content knowledge, lead to students' better understanding of more complex patterns in ecosystems (Grotzer and Basca 2003; Sommer and Lücken 2010). The impact of knowledge is also revealed when comparing novices' and experts' systems thinking. Research indicates that novices strongly focus on available, static components, whereas experts integrate structural and behavioral system components when analyzing ecosystems (Hmelo-Silver and Pfeffer 2004). It seems that "without systems-specific content knowledge, individuals appear to default to descriptive surface features" (Sweeney and Sterman 2007, p. 305) of ecosystems. Consequently, a deeper understanding of ecosystems involves integrating knowledge, which differs between novices and experts.

Conceptions

Acquiring new knowledge is not only influenced by learners' scientifically adequate prior understanding, but also by students' plausible (though scientifically incorrect) notions (Duit et al. 2013) that are seen as naïve, alternative, or as misconceptions. Following the approach presented by Gropengießer (e.g. Gropengießer 2007), individuals use metaphors to access and understand their environment by projecting a domain from everyday life onto another target domain they aim to access. This is especially relevant when the target domains cannot be experienced individually, such as interdependencies in food webs. Thereby, the degree of abstraction and complexity can vary from concepts expressed by the use of single terms, through propositions that express thinking constructs that relate to specific situations or domains, up to conceptions representing complex thinking figures within domains. Alternative conceptions represent an inadequate mapping of an experienced metaphor that is not suited to explain the target domain's structure. Therefore, evaluating students' language is particularly important to access their ways of thinking regarding a domain. We can assume that these ideas also influence reasoning about ecosystems. Findings supporting this assumption were revealed in a comparative international study by Barman and his colleagues (1995) who found that students demonstrate "specific misconceptions that impede their understanding of more complex information" from ecosystems (Barman et al. 1995, p. 781). Often, students cannot identify influences of a changing prey population on a predator population, and vice versa (American Association for the Advancement of Science 2019; Griffiths and Grant 1985). When referring to food availability, students use teleological reasoning patterns, imposing an intention on systems regulation. They indicate that populations exist to feed other populations (Leach et al. 1996, p. 113). The relationship between students' conceptions and systems thinking is particularly elucidated in a study by Hokayem and Gotwals ( 2016). They propose students' anthropomorphic and conceptual reasoning about ecological systems to be the lower anchor of a learning progression. Nevertheless, students' integrated reasoning patterns were based on their conceptions and complex levels of systems thinking and were rated as mixed-reasoning patterns. These findings indicated that students' conceptions could be relevant in all levels of systems thinking.

Representations

Science communication relies heavily on representation (Tsui and Treagust 2013). Understanding representations is an active and constructive cognitive procedure wherein a learner develops a mental model of representations by applying prior knowledge to representational features (Schnotz 2005). This is necessary for a deep understanding of representation and coherent reasoning. Hence, reasoning about subject-related representations, such as ecosystems, is influenced by learners' existing knowledge and ideas. Accordingly, representations can also influence reasoning about ecosystems.

Ecological systems are often presented as food webs or food chains. In ecology, a food web is a scientific conceptualization of an ecosystem (Begon et al. 2006), a model depicting interconnectedness and relationships to clarify the interplay of an ecosystem's elements. Food webs are highly conventionalized illustrations. In scientific representations, conventions express additional information for scientists that are challenging for students to understand (Tsui and Treagust 2013). Typical conventions in food webs represent populations through one animal. Furthermore, arrows are conventionalized as depicting energy flow (Begon et al. 2006). Consequently, they always point at the predator population. Arrows are often interpreted as "lives off," "produces," or "depends on" (Schollum 1983, p. 47), which contradicts scientific convention. Additionally, vertical organization of food webs by trophic levels (with predators on top) allows identification of depicted animals' relationships, although some might be unknown. Representations also include information on indirect or chain effects impacting entire ecosystems. For example, reducing the top predator population influences the population sizes of all other animals in the food web. Students show difficulties in integrating these mediated effects in their reasoning about ecosystems (American Association for the Advancement of Science 2019; Griffiths and Grant 1985). Based on these findings, representation seems to influence reasoning about ecosystems.

Research Question

Students' understanding of ecosystems has been investigated in many studies from a general systems thinking perspective. However, there seem to be additional factors (e.g., knowledge, conceptions, and conventionalized representations) that might impact reasoning about ecosystems. Hence, our study contributes to the existing literature by determining the factors that influence students' reasoning about ecosystems and how they interact.

Method and Procedures

Participants and Data Collection

Ecosystems are internationally relevant in curricula, from elementary to higher secondary classes. Existing studies on ecosystems understanding comprise various perspectives on teaching and learning, which enables the identification of relevant influences on the learning process and builds the basis for our comprehensive research approach. Based on a literature review, we expected that younger students' understanding of ecosystems would be influenced not only by systems thinking but also their personal experience and education. To capture the influences on students' understanding, we investigated systems thinking with students from primary to early secondary school. Investigations into students' systems thinking at this age reveal that most students show significant improvements in systems thinking performance through formal instruction (Ben-Zvi Assaraf and Orion 2010; Sommer and Lücken 2010; Grotzer and Basca 2003). Furthermore, at this early age, there is a great variance in students' abilities, comprising both students with no ambitions to use systems thinking in their reasoning as well as high performing students (Hokayem and Gotwals 2016; Ben-Zvi Assaraf and Orion 2010). Conclusively, we assume that there is a great potential for teaching and learning systems thinking in the school years from primary to early secondary school, which informed our choice to investigate students' systems thinking and development at this young age (Ben-Zvi Assaraf and Orion 2010). To access a broad variance in students' understanding of ecosystems, we followed Hokayem and Gotwals's ( 2016) approach and performed a cross-sectional design with N = 20 students aged 9 to 12 years from a public primary and secondary school (Fig. 3 in Appendix). Our aim was not only to access students' systems thinking skills but also their cognitive activities while performing systems thinking. To gain insights on these cognitive activities of the meaning-making process, thinking-aloud processes are valid tools in educational and psychological research (Ericsson 2006; Ericsson and Simon 1998). Therefore, we asked participants to think aloud while answering a questionnaire on ecosystems. Participants explained why they considered certain answer options right or wrong. The questions aimed to access students' intuitive cognitive activities while undertaking systems thinking. Therefore, no intervention on ecosystems was conducted beforehand by the researchers

Sample item following the framework of Mehren et al. ( 2018): Systems organization at a monocausal level (Level 1)

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The questionnaire included 14 questions on systems thinking. To ensure validity, it was developed based on Mehren et al.'s ( 2018) systems thinking model. Each question (8 on systems organization, 3 on systems behavior, and 3 on systems-adequate intention to act) addressed one systems thinking skill and included a question, a representation of an ecosystem (food web), and three possible answers (see Fig. 1 for sample item and Table 1 in Appendix for all items).

Summary chart of the reasoning profiles students used regarding the different systems thinking skills identified following Mehren et al ( 2018). Regarding each skill of systems thinking, the maximum complexity of systems thinking skills observed for each student is listed. If a student referred to either conceptions, representation, or their knowledge in the reasoning patterns, this is displayed with a black box. If no statement was made regarding systems thinking or further reasoning patterns the figure shows a blank space.

We used the questionnaire to access students' abilities as Grotzer and Solis's study (2015) appeared to show that although students infrequently reported complex statements regarding, for example, distal explanations for dynamic interactions, they chose them when presented to them. Therefore, to access students' cognition, we prompted their systems thinking skills by presenting different answer options to them in a questionnaire and analyzed the cognitive processes performed while reasoning. Furthermore, the questionnaire simultaneously reduced the reading skills required. Students could always use simple reasoning but were encouraged to apply complex thinking processes. This should have engaged students to also consider indirect or complex effects. Students were introduced to the method of thinking aloud and then trained with a sample test item. During the training, students were requested to explain why they considered certain answer options to be right or wrong and give insights into their reasoning process. Thinking aloud took up to 40 min for each student and was recorded by a voice recorder. All statements were transcribed.

Data Analysis

To analyze students' transcribed thinking-aloud protocols, we developed a theory-based coding frame following Schreier ( 2012) (Table 2 in Appendix), which included systems thinking, knowledge, conceptions, and representations as the main categories. First, we assigned the systems thinking skill related to the skill addressed in the questionnaire. Then, we analyzed the underlying patterns of complexity in the students' statements according to the progress levels of Mehren et al.'s ( 2018) systems thinking model. If several statements were made in succession, the maximum linkage was assumed to indicate the progression level of systems thinking. When students expressed correct statements on biological content, we categorized their knowledge. When they used ideas based on everyday experiences or from classes that were inconsistent with a scientific perspective, we coded their conceptions. Statements referring to system presentation were coded as representations. To ensure the reliability of the coding, in the first step, two scientists independent of the study worked separately to categorize all the recorded explanations. In the second step, both raters discussed differences in coding until an agreement was reached (Schreier 2012; Markauskaite et al. 2017). Hence, our results represent the agreed coding of both scientists.

Ethical Considerations

All students and their parents were informed in advance about the aim and the procedures of the study, and that participation was voluntary. They all consented to participate. To protect privacy, and following data protection restrictions, data analyses were performed with anonymized transcripts and no additional data about the participants were collected, except their age and the thinking-aloud protocols. Therefore, gender and differences in skills regarding gender cannot be reported.

Results

We coded 215 students' statements referring to systems thinking (42.8%, 92), students' knowledge (20.8%, 45), students' misconceptions (19.1%, 41), and representational features (17.1%, 37). In the following sections, we present each category's coding and results (for details, see Table 2 in Appendix), and we provide an overview of the students' abilities and reasoning profiles according to the different systems thinking skills.

Systems Thinking

Regarding identifying systems organization, students could reason systemically at all levels of systems thinking. Students' statements showed monocausal reasoning patterns (Level 1) by identifying one element acting on another, e.g., "The mouse eats the snail" (3029). They addressed linear relations (Level 2) when identifying element A acting on element B and element B acting on element C, e.g., "The snail eats the dandelion and the mouse eats the snail" (5011). A complex reasoning pattern was revealed (Level 3) when more than three elements were involved and demonstrated at least one connection point where the interdependence of more than three elements occurred (A acted on B and A acted on C), e.g., "The sun makes the dandelion grow. The snail or caterpillar eats the dandelion. The mouse or bird eats the snail or caterpillar. The fox eats the bird or mouse" (5011).

All statements presented regarding the systems organization skill indicated that students' reasoning was based on descriptive patterns referring to single animals in the ecosystem rather than populations. They did not seem to develop an abstract model of ecosystems, but described individual actions depicted at different complexity levels.

When analyzing systems behavior, students identified feeding relationships between the ecosystem elements. However, these also remained at an individual level. Students recognized that intervention on one animal in the ecosystem also affected others. These effects were analyzed at different complexity levels, ranging from monocausal to complex. A complex analysis was revealed (Level 3) in the statement: "All animals are poisoned and get sick. The snail and caterpillar eat the poisoned dandelion. The bird and mouse eat the caterpillar and snail, which are also poisoned, and the fox eats the bird and mouse, accordingly" (6004). The student identified complex interrelations between animals in the ecosystem by explaining why single animals were poisoned. As shown in the systems behavior example, the analyzed effects mainly moved in one direction: from the starting point to the top predator. Thus, students did not mention feedback loop processes.

Regarding system-adequate intention to act, students need to predict how an intervention today influences the ecosystem in a future state. Students tend to choose direct solutions by predicting consequences mainly on a monocausal level, as stated in the following sentence regarding the question of how one could achieve having fewer caterpillars in gardens: "You could poison the caterpillars because they eat all the salad" (3034). To achieve a higher level of systems thinking, the student needs to consider further effects on other animals in the ecosystem and has to integrate a prospective view in their analysis. This reveals that students described complex effects but did not recognize prospective regulatory processes like feedback loops. Rather, it was indicated that intervention by humans, in general, negatively influenced the food web.

Knowledge

The statements analyzed showed a variety of factual knowledge. Regarding systems organization, students recognized individual animals and explained the knowledge they associated with them. To answer the questions, students frequently referred to their prior knowledge (73.2%, 33 of 45) instead of the elements and relationships in the food web. Regarding which animal was eaten by another animal, Student 4001 reasoned: "I say the snail because it [...] is not a predator and has [...] little protection [....]."

Students demonstrated high and low levels of systems behavior analysis (22.1%, 10 of 45). The question, "Poisonous garbage is dumped in the ecosystem. What will happen to its animals?" was asked to understand their perspectives on animals' relationships. They applied their prior knowledge of how poison makes animals sick to their answers. Student 3029, for example, used this knowledge to explain that "All animals will be affected because poison makes animals sick" (3029). In contrast, Student 6004 applied this knowledge and added a complex analysis of systems relationships regarding how poisoning would affect all animals: "All animals are poisoned and get sick. The snail and caterpillar eat the poisoned dandelion. The bird and mouse eat the caterpillar and snail, which are poisoned again, and the fox eats the bird and mouse, accordingly."

Concerning the system-adequate intention to act skill, students barely used their knowledge (4.3%, 2 of 45). Rather, they imagined potential scenarios that related more to their conceptions than their knowledge, as presented in the "Results" section regarding conceptions. Only two students used their knowledge when predicting a system-adequate intention to act. Thereby, they supported their assumption regarding future system states based on their knowledge.

Students' Conceptions

Students' conceptions were mostly very individualized ideas about nature. Based on their conceptions, students identified systems organization (24.4%, 10 of 41) by explaining the relationship between the ecosystem's elements. Student 5031 responded, "The snail eats the dandelion and mouse eats the snail. That means the dandelion is in the snail and the mouse eats the snail with the dandelion in it."

Students imagined that if an animal ate a plant, a small part of that plant remained in the consumer. If this animal was eaten by another animal, it would contain parts of all that had been consumed before. We supposed that the student followed the idea of a container scheme (Niebert et al. 2012). Higher concepts of digestion and energy transfer were not mentioned. As presented in the example, the student considered the animals presented in the food web on an individual level and not on a population level, as in the scientific understanding.

Students often analyzed systems behavior (26.7%, 11 of 41) from an anthropomorphic perspective (Hokayem and Gotwals 2016). They stated, "Snails are important [and] do clean nature" (5028) or that animals could actively think "[...] the animals think that [...]" (4005). Thereby, students gave animals human characteristics or behavior.

Most conceptions were mentioned regarding the system-adequate intention to act (48.8%, 20 of 41). Students frequently referred to the balance of nature concept. Student 5031 stated, "There must always be a certain balance in nature." Following students' conceptions, influences on the ecosystem (such as human intervention) should aim at not disturbing the ecosystem's balance.

Student 6003: "The fox eats birds and mice in the meadow and [when one decreases the fox population] there is no one [to eat the mice and birds], who become too numerous. Then, people come and do not want [mice and birds] anymore, so the whole [food web] is broken."

Students demonstrated a complex analysis of the ecosystem. Nevertheless, this student evaluated intervention by humans as destructive to the ecosystem. Students used their conceptions in all skills and levels of understanding complex ecosystems, most frequently regarding their prediction of a system-adequate intention to act.

Representation

The majority of statements made regarding the representation of the food web were coded when identifying systems organization (97.3%, 36 of 37). When thinking aloud, students referred to the representation to confirm their reasoning. However, they also reported misunderstandings regarding scientific conventions used in the food web, like the meaning of arrows or the implicit integration of indirect effects. Various meanings were perceived, e.g., "equals" vs. "to become," or arrows were misinterpreted by assuming "B eats A," as in "snail eats bird," instead of "A eats B," as in "bird eats snail." These assumptions regarding representational features affected the understanding of interrelationships between ecosystem elements. Additionally, students negated indirect relationships because they stated there was "no connection between the animals in the food web" (5001); "I would assume this connection, but there is no arrow between these animals in the picture" (4005); and "I do not see any connection between these animals" (4004). It is apparent that students believed that there were no relationships because indirect relationships were not explicitly indicated in the representation. Regarding the conventionalized representation of populations by single animals, students frequently reasoned at the individual level. There did not seem to be an abstract model of populations interacting in the ecosystem, rather than individuals. It could be observed that students did not detach themselves from the concrete, observable contents of the representation. Consequently, difficulties arose when understanding scientific conventions, such as arrows, indirect effects, or interrelationships at a population rather than individual level.

Development of Systems Thinking Skills

In the following section in Fig. 2, we present an overview of students' abilities and reasoning profiles regarding the different systems thinking skills by reporting the maximum level of systems thinking and further reasoning patterns used by the students per skill. In the figure, the three main columns represent the main systems thinking skills following the model by Mehren et al. ( 2018). Each line stands for one student ordered by age, starting with the youngest. For each main column, we represent the highest reached level of systems thinking by the student. Furthermore, the black box represents whether the students used reasoning patterns regarding their conceptions, representation, or knowledge. This provides an overview of the students' reasoning patterns development according to their age.

It reveals that systems thinking performance improved with age, as the number of relationships and elements considered rose in students' thinking-aloud protocols. Students at a younger age showed little reasoning based on systems analysis, although they showed a higher frequency of ability regarding the skills systems behavior and system-adequate intention to act. Nevertheless, some individual students were also able to show complex reasoning patterns at a young age. A matter of particular interest can be identified in the reasoning patterns of students regarding the diverging systems thinking skills. When they reason on systems organization, they frequently refer to the given representation and their knowledge, whereas, when reasoning on systems behavior, students refer to their conceptions and knowledge. It can be further identified that while addressing the systems-adequate intention to act, students address mainly their conceptions. Thereby, the reasoning patterns used do not vary substantially within the age cohort.

Discussion

Conserving ecosystems are one of our future's central challenges (United Nations 2015). Hence, we aim to investigate how students reason regarding ecosystems and which factors influence their reasoning. Mehren et al.'s ( 2018) framework was revealed to be well-suited to analyze students' systems thinking skills, as we could evaluate all skills and levels of systems thinking. The analyzed data provided information on the increasing complexity of students' systems thinking skill in relation to their age, while revealing that students based their reasoning not only on systems thinking, but also on their knowledge, conceptions, and representations about the ecosystem. It was identified that specific reasoning patterns occur due to the systems thinking skill performed, independent of students' age.

Systems Organization

Students showed frequent reasoning patterns in relation to the representation of a complex system and their individual knowledge. Conclusively, when performing systems organization, students interact with the representation to identify relevant information within the system. Visual representations play a major role in scientific communication (Tsui and Treagust 2013). Especially in the visualizations of complex ecological systems, the degree of abstraction varies widely (Roth and Pozzer-Ardenghi 2013), and students need to understand a wide range of representations like food chains, food webs, or computational models. Following Schnotz's ( 2005) approach, students integrated their knowledge and conceptions to understand the food web representations. Our results showed that a lack of knowledge regarding conventionalized representational features, not ecosystems in general, prevented a deeper understanding of the ecosystem when identifying systems organization. They demonstrated difficulties decoding the conventions, showing misunderstandings when identifying indirect effects (Griffiths and Grant 1985, AAAS 2019). Without decoding the conventionalized image, identification of the system organization remained superficial and strongly oriented on patterns of representation, which was confirmed by results from earlier studies (Sweeney and Sterman 2007).

Systems Behavior

Students applied their knowledge and conceptions to analyze systems behavior. Qualitative analysis reveals that in this process, students could analyze a complex number of elements and relations but based their analysis on rather superficial assumptions about systems relationships, which originate from fragmented individual knowledge and misconceptions. According to Piaget ( 1966), younger participants' perceptions are still strongly led by observable phenomena. Thus, knowledge and conceptions in our study were particularly specific to the given animals of the presented ecosystem. When analyzing systems behavior, students revealed that their ecosystem understanding was based on coexistence of individuals, rather than populations. This missing abstraction of the given content is in line with earlier studies, where students based their reasoning on their direct experience or environment (Hokayem and Gotwals 2016; Grotzer and Solis 2015) or observable systems patterns (Hmelo-Silver and Pfeffer 2004). Our research indicates that this is not only a phenomenon that affects young students' systems thinking since with knowledge or conceptions concerning single feeding relationships students were unable to overcome a unidirectional and very individual understanding of the elements and relationships presented in the ecosystem (Grotzer and Solis 2015).

System-adequate Intention to Act

When students predicted a system-adequate intention to act, they frequently referred to their conceptions. Students overestimated the scope of ecosystem interventions, as their understanding was led by the idea of single animals depending on each other rather than populations. Since students did not exhibit knowledge of mechanisms, such as feedback loop processes or indirect effects, we suspected that predicting interventions' impacts on the ecosystem over time were difficult. We assumed that because they did not have knowledge of typical process patterns in the ecosystem, their arguments were based on their conceptions.

We conceptualized knowledge and misconceptions as the opposite ends of a continuum, from scientifically correct knowledge to plausible but scientifically incorrect misconceptions. We know that this does not necessarily imply two diverging cognitive procedures, but rather, contrasting factors affecting ecosystem understanding. Thus, it may be possible that students' reasoning regarding the system-adequate intention to act could also be affected by their knowledge, if available; this was also evident in our study. Nevertheless, misconceptions are often resistant to change and firmly held by individuals (Duit et al. 2013; Duit and Treagust 2003). First signs on the robustness of students' conceptions in the domain of ecosystem analysis were revealed in the study of Reiner and Eilam ( 2001), where ninth-grade students' conceptions changed after instruction, but their thinking figures, for example ontological beliefs, did not. Especially in young students, there is a strong belief in conceptions like the balance of nature (Ergazaki and Andriotou 2010) or container schemes (Niebert et al. 2012). We also assume that predicting future systems settings involves not only the application of knowledge but also creativity. Therefore, students might not only ponder which scenario is the most likely to happen according to their knowledge but think of potential future scenarios based on their imagination. It remains to be investigated whether conceptions influence students' systems thinking only at an early age, or in higher grades too.

Explanations of Mixed-factor Reasoning

Our study revealed two major findings on mixed-factor reasoning about ecosystems. First, students referred to factors influencing the individual cognitive requirements of the systems thinking skills performed independently of their abilities in systems thinking or their age. Second, the complexity of students' systems thinking was independent of their basic assumptions on systems patterns and relationships, indicating that just because a statement was complex, it did not have to be led by scientific assumptions regarding the system. Studies often conclude that young students are unable to engage in complex systems thinking (Hokayem and Gotwals 2016; Sommer and Lücken 2010). However, we suggested that they might lack the basic knowledge to argue scientifically, which was found to be systemically correct.

The identification of mixed-factor reasoning aligned with findings from Hokayem and Gotwals ( 2016) but contradicted their assumption of a natural evolutionary learning progression, which characterizes reasoning based on conceptions as low-level reasoning and complex reasoning patterns as the highest level. Rather than conceptualizing a linear learning progression concerning systems thinking in ecosystems with absolute levels, our analyses indicated that factors influencing students' reasoning seemed skill-specific and independent of students' systems thinking abilities. Furthermore, most of the systems thinking framework confounds the assumption that complex systems thinking only occurs at correct basic assumptions on systems relations, which we can refute with our study's results (Hokayem and Gotwals 2016; Mehren et al. 2018).

Limitations

Our study has some limitations. In our study, we aimed to determine the factors that particularly influence students' reasoning. To do so, we used one specific ecosystem in our questionnaire; hence, our findings are limited to this system for now. Students could investigate this ecosystem over time, which additionally led to constant use of the same system complexity. This could have contributed to the fact that students did not reconsider their basic assumptions about the ecosystem. In a further study, this limitation could be addressed by having students analyze a variety of ecosystems. We developed the presented ecosystem according to scientific conventions, which meant that elements were labeled as singular. This could have enhanced reasoning at the individual level. Hence, investigating whether plural labels promote thinking concerning populations would be worthwhile. However, since this did not correspond to scientific conventions, we did not implement it in our study. A further limitation could be that students' reasoning did not always correspond to our investigation's focus, which was, of course, age-appropriate for the young participants of our study. However, this explains why the number of statements rated was lower than the potential number of reasoning patterns fostered by the questionnaire. Finally, our results represent students' systems thinking "as it is" to provide an ecologically valid description. This implies that the particular sources of students' skills, for example, science lessons or out of school learning, need to be subjected to further investigations.

Implications and Outlook

With this thinking-aloud study, we intended to investigate factors influencing students' reasoning about ecological systems from multiple perspectives. Our results add to what is already known on systems thinking, by showing that systems thinking is highly guided by systems-specific patterns, as basic assumptions on systems elements and relationships heavily impacted reasoning about ecosystems at all levels of systems thinking. This should be considered when nurturing students' systems thinking skills across grades and topics, as we discovered that students may be able to consider a complex number of elements and relations in their assumptions on a complex system, but their lack of knowledge or their conceptions foster incorrect conclusions on the interdependencies between elements. Furthermore, our study contributes to the field, by identifying the significant relevance of focusing on representation formats, students' knowledge, and students' conceptions when teaching systems thinking. We assume that identifying systems characteristics within the factors of systems-specific knowledge, conceptions, and representations are an effective blueprint for further research, as it reveals challenging patterns in students' ecosystem understanding, which is highly relevant for the teaching process. Science educators should be aware that the complexity of systems thinking and the correctness of a statement do not necessarily correlate. Rather, students may show complex thinking processes that underlie conclusions that are based on conceptions or lack of content knowledge. Furthermore, the instruction given to the students significantly influences their cognitive activities. As diverse systems thinking skills demand distinct cognitive activities and potentially different instruction, future research could address whether skill-specific foci of instruction regarding systems thinking can significantly improve students' reasoning about ecosystems or even reach beyond ecosystems understanding and be generalized to a common tool for improving systems thinking. Our research also guides the investigation and conceptualization of a unified framework for systems thinking across fields and lays the basis for advancing tools for developing systems thinking across topics and grades, which is highly relevant for the implementation of systems thinking as a core skill in science curricula (National Research Council 2013; Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority 2017). Ultimately, we assume that our results particularly advance research on systems thinking, as they indicate that conceptualizing the intersection of systems thinking skills requires consideration of systems and skill-specifics.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Professor Armin Rempfler from the University of Teacher Education Luzern for supporting us in the item development of this study. Furthermore, we would like to thank our student research assistants, Johannes Wolters (for transcription) and Kristian Frey (for transcription and coding of the thinking aloud protocols). Additionally, we thank the IZfB for its financial support regarding the professional editing service.

Funding

Open Access funding provided by Projekt DEAL.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Faculty of Biology, Biology Education, University of Duisburg-Essen, Universitätsstraße 5, 45141, Essen, Germany

Sophia Mambrey & Philipp Schmiemann

2. Faculty of Physics, University of Duisburg-Essen, Universitätsstraße 5, 45141, Essen, Germany

Nico Schreiber

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sophia Mambrey.

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This project was conducted under the auspices of the graduate school for primary education "SUSe I" of the University of Duisburg-Essen and was financially supported by the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Research of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. We contracted professional editing services by Editage, financially supported by the IZfB (Interdisciplinary Centre for Educational Research) of the University of Duisburg-Essen. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funder. We confirm that there are no potential conflicts arising from these arrangements.

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Appendix

Appendix

Sample number of participants by age

Table 1 Overview on questionnaire and item construction. In the table, the items are displayed in an overview chart. All items refer to the presented figure underneath. The students were presented an age-appropriate format of the questionnaire. To access students reasoning on systems thinking, items 1-6 are developed in a multiple-choice (MC) format. The addressed elements and relations in these items are always related to one level of the systems thinking model by Mehren et al. (2018). Items 7-14 are developed in an ordered multiple-choice (OMC) format. In these items, all distractors present one level of a systems thinking skill of the systems thinking framework. This allows the condensed representation of a variety of response options and thereby a time-economic survey method. We have always applied the OMC format when it matched best to the skill addressed

Table 2 Results: category system, sample categorization, and number of statements. * Deviations from the 100% mark occur due to rounding of the relative number of statements

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Mambrey, S., Schreiber, N. & Schmiemann, P. Young Students' Reasoning About Ecosystems: the Role of Systems Thinking, Knowledge, Conceptions, and Representation. Res Sci Educ 52, 79-98 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-020-09917-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-020-09917-x

Keywords

Environmental education

Reasoning patterns

Systems thinking

Understanding of ecosystems

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Young Students' Reasoning About Ecosystems: the Role of Systems Thinking, Knowledge, Conceptions, and Representation - Research in Science Education

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Regarding future ecological challenges, it is highly relevant for students to understand the processes within ecosystems and the effects of external influences on their conservation. Since ecosystems are complex, difficulties in learning are often examined from a systems thinking perspective.